Simon Willison's Weblog: xuacompatible

Introducing Google Chrome Frame

2009-09-23T09:57:59+00:00

Here’s what Alex Russell has been up to at Google: An IE plugin (for 6, 7 and 8 on all Windows versions) which embeds the Google Chrome rendering engine—sites can then opt-in to using it by including a X-UA-Compatible meta tag. Seems to be aimed at corporate networks which mandate IE for badly written intranet applications—they can roll this out without retraining users to use another browser or breaking their existing in house apps.

Tags: alex-russell, chrome, chromeframe, google, internet-explorer, webkit, xuacompatible

Sunsetting Quirks Mode

2008-01-23T14:56:44+00:00

Sunsetting Quirks Mode

Apparently proper standards support in IE (or at least the IE8 renderer) will be triggered by the HTML5 doctype, providing an alternative to those who don’t wish to pollute their markup with an IE-specific meta tag.

Tags: browsers, doctypes, html5, ie8, internet-explorer, sam-ruby, xuacompatible

Legacy.

2008-01-23T14:14:15+00:00

Legacy.

James Bennett has what I think is the most interesting analysis of the X-UA-Compatible header to date.

Tags: browsers, ie8, internet-explorer, james-bennett, web-standards, xuacompatible

Quoting Ian Hickson

2008-01-23T10:07:40+00:00

If Web authors actually use this feature, and if IE doesn't keep losing market share, then eventually this will cause serious problems for IE's competitors — instead of just having to contend with reverse-engineering IE's quirks mode and making the specs compatible with IE's standards mode, the other browser vendors are going to have to reverse engineer every major IE browser version, and end up implementing these same bug modes themselves.

— Ian Hickson

Tags: browsers, hixie, ian-hickson, ie8, internet-explorer, web-standards, xuacompatible

Quoting Andy Budd

2008-01-22T21:00:50+00:00

No matter what great leaps forward the Internet Explorer team make from now on, the majority of developers won’t use them and the majority of users won’t see them. By doing this the Internet Explorer team may have created their own backwater, shot themselves in the foot and left themselves for dead.

— Andy Budd

Tags: andy-budd, ie8, internet-explorer, xuacompatible

2008-01-22T18:55:12+00:00

<META HTTP-EQUIV="X-BALL-CHAIN">

Mozilla hacker Robert O’Callahan discusses the technical implications of freezing copies of older rendering engines, including the increased footprint and the terrifying prospect of documents in different rendering modes communicating through iframes and the DOM.

Tags: browsers, dom, ie8, mozilla, roberto-callahan, xuacompatible

Broken

2008-01-22T18:42:37+00:00

Broken

Jeremy highlights the fly in the ointment: if you want IE 8 to behave like IE 8 (and not pretend to be IE 7), you HAVE to include the X-UA-Compatible header.

Tags: ie8, jeremy-keith, web-standards, xuacompatible

The versioning switch is not a browser detect

2008-01-22T16:34:08+00:00

The versioning switch is not a browser detect

PPK: “In other words, the versioning switch does not have any of the negative effects of a browser detect.”

Tags: browserdetect, browsers, doctypeswitching, ie8, internet-explorer, ppk, web-standards, xuacompatible

Quoting Eric Meyer

2008-01-22T14:24:06+00:00

Like DOCTYPE switching did in 2000, version targeting negates the vendor argument that existing behaviors can't be changed for fear of breaking web sites. If IE8 botches its implementation of some CSS property or DOM method, the mistake can be fixed in IE9 without breaking sites developed in the IE8 era. This actually makes browser vendors more susceptible to pressure to fix their bugs, and less fearful of doing so.

— Eric Meyer

Tags: browsers, doctypeswitching, eric-meyer, ie8, internet-explorer, web-standards, xuacompatible

Beyond DOCTYPE: Web Standards, Forward Compatibility, and IE8

2008-01-22T12:40:53+00:00

Beyond DOCTYPE: Web Standards, Forward Compatibility, and IE8

This has huge implications for client-side web developers: IE 8 will include the ability to mark a page as “tested and compatible with the IE7 rendering engine” using an X-UA-Compatible HTTP header or http-equiv meta element. It’s already attracting a heated debate in the attached discussion.

Tags: browsers, http, ie8, internet-explorer, web-standards, xuacompatible