Weekly Link Round-Up #19

There has been a lot of discussion/arguments recently about IE8’s rumored version targeting. I have been a little in between on which side to take, but I think a few articles from this week really helped me to make my decision.

  • They Shoot Browsers, Don't They? Jeremy Keith has a great discussion about why the default version targeting is incorrect. He does not think you should have to add extra code (ok, just one line) in order to “enable” new browser features.
  • Version Targeting: Threat or Menace? Jeffrey Zeldman takes a different approach and discusses how huge IE’s market share is, and that a majority of people are not developing their websites with Web Standards, and their sites would “break” (display differently) in IE8 (if by default, it would act like IE8). Imagine all of those large and powerful companies having their sites “broken”, Microsoft couldn’t take it. This is what I think really sold me. While I don’t think it’s necessarily correct, it is probably the right thing for Microsoft to do to protect themselves.
  • Common Bonds Eric Meyer brings up a fantastic point here regarding the two different views of version targeting:
We all want to advance web standards. We all want browsers to improve their support. We all want better and more advanced specifications. We all want to reduce inconsistencies. We all want a better web.

Here is the rest of this stuff that I found interesting this week: