Ensuring your website is ready for Internet Explorer 8
Top line - IE 8 can potentially affect websites designed for previous versions of IE. Feel free to reach out with questions. Thanks.
Users may experience one or more of the following issues when Web browsing existing content with Internet Explorer 8 in IE8 Standards mode: Misaligned page layout, Overlapping text or images, JavaScript functionality issues and/or errors. There are multiple options customers can use to mitigate these issues: Site owners can update their sites now with the meta-tag to set site rendering in Internet Explorer 7 mode, Optionally, site owners can test their sites with IE8 before applying the tags to determine the depth and breadth to which they are affected, If a site is not updated with compatibility tags, users would need to opt-in to Internet Explorer 7 compatibility mode within the browser.
Consistent with our efforts to promote further interoperability across the Web, Microsoft will be releasing Internet Explorer 8 to render content in its most standards-compliant way by default. Giving top priority to Web standards interoperability allows us to help web developers and designers drive toward the ideal of “write once, run anywhere”, freeing up more time to innovate rather than modify content for different browsers. This commitment also addresses several development and design pain points from previous Internet Explorer releases.
However, browsing with this default setting may cause content written for previous versions of Internet Explorer to display differently than intended. This creates a call to action for site owners to ensure their content will continue to display seamlessly in Internet Explorer 8. As such, we’ve provided a meta-tag usable on a per-page or per-site level maintain backwards compatibility with Internet Explorer 7. Adding this tag instructs Internet Explorer 8 to render content like it did in Internet Explorer 7, without requiring any additional changes.
We are encouraging site administrators to get their sites ready now for broad adoption of Internet Explorer 8, as there will be a beta release in the third quarter of this year targeted for all consumers. To learn more and get started, please follow the step-by-step instructions located at the following link: https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=120024 .
Additional Resources
The following links provide additional information you may find useful:
· Internet Explorer 8 main site: https://www.microsoft.com/ie/ie8
· Internet Explorer Team Blog: https://blogs.msdn.com/ie
· Internet Explorer Developer Center: https://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/ie/default.aspx
· Internet Explorer 8 Readiness Toolkit (for web designers and developers): https://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/ie/ie8/readiness/default.htm
· Microsoft Interoperability Principles: https://www.microsoft.com/interop/principles/default.mspx