Finally: IE8 will default to standard-compliant mode
In an impressive volte-face, Microsoft has decided that Internet Explorer 8 will default to being compliant with web standards after all, and will not, as previously announced, require web pages to explicitly opt in to conforming behavior.
Internet Explorer presently has two modes for displaying web pages: "quirks" mode, for showing old or particularly badly-formed pages, and "standards" mode, for showing pages that appear to conform to the various specifications that govern the web. The problem with this was that IE 7 doesn't honor the standards very well, and so its "standards" mode isn't all that standard.
IE 8, due to go into private beta imminently, is set to be a huge improvement on this front, and should be a truly standards-compliant version of Internet Explorer. This had Microsoft concerned. The obvious thing to do would be to make "standards" mode more standard. The part of this that concerned the company was that there are pages out there that put the browser into "standards" mode, but aren't actually standard—instead, they depended on IE 7's nonstandard "standards" mode.
Internet Explorer 8 will default to true standards compliance after all, and developers who want IE 7 behavior will have to explicitly choose it. Microsoft is citing its new interoperability initiative as the impetus behind the change. This move, designed primarily to stave off further EU intervention, emphasizes support and promotion of open standards in a way that the company hasn't previously done. This move should also help to fend off Opera's antitrust complaint, which argues that the EU should force IE into better standards compliance.
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