We’ve decided that IE8 will, by default, interpret web content in the most standards compliant way it can. This decision is a change from what we’ve posted previously.

- Dean Hachamovitch on the IEBlog

This is great news, kudos to the Microsoft team for listening to the community and changing their approach.

(for more background see Jeremy Keith and Jeffery Zeldman's articles in issue 253 of A List Apart)

This has to be some kind of joke?

Right?

It's all an elaborate ruse and in a couple of days, after we've all blogged about it, they'll turn round and say “You didn't seriously think we were this out of touch did you? Suckers!”

Please tell me that's what's going to happen.

The proposed default behavior for version targeting in Internet Explorer solves the problem of “breaking the web” in much the same way that decapitation solves the problem of headaches. In its current state, version targeting is a cure that will kill the patient. Version targeting could have been an opportunity for Microsoft to demonstrate innovation. Instead, the proposed default behavior demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the World Wide Web, a place that according to its creator, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, will always be “a little bit broken.”

- Jeremy Keith

Sharepoint 2007 is proof positive that Microsoft doesn’t get the community thing

Clay Newton commenting on Scobleizer.

Markus Mielke has published the final list of CSS changes for IE7 now that they're in lockdown and getting ready for shipping.

In all, we made over 200 behavior changes (bug fixes or new features) under strict mode to improve CSS2.1 compliance.

Some of the fixes include the infamous peekaboo bug, three pixel text jog, and doubled float-margin bug.

As well as the bug fixes there are other improvements including :hover on all elements not just <a>, background-attachment: fixed working on all elements, and support for min/max width/height (finally!!).

I'm disappointed that display: table still isn't in there but there is hope for the future

We are already planning for the next IE release and will continue down the road of improving our CSS support.

Praise where praise is due, I think the team over there has done a great job so far. Now I (and many others) want to see this kept up.