By: Tim Nash

Yes it's official a member of the leat Mozilla commando team has succeeded in spiking the water at Microsoft headquarters.

In a daring over night raid the result...

there is a concrete benefit to Web designers if all vendors give priority to interoperability around commonly accepted standards as they evolve

Source: Microsoft Press release

My initial reaction on hearing the news was to finish with the line, "which is why we believe all browser should use our latest standards" but no it seems the IE team have in fact decided that IE 8 the first Microsoft browser to come near to an acid test will actually operate in a compliant "standards" mode from the start in what can only be called a mammoth U turn.

What does this mean?

Well if they follow through on the promise and let's face it track record does not do them favours then a lot of the current inconsistencies between IE and other browsers should be resolved. Of course this requires that the IE 8 take up to be quick and efficient on launch and once again the various signs at least from the IE 7 launch is this is a long way from being the holy grail moment for web designers.

For SEOs?

Well for search engine optimisers perhaps this isn't that interesting news but it does mean that with Microsoft potentially embracing web standards, that the move to newer more semantic standards should be quicker and easier meaning you can use more cutting edge techniques in your on page optimisation without having to worry about poor old IE. So might not be huge news and until they actually carry out their word it is nothing to worry about. Of course I'm sure their must be some one who will be upset by the news and will want IE to render as it currently does on their page one can only guess why? But if you are such a person fear not
you can always declare a specific rendering engine...

<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=8" />

For more information and a much better write up then mine check out IE will use standards mode by default.