Lots of continued discussion about Internet Explorer and Microsoft's support of web standards. Sam Ruby continues to finesse his SVG-via-Silverlight solution (improvement: use createElement() and then some XSLT to transform from SVG's XML elements to XAML's). Shelley Powers continues to finesse her ultimatum (ultimatae?) to Microsoft. I thought I'd post a few loose predictions of what I think IE8 will have when released.
Prediction 1: Web Development As You Wanted It To Be In 2004
IE8's "super standards" will include not only vastly improved CSS 2.1 support, but support for HTML DOM Level 2 and fixes to a great deal of IE7- interoperable bugs in its JS and HTML 4.01 (<object> implementation, for instance) implementations. In "super standards" mode, I should be able to write a decent web application from 2004 by following web standards without a huge amount of IE-specific hacks - as long as I include the <meta> tag.
Prediction 2: Little Bits of HTML 5
IE8's will support some of the new features of HTML 5 (probably not <video> or <audio>, but perhaps <canvas> and the DOM interfaces). IE8 will automatically go into "super standards" upon encountering the HTML5 DOCTYPE (as Chris stated).
Prediction 3: Who Needs Demand?
IE8 will ship with the Silverlight plugin automatically enabled. This will certainly drive penetration of the plugin, since even standardistas will want to install IE8 to get the good stuff we wanted 4 years ago. Who needs demand?
Prediction 4: If You Want XHTML, Go For It
I might be going out on a limb here, but I think IE8 might just support XHTML 1.1 (the MIME type and the XML strictness). This doesn't hurt Microsoft's strategy, really - since I don't think a large amount of people will be that interested in XML-based HTML. I think documents serving XHTML will automatically be in "super standards" mode. I also think that whatever bits of HTML5 they support, it will also be XHTML5 support.
Prediction 5: Sorry Shelley
IE8 will not support SVG. I really hope this one is not true, but I can't see that it makes sense for them to ship with support for the XHTML+SVG (+MathML?) mixed namespace nirvana until Silverlight has penetrated further into the web. Maybe they'll do it in IE9 when the Silverlight functionality is native (ok, that's a prediction for IE9...)
Thoughts?
I’d be happy with XHTML, at least it would be a start. With the other changes.
I wish, though, that Microsoft wouldn’t feel so threatened by everything that isn’t invented or owned in house. SVG gives options, it doesn’t take away eyeballs.
PS I don’t think it will support Canvas.
Have I become a standardista?
They MUST support SVG. The VML infrastructure is already in place, it wouldn’t make sense for them not to take advantage of it.
But really, I’m just hoping for proper opacity.
They had VML in place before IE7 and other browsers implemented SVG before that came out so I think you’ll be disappointed again Gyrobo.
Now I’ve lost hope for proper opacity.
All your dreams are dead.