Microsoft: IE8 Beta 2 coming ! Is your website ready ?

That’s a rather odd question, don’t you think ? I was always under the impression that browsers had to render websites correctly by being compatible to standards and not the other way round. It you investigate further you find out that Microsoft is on the right track with Internet Explorer 8 and here is why.

The question (via NeoWin)if the website is ready for Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 is not aimed to let everyone know that Microsoft is again creating their own standards, to the contrary. The question is specifically aimed at webmasters who have optimized their websites for previous versions of Internet Explorer which, without doubt, did not take it to serious with being standard compliant.

Nick MacKechnie is putting is this way on his MSDN blog:

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 have provided a meta-tag usable on a per-page or per-site level to 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.

He goes on by leaking the information that the second beta of Internet Explorer 8 will be released in the third quarter of 2008.

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.

Microsoft created a Knowledge Base article entitled Your Web site may not display correctly in Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 which is also the main source of information for webmasters seeking information about compatibility to Internet Explorer Beta 2.

It is interesting to see that Microsoft really has the intention to comply to web standards with Internet Explorer 8.