A Retort - IE8 Blacklist: Forcing Standards Rendering Opt-In

13 Feb 09

A blog post making the rounds in web development circles today argues that a new feature in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8 (currently in pre-release) presents another major obstacle in the way of standards-based web development. That post is almost completely wrong.

The post in question, IE8 Blacklist: Forcing Standards Rendering Opt-In, points out the fact that Microsoft is implementing a “compatibility list” for its upcoming release of Internet Explorer 8, which will, in effect, trigger the browser to render a site on that list as if it were being displayed in IE7. Further, the list is generated primarily by users of IE8 who think a certain site doesn’t look right in the browser (IE8 will default to standards-compliant page rendering) and click on the browser’s “Compatibility View” button. If enough people click on that button for a given site, Microsoft takes note of it and adds that site to the compatibility list.

Anybody who knows me and how I prefer to work can tell you that I’m no Microsoft loyalist or sympathizer by any means, but Mike Davies, the author of the IE8 Blacklist post, is really overreacting here.

If you read through the Microsoft IE blog post, Compatibility View Improvements to come in IE8, which Davies sources to form his argument, you’ll see one thing that he fails to point out is that the compatibility list (Microsoft avoids the term “blacklist” in the post) only keeps track of “high-volume” sites:

The sites on the list are based on objective criteria applied to telemetry data as well as product support channels. For example, in addition to the top sites worldwide, we determine high-volume on a market-by-market basis; the top 50 sites in one region of the world might be very low on the world-wide list of top sites, but are important to include for those customers.

By “high-volume” sites, Microsoft is referring to

…sites like facebook.com, myspace.com, bbc.co.uk, and cnn.com...

Davies uses A List Apart as an example of a site that could inadvertently get blacklisted into rendering in compatibility mode. As popular a site as ALA is in the web industry, it is FAR from one of the top sites worldwide. As of today, Alexa puts its rank at 59,067, and Quantcast puts it at 43,450. Not exactly the top 50 in any market, and therefore not “blacklistable”.

Additionally, he fails to point out that Microsoft will do outreach to owners of sites which have been blacklisted to let them know and help them out:

We reach out to those sites (beyond all the other outreach we’ve already done!) to make sure they know the experience their IE8 visitors have by default and what steps they (the sites) can take to make it better. We also tell them that in the meantime, we’re adding their site to this compatibility list and provide instructions on how the site can opt-out. (If a domain notifies Microsoft that it’s choosing to opt-out, we remove it from the list at the next scheduled list update.)

While it’s not entirely clear exactly how Microsoft will determine what qualifies as a “high volume” site, what is clear is that most sites – especially niche sites maintained by individuals who care deeply about web standards – don’t make the cut. We’re just not in the same league, traffic-wise, as Google, Facebook, MySpace or CNN.

Put yourself in Microsoft’s position. They have a tremendous weight of legacy sites and applications written with proprietary code that they don’t want to break with a browser upgrade. They also realize they’re way behind the curve when it comes to supporting current and future web standards. I do believe they’re trying to do as much as they can to serve both issues and for that they should be commended.

©MMII—MMX Michael Bester