Microsoft splits web development
MICROSOFT seems to be doing quite a good thing with its Internet Exploder 8 by allowing it to run older rendering technology.
However, web developers are starting to wake up to the fact that having IE8 rendering pages in three modes, the “old mode”, the IE7 half-standards mode and IE8 full standards mode might not be a good idea.
According to the Wayne State web communications bog, while it makes sense to be nice to the web developers who refuse to keep up with their profession there are a few problems with this.
The biggest is there will be another variable that developers will have to ponder. In several years time there will be developers who are still using the old mode when they should have been in the new mode years earlier and help out the end user.
In short, it will encourage developers to be pig ignorant lazy sods who follow the easy way because they cannot be arsed learning anything new.
Running three modes will just slow down the evolution of the web particularly if other browsers pick up the idea. µ
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The only fud we'll have to fear is fud himself.
It was just a short couple of weeks ago that the press was jumping all over MS for Office SP3 which discontinued older file formats in the name security.

Now they are keeping older standards and trying to move forward with updating and they being accused of just the opposite.

Let's face it - All of the Firefox users are going to remain Firefox users, so do not worry about IE and it's standards.

I don't think MS have a choice. If they force the new mode the web will break. Then that'll be their fault.

Its up to developers to move the industry forward, MS cant force it.
Couldn't agree more. If rendering of a site breaks in full standards compliant mode then so be it. That'll teach the people building said site to get a fscking clue.
The problem is a bit more more complicated, and the solution they have come up with is the cause of much discussion among web developers, who are, right now, most affected by the decision. Check out http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/ and other web developer blogs if you're interested in hearing all the pros and cons.
As I said on the IEBlog, why can't they just follow the leader on this one. Mozilla introduced 'almost standards' and 'full standards' modes back in Firefox 1.0.1 using the good old doctype switching:

http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Mozilla%27s_DOCTYPE_sniffing

They do need to add (x)html5 to the list of 'full standards' doc types though.
This may not be true with 100% of the web developers out there, but all the web developers I know (including myself), would not like this feature merely to remain lazy pigs. It is actually quite the opposite. We want this feature to create even more work for ourselves!

This feature will allow us to code our web pages in such a way that it will support all the nightmarish rendering engines that Internet Exploder offers, by offering us a proper testing platform. 

Believe it or not, loads of users out there do still use the horrific Internet Explorer 6. And we all want to keep our visitors happy right? :-/
IE has long been a completely different ballgame than other more standards-compatible browsers. 

MS should be looking to follow the actual standards closer, rather than mucking about with optional viewing modes. How likely is it that non-IT people are going to ever change their mode beyond what MS declares to be the default (most likely some version of how MS think the internet should look, and what they can be bothered to implement).

Or course since they're still playing monopoly, the more broken they are, the more broken everyone else will look to the laymen.
Needing to add a Metatag to tell IE8 NOT to render in the previous manners, is just dumb.

Obviously a metatag should only need to be used to tell IE8 when it SHOULD render acording to the older manners.

It's a simple matter for webmasters of older sites to poke the "this is an old site" metatag into the page before it gets sent to the output stream, so that IE8 can deal with it as such, and means that developers of standard compliant sites don't need to do anything special for IE8.
looks like critics cant be cheered anyway even if MS stands infront of them pants down or pee inits pants infront of them.

If MS would have closed all modes but new, critics will be calling a murder, abandoning orphaning and taking bread from the mouth of all the developers in world. When MS has coperated then these critics have made developers' own lazyness a guilt of MS with which its should die and rot and decay in its grave.
w3schools (a site for webdevs no less) shows that for them in December, ie5 had the same market share as safari (1.7%)... that's a browser that was replaced in 2001!

Get real, you acid2-gives-me-a-hard-on elitist web developers! Backwards compatibility is a big part of why the vole has the market share it does -- the business world moves slowly, and if you want their audience ($$), you gotta deal with it.

Honestly, 90% of websites would likely fail if ie8 were released today, and has anyone bothered to check mozilla for whether they'll be doing something crazy like not supporting quirks mode in v3? (they will)

If you don't like it, go stick a doctype in it.