Microsoft has done it again (technically they haven’t done it yet but they will with IE8). Microsoft has, again, invented new tags for their browser. On this occasion I’m only going to talk about the META tag developers will need to use to let IE8 know that it should render the page under IE8 standards.

So what is this META tag anyways and what does it do? To make put really simple, it tells IE how to render a website, as IE7 or as the more standard compliant IE8. At first you may seem confused as in why would you need to tell the browser which version to use. After all, a browser should be complaint from the beginning or at lest offer backward compatibility meaning that it should understand the hacks you had to use to make it work in it’s previous version.

But what’s really baffling is that IE8 is setting a precedent that may become a nightmare for web developers as new versions are created. According to this article Microsoft may be thinking that by letting developers choose which version their pages will render, it will assure that their websites won’t break on newer versions. But, why should a new browser version break a website that is already working? If you are IE, the answer is simple: Complete disregard for Web Standards.

So the point we are trying to make here is that the META tag approach is the wrong approach and it should be seen as another attempt by Microsoft into doing whatever they want and bullying everybody else into following. For starters, if they had committed to develop a standard compliant browser from the first place, we wouldn’t be in this mess.