Computer World recently posted an article talking about how IE8 was breaking several websites. Then a post was created here defending IE8 and explaining why it was behaving erratically mainly focusing on the fact that it is only a Beta.

Now I know we can all agree that this is a Beta version and it’s supposed to have errors and that is exactly why it is a beta version so this errors can be fixed before the actual release. The problem that I see and some people don’t, is that it is breaking things that were breaking before on IE7.

Then of course we get into the Meta tag crap which some people hail as the savior of the Internet when in reality it has no reason for existing. I mean, I’ve already lost time and money, either mine or my clients, making sure websites work correclty o Firefox, Opera, Safari and IE6 & 7 and now a lot of functions will not work correctly on IE7. That is unless I use their marvelous meta tag, which know I have to go to every website I created, or at least the ones for clients willing to pay for the work, and add this tag to each individual page on the site.

Just so we are clear, my Website were not poorly written and only used hacks when standard things decided not to work correctly on IE7 and specially on IE6, in which case I usually use a separate css file to target this browser alone.

We have yet to see what come up of this beta and meta tag mess but so far, it’s not looking very good for us developers. Yes, we might make some money when clients start calling about problems with their websites, that if of course if they believe that a Multi billion company is the cause and not us in which case they might go elsewhere.