“…the specification needs to be fixed, not the other way around.” Yes, I know. I also clinched when I read this. As it turns out, there is somebody defending IE8 and the Microsoft team and they base their argument in their theory that standard compliant Websites are not the norm and so, browsers should change according to whatever anybody is doing and somehow accommodate and render every website correctly.

I decided to create a mental experiment and apply this theory to several aspects of our daily life to see the results:

1. Traffic lights. Following in this theory, traffic lights should accommodate according to motorist and not the other way around. Yes, some lights will stay on longer at certain times of the day to improve the flow, but according to the theory presented above they would need to let everybody go while stopping everybody at the same time since motorist would be in control, not the lights.

2. Baseball. Since the season is almost here let’s take a look at how this theory would benefit the game. Umpires would need to learn each teams set of rules before hand and somehow combine them so that each team can play the game according to their own set of rules and without breaking the game. So, If team A decides to have only one out while team B stays with the normal three outs rule, well, I don’t see an easy solution for the umpire.

3. Laws. All of them. Could you imagine the court system having to conform to each and everyone of us and our own interpretation of the law? It would be sweet in some cases but really crazy and scary in others.

So, fixing the standard because a bunch of people decided to create websites without following the standards makes absolutely no sense and I have yet to see a non standard or standard website break in a standard compliant browser the way a lot of standard and non standard websites break on IE8, IE7 & IE6.