About 6 years ago, I remember taking part in a conversation about preferred browsers on the Jane magazine message boards. IE 5.x was still king of the PC world. IE 6 was coming on strong. Netscape 4 was still widely used by universities. Netscape 6 was on its way.

Most of the respondents said they preferred Internet Explorer. Why? Because sites just “look right” and “work better” in Internet Explorer. My response at the time was simple: if a site doesn’t work in Netscape, it’s because the web developer didn’t know what (s)he was doing.

Of course, they didn’t care. They were far more into Sephora than HTML code quality. As far as they were concerned, Netscape was the problem. They didn’t blame crap code, or Microsoft for developing a browser that stomped harder than a Catalonian flamenco dancer all over the W3C specs and allowed ugly code to thrive. They blamed Netscape.

I was reminded of that conversation when I first read Microsoft’s recent announcement about Internet Explorer 8. After my initial D*MNF*CKINGBLOODYHELL!JUSTBREAKTHF*CKINGWEBALREADYMICROSOFT!WHATTHEF*CK? IAMTIREDOFYOURAGGEDYBASTARDSMAKINGMYDAYJOB1000TIMESHARDERTHANITNEEDSTOBEBECAUSEYOUCAN’T DEVELOPABROWSERTHATFOLLOWSAF*CKING10YEAROLDSPEC!!! reaction passed, I came to the following conclusion: this is the best approach to a bad situation.

Microsoft does not want to be where Netscape was. It’s a sad but true fact is that if a site breaks, the average web user — and, dare I say, average web developer — will blame the browser. Microsoft is too entrenched in corporate intranets and applications to let that happen. Doing so would cause a sh*tstorm of massive proportions for the company. From a business perspective, I understand.

And while I am also not happy about the default implementation (as Jeremy Keith explained Unless you explicitly declare that you want IE8 to behave as IE8, it will behave as IE7.), opting-in to web standards eliminates the need to revise existing code.

Yes, it’s potentially a nail in the coffin for progressive enhancement techniques. Yes, we’ll still have to do something special to cater to Microsoft browsers. Yes, this could freeze web development at the IE7 level for years to come. But I believe — and it pains me to say it given the hate-hate more relationship I have with Microsoft browsers — that Microsoft, given its position, had no other choice.

But putting pragmatic approaches and practical considerations aside, I think Ben Buchanan said it best:

If they’ve included a DOCTYPE, they’ve declared they want to render to standards. If they did that in ignorance, it’s time they started earning their money instead of letting Dreamweaver do their jobs.

Related: Internet Explorer 8 Round Up