Microsoft: More than 2,000 major Web sites still not fully compatible with IE 8
The bad news: More than 2,000 highly-trafficked Web sites are still not compatible with Internet Explorer 8 and require IE's Compatibility View support to display properly. The good news: That is down from about 3,100 sites a year ago.
The new data is courtesy of a March 2 post on the Microsoft IE blog.
A year ago, when Microsoft first released Internet Explorer (IE) 8, it got kudos for making its browser somewhat more standards-compliant than previous versions. But increasing standards compatibility meant more incompatibility, as many Web-site developers had tweaked their sites to take advantage of far less standards-friendly IE 6 and IE7 and weren't in any rush to make changes to accommodate IE 8.
To lessen the impact of those incompatibilities, Microsoft added a compatibility button to IE 8 and also allowed users to opt to download a list of popular Web sites which automatically would display in compatibility mode. Not a perfect solution, but one that kept (at least some) users from screaming that Microsoft had broken the Web with IE 8.
The latest IE Blog post by Program Manager Marc Silbey includes a complicated diagram designed to show how IE 8 determines whether to default to "quirks mode," "IE 8 almost standards mode," "IE 8 standards mode" or "IE 7 standards mode" when displaying a Web site.
According to the IE team's data, only 19 percent of highly trafficked Web sites are currently rendering in IE 8 browsers in full in IE 8 standards mode. The majority (41 percent) are in "IE 8 almost standards mode," and another 26 percent are being viewed in "quirks" mode. Fourteen percent still require "IE7 standards mode" to be viewed properly.
Microsoft officials have promised to deliver more standards support with IE9, without indicating much beyond the fact Microsoft will support more Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) standards, and (likely/possibly) SVG and HTML5 standards, as well. Microsoft will likely have more to show and talk about on the IE9 standards front at its Mix 10 conference in mid-March.
Update (March 4): Microsoft officials wanted a chance to better explain what this post meant, in terms of application compatibility and Internet Explorer. A spokesperson sent the following clarification:
"The CV (Compatibility View) list is sites that have at some point tested and had some element of compatibility. Sites either have to ask to be off the list or have 6 months of testing without a single incompatibility across the entire site and subsites.
"Just because sites are on the list, doesn’t mean they are necessarily incompatible. In many cases there was historical incompatibilities of some kind so they’ve stayed on to ensure a good experience even if compatibility is there now.
"There’s a new grid here where you can see sites that have been removed because they’ve had no compat problems in the last 6 months. You can see there’s a ton of really high traffic sites on this list (sort in 3rd column in the compat view tab for “removed per microsoft testing”). Those sites include everything from Google to TripAdvisor, etc.
"The biggest thing is that of the 4,142 sites that make up 75% of traffic on the web, our compatibility is on par or better with competitors without the CV list."