Is there light at the end of the browser-hacking tunnel? I just read in SMH that IE8 will adopt open W3C standards by default (with an option to revert back to non-standard compatability modes to keep legacy systems built to support IE6 and IE7 up and running)…

Firstly, I am taking it with a grain of salt because after almost a decade of stupidity, I find it a bit hard to believe they are going to come full circle now. So I’m not throwing out our four-system browser-compatability (hacking) workstation just yet. But if it is true, then hallelujah!!!

These days we are spending (wasting) an absurd amount of time on browser compatability. In fact, for design-focussed clients, it’s such a problem that browser compatability is one of the earliest considerations we need to address in the design process, because there are simply so many pitfalls that a perfectly valid standards-based site concept may be a write-off in a good chunk of browsers.

Now, all we need to do is sort out standardize what’s happening on the javascript side of the equation and we’ll be taking fridays off (and probably half of thursday too)!