Praise Almighty, IE8 Passes Acid2

Like spoon feeding water to a man who has walked the desert for more than a year, news about IE8 has been slow to come, but Chris Wilson and Dean Hachamovitch cracked open the flood gates a bit today by announcing that IE8 has been able to pass the Acid2 test (yay!!!).

For developers this represents a huge step forward for IE and is hopefully the beginning of it coming more into line with the other more standards compliant browsers out there.

Both the blog post on IEBlog and the Channel9 video do a good job of explaining that while passing Acid2 itself does not automatically standards compliance (as Chris remarked in the video the good thing about standards is there are so many to choose from), Acid2 is basically the benchmark test for demonstrating standards compliance. 

It was also made very clear by both Dean and Chris that developers (though quite loud and usually willing to call it as they see it) are just one of the many audiences that the IE team has to try to please.

While IE8 is a little ways away, today's announcement hopefully shows the commitment the IE team has on supporting developers and not breaking the web.  More news to come at MIX08 (see you there!).