Apparently, the a lot of of web pages will load in IE7 mode instead of standards mode. The Register has the full details.

This week, the promise was broken. It lasted less than six months. Now that Internet Explorer IE8 beta 2 is released, we know that many, if not most, pages viewed in IE8 will not be shown in standards mode by default. The dirty secret is buried deep down in the «Compatibility view» configuration panel, where the «Display intranet sites in Compatibility View» box is checked by default. Thus, by default, intranet pages are not viewed in standards mode.

So all intranet sites will be shown in non-standards mode. Then we have all the version targetting nonsense they’ve been planning.

Oh, and guess what happens whenever a page loads in standards mode? A little icon appears showing a broken page. When clicked, it forces the page into “IE7 compatibility” mode. So the browser tricks people into not using standards mode.

The picture shows a broken page. A broken page? Why is broken page icon shown next to standards-compliant pages? The idea, apparently, is to encourage users to escape standards-mode by clicking on the broken page. There’s a dastardly logic here: showing a broken page may make users wonder if they are seeing pages correctly. Authors are probably not too thrilled by having a broken page shown next to their pages, and the only way to avoid the icon is to not trigger standards mode. The message is clear: don’t use standards!

A broken page icon! Can you believe that?

Here I was thinking Microsoft was finally putting some effort into getting their act together in the browser department. Forget that. Microsoft, what is your problem? This rubbish will only hurt you, and the entire internet to boot, in the long run.

I’m very well aware that the browser is in beta, but I can’t help but be worried about this. Some pages seem to render worse than ever, and I can’t help but think “Are these bugs, or some sort of ploy to keep things as they’ve been?” It’s not really in Microsoft’s best interests to be fully standards compliant, after all.

Here are just a few examples of the render bugs I’ve noticed:

• WSC’s footer appears halfway down the page, right at the end of the sidebar, not at the bottom of the page where it belongs.
• The contents of Facebook’s main page are squished funny.
• The search bar on Apple.com appears below it’s parent navigation bar, instead of inside it.
• Digg’s header doesn’t match-up with the top of the screen, and has a bunch of extra padding below the navigational links.
• WebDesignerWall.com doesn’t look very good. The background image (which is most of the design) does not line-up correctly, because there is at least 800px of extra space inserted above the content.
• FreelanceSwitch.com looks horrible, and we’ll leave it at that.

Few sites have escaped its horrible rendering issues. Again, I know IE8 is in beta. But I wonder, how on Earth did it pass the ACID2 test with such horrible problems? Did they just adjust things until all of the ACID2 elements lined-up, messing everything else up?

I hope things improve.