Forbidden Donut

Is IE8 much better than IE6?

Edit: This won't stop me from downloading it....I love good causes.

This is a very strange initiative. Is MS teaming up with Feed America or something?

Microsoft wants IE6 dead just as much as everyone else that uses the Internet. It is the single greatest obstacle facing progress on the web. The stuff you'd be doing on the web would be 1000x more awesome if IE6 [and even IE7 to a degree] were totally replaced.

To answer your question Mungo, yes. IE8 is hilariously better than IE6. I actually can't tell whether you were simply trolling.

IE8 meets current web standards (at least until the new draft is finalized).

I approve of this initiative, simply because they don't even require you to use the file in order for the donation to take place. Oddly, for that reason alone I will actually install and check IE8 out.

Many sites aren't 100% ie8 compliant yet :-/

My entire campus isnt even using it yet.
However that doesnt keep me from using it on my personal computer, or my work computer for that matter.

Not "100% ie8 compliant" is a nice way of saying "horrendously outdated." IE8 barely makes the "modern browser" cut, so it is nothing less than an insult to a site's userbase to not support the latest version of the most used browser on the planet. Microsoft recognizes that, and it is why they are pushing this initiative.

Sites that break in IE8 are either:

1) ...broken in all browsers except IE6 and maybe IE7. This is pretty much the worst scenario imaginable for a website. If nothing else, it means at least 40% of all web users cannot access your site without it breaking. If the site is broken in IE7, then you are talking about closer to 80%.

2) ...using a retarded "hacking" method to apply IE-specific fixes that doesn't specify a maximum version to apply the hack to. This is probably the more prominent scenario as it is pretty common for inexperienced or bad developers to only check what browser type a person is using rather than what version of that browser. It's a product of a total lack of foresight. Fortunately, this is the easiest problem to fix, and people will fix it as IE8 becomes more popular (which it will do rapidly).