Internet Explorer 9 - the most standards compliant browser on the block

I have to say I was very pleasantly surprised to read this post on el reg that highlights that IE9 is currently the most standards compliant beta browser on the block.  I’m really proud of the work the IE9 team is doing to nail the the things that were previously levelled at Internet Explorer for being a “bad browser”.  IE8 brought stellar levels of security and privacy, preventing your company data from being shared with people outside your company…like your search provider.  IE9 is building upon that and nailing the standards debate.  Reading this, you probably don’t believe me though…

…. So here’s the proof.

The W3C HTML 5 Test Suite tests to see how well browsers render HTML5 elements, it’s not all inclusive of the spec (probably because the spec’s not final) but the results are none the less interesting.  IE9 is showing promise as the most compliant browser in beta, but it’s an interesting idea being more standards compliant than than everyone else…it shows that the IE9 team are striking the path that lots of people have wished them to follow for a long time.  It’s also another marker of how innovative the team is being, other markers being OneBox, Chakra, Tab pinning to name a few.

The real winner with standards is that it allows developers to create just one beautiful website and have it render in exactly the same way everywhere.  It seems that for that dream to become reality there’s some catching up to do by others for a change. 

What’s becoming more and more clear is that Internet Explorer 9 is going to be a must for most businesses, security, reliability, standards, ease of use and not only that but there’s update and settings management built in at the core not just as an afterthought with a few settings that can be centrally managed.

It’s nice to be able to leave you with this final thought, expressed through the wonder of the WC3 test harness: