I've seen this story before. Microsoft does the right thing and makes their product more secure and more compliant with standards. This diametric switch from Microsoft's historical norms to the newer and smarter standards initially causes IT environments to break. Administrators everywhere then complain "the new product sucks".

Where have we seen this before? How about Windows VIsta? Vista's perceived "lack of application compatibility" has more to do with Microsoft's intelligent decision to force all apps/drivers/services out of ring zero (the kernel). This movement forced application and driver developers everywhere to re-develop their product to meet the O/S's improved security. The result: At its initial release, applications broke and administrators complained so much that "Vista sucks" that they threw the baby out with the bathwater. Vista's resulting adoption rate thus far has been abyssmal.

Yesterday, Microsoft announced that they will bow to pressure and enforce IE8 to be fully compliant with public web standards. This decision will initially cause web sites everywhere to break, becuase all of which were previously de-tuned to IE7's non-standard-ness. My prediction, based off our recent Vista experience, is that short-sighted IT administrators will quickly (and incorrectly) claim that "IE8 breaks my web apps. Therefore IE8 sucks." IE8's adoption rate will suffer in much the same way as Vista and MIcrosoft again ends up holding the bag.

So, yes, maybe a little negativity today, but you heard it here first. All this is based off a recent article over at Redmond Developer News. Check it out at: http://reddevnews.com/news/article.aspx?editorialsid=9608

Care to comment to the contrary? I see, like with the Vista decision, this IE8 decision to be good in the long run. If we can just get through that initial vitriol...