Two days ago it was announced that IE8 will render by default to Web standards the best it can. This is a monumental occasion as Microsoft has been very reluctant to partner with other companies involved in the proliferation of standards on the Web.

This also comes less than two weeks after Microsoft changed their stance on business and technology practices. They announced on Feb 21st that they will be making broad changes that effect their focus on working with other companies to better support industry standards.

I am not shy to say that I really don’t like a lot of the practices of Microsoft, and have not found their products to be any enjoyment to use. However, this change to expand interoperability has given me a glimmer of hope for the future of the company. At this point the deck is really stacked against them in the area of influence on the Web, and with more and more people using the Web for their daily productivity this is a bad place to be for Microsoft.

We will see how compliant IE8 really is, as they did say, “IE8 will, by default, interpret web content in the most standards compliant way it can.”

— UPDATE —
Microsoft released IE8 beta.