@M@TT: IE is my bitch, it can run about sometimes but only on a very tight lead. And its great that FF has finally noticed ACID3 exists. Presto and Webkit may have passed dev builds in two weeks, but its nice that after over a year FF is willing to publicly acknowledge it. But thats not my problem, all browsers are constantly improving, even with 100% on ACID3 webkit admits its SVG support is minimal and operating as a testbed for concept specifications. Opera is largely focused on testing their new rendering engine, which was finished before 10 was even released but Opera have more rigorous quality control than most armies.Btw Jeeves, if Firefox is as standards compliant as your cat, what is IE? Firefox may not quite be at the level of Opera and Webkit, but it's still pretty good (92% of the Acid3 test, it passes Acid2, and is implementing several CSS3 features).
The fact FF is implementing CSS3 features is partly my issue with it; they should be fixing their existing technology support rather than chunking in new specifications that haven't been released yet. They need to get over their attitude as the cool new kid and instead of showing off the lastest shiney should be working on becoming responsible software vendors. I really don't care that FF3.5 included <video>, because since nothing else does, its only useful as a fallback for object, which after being in the specs for over a decade is supported properly by every browser - except FF. So clearly they can code such features in, they just can't be bothered. What irks me most, is that FF3.5 was packed full of vulnerabilities and loopholes that had been submitted to their SVN by malicious programmers, and nobody took them out. Same story with 3.5.1, which is why 3.5.2 was out a couple of days after the initial launch.
NOBODY should ever release code without checking it first. Whether they have <video> or not. Automatically updating millions of clients to include severe security problems is just unacceptable, whether they had <video> or not. If IE had done the same you'd never hear the end of it and they'd probably never get out of court.
@Hostile: you had better be joking...
And IE8 support should be a breeze, you could just use display: table if you feeling lazy. But avoid hacks for non-legacy browsers because if it works now without a hitch next one should work too, so IE8 support should be a priority to lower the maintenance requirements in the future.
I'm being told to use display: table AND make it work in IE6, thats a big issue, and costing the client thousands. IE8 passes ACID2, thus the box model and base layout model work. Its really that simple.
After that, just resort to progressive enhancement, the ideology that a page should look the same is nonsensical, the only real option is to go for a "functional" approach, don't try to make it look the same, just try to make it work and look ok. The universal IE6 stylesheet is a perfect example, content should always go above presentation, so just enhance your presentation where the technology is supported.