This just in from the IEBlog:

We’ve decided that IE8 will, by default, interpret web content in the most standards compliant way it can. This decision is a change from what we’ve posted previously.

If you’ll recall, there was a bit of an uproar about a month ago when it was announced that web developers would need to opt-in in order to take advantage of IE8’s improved web standards support (I got to the news late and a combination of that and pure laziness kept me from posting anything specific here, especially since you literally had to be living under a rock to have missed the debate as it burned across the web).  As a result of the uproar, the IE team seems to have changed its stance on the matter.

Here are some more details from today’s IEBlog post:

Our initial thinking for IE8 involved showing pages requesting “Standards” mode in an IE7’s “Standards” mode, and requiring developers to ask for IE8’s actual “Standards” mode separately. We made this decision, informed by discussions with some leading web experts, with compatibility at the top of mind.

In light of the Interoperability Principles, as well as feedback from the community, we’re choosing differently. Now, IE8 will show pages requesting “Standards” mode in IE8’s Standards mode. Developers who want their pages shown using IE8’s “IE7 Standards mode” will need to request that explicitly (using the http header/meta tag approach described here).

In the end, I think the IE team has made the right decision.  As a web developer myself, I really feel that it is in the best interests of the web to encourage the migration to the latest and greatest web standards, and hey, if a bunch of legacy code suddenly needs a retooling to catch up with the times, that can only mean more work for web developers, right?

What do you think of the decision?

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