[LINK] MS technical spin...

[Chris Maltby]

This is almost as funny as the earlier (hoax) message about MS aborting
the IE8 project because it couldn't hope to compete with Firefox 3.

 "We've been talking about Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) for a few months
  now and Beta 1 was announced at MIX in Las Vegas in May. A few weeks
  back, Bill Gates announced Beta 2 would be released in August. IE 8
  will be one of the most major browser releases for Microsoft as we
  continue our efforts to promote further interoperability across the
  Web. Designed to help web developers and designers drive toward the
  ideal of "write once, run anywhere", IE8 promises to allow you more
  time innovating rather than modifying content for different browsers.

  Browsing with this default setting may cause content written for
  previous versions of Internet Explorer to display differently than
  intended. For those of you responsible for your company's websites,
  you will need to ensure content will continue to display seamle ssly
  in Internet Explorer 8. As such, we've provided a meta-tag usable on a
  per-page or per-site level to maintain backwards compati bility with
  Internet Explorer 7. Adding this tag instructs Internet Explorer 8 to
  render content like it did in Internet Explorer 7, without requiring
  any additional changes."

As in, MS eats humble pie and are forced to implement the actual standard
instead of whatever they think the standard might most readily be...

Chris

PS Note that expression "one of the most major ... releases". Perhaps the
   spin to content ratio is at a new maximum for them.