<p>Well, tomorrow in <a href="http://visitmix.com/2008/">MIX08</a> keynote, <a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/">Dean</a> is going to talk about IE8 and even show it (rumors say at this time there is already a private beta program running).</p>

<p>The IE8 team (and some other guys at MS) noticed that the webdesigners and developers didn&#8217;t particularly like the IE8 behavior towards standards, and with <span class="caps">MIX</span> coming up, they definitely want to please designers, so <a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2008/03/03/microsoft-s-interoperability-principles-and-ie8.aspx">yesterday they changed their minds</a> and IE8 will follow the standards rendering the pages for default. This is a huge news! When everybody says that Apple listen to their users (regarding 10.5.2), Microsoft does the same about their ever-hated browser.</p>

<p>There is also one thing I guess their going to announce tomorrow: the fact IE8 will ship with the silverlight plugin. Everyone is expecting this, but it&#8217;s their way of convincing more designers to enter the silverlight wave. And Apple will also announce the same for Safari in next mac event&#8230;</p>

<p>After yesterday&#8217;s announcement, I&#8217;m already please with Microsoft, but there are a few things that would make me even more happier. First it would be the Microformats UI. After <a href="http://andr3.net/blog/post/116">Mozilla dropping microformat UI support for Firefox3</a>, this would be an excellent news to higher IE in people&#8217;s consideration.</p>

<p>Another news I would love to see is the OpenID support. Right now, I get the feeling Microsoft is becoming a security freak. They already have Cardspace support, but for regular internet surfers, they will only use it, if attached to an OpenID. So we could expect a Cardspace+OpenID support, but I guess not now.</p>

<p>The final feature, and this one would be the one I would really fall in love with MS, but I know it&#8217;s impossible, is the HTML5 (even if partial) rendering support. There are already a <a href="http://waffle.wootest.net/">few</a> <a href="http://ifacethoughts.net/2008/03/03/wearing-html-5-now/">folks</a> wearing html5, so it would help people to move forward, and even pressure the standardization process.</p>