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I’ve been following, but not commenting on, a few Microsoft developments lately. They have been pretty big from a web developer’s point of view. But today’s announcement may be the biggest of all, and could potentially affect the entire web as we know it. But let’s look at all the events in order:

IE8 passes the Acid 2 test

Great news for web developers and web users alike. According to the IE blog, the next version of the biggest browser will pass the Acid 2 test. For the non-web developers out there, here is what Microsoft writes:

Acid2 is one test of how modern browsers work with some specific features across several different web standards.

What is means is, that web development will be easier, and web browsing will be richer, and both will be more exciting.

New Version targeting in IE8

Microsoft is apparently introducing a new way of browser targeting in IE8. The main idea is that unless the web developer specifically states that a web page should be rendered as the newest, or any other specific IE version, it will be rendered as IE7.

To make the page render with the newest IE rendering engine, insert in your page header:

<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge" />

To Make it render using a specific version, insert:

<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=8" />

To make it render as IE7, do noting…

To me, and apparently many others, this seems a little strange. I think it would be much more logical to get rid of the ‘edge’ version, make newest version the default version if you don’t insert the tag, and let web developers insert the specific target if they desire.

As far as I understand, this is still a draft, and could change before IE8 ships.

Microsoft bids $44.6 billion for Yahoo

Microsoft is ready to purchase one of the biggest players on the web, Yahoo. Wow. I’m not sure how this is going to play out, but it’s big news, and it looks like a change in strategy from the folks in Redmond. Microsoft has always been about developing their own products, usually becoming industry giants in the process. However, this must be seen as a realization that in the search market, they can not compete with Google on their own. It will be very interesting to see how it plays out.