Via Arstechnica today, under the apt headline “sanity prevails” comes news that Microsoft has changed its stance regarding standards mode in IE 8. IE 8 will now render pages in standards mode by default. Great news.

Perhaps it’s the cynic in me, but the post from IE General Manager Dean Hachamovitch seems overly concerned with explaining browser rendering modes in very basic terms. These are things web developers are all too familiar with from spending their days rope-tugging with IE, and in light of that the post sounds a little condescending. Maybe it is intended for a much broader audience. If that’s the case I consider it good news; managers caring more about web standards can only be a good thing. MS U-Turn