An update on compatibility view updates

The IEBlog just tried posting another round of "Okay, we'll say it again: we fucked up...but we've tried to make it up to you by switching to 'standards by default,'" trying to get people to quit posting the goddamn opt-in standards misinformation. This reminded me that I really need to check out that shit list of sites that both fail in IE8 and lack the "I fail in IE8" header. At first, I wondered about the legal issues of posting information from an XML file residing in a release candidate, and then I realized two things:

1. I don't fucking care. I post this reasonably anonymously, so I would really have to stir up some shit in order for Microsoft to bother coming after me for something.
2. Microsoft already posted the entire list (Google-rendered HTML from the fucking Excel sheet of the XML file - why the...? FUCK IT...moving on...), making any legal argument simply a figment of my whisky-addled mind.

So without further ado, let's talk about just a scant few of the 2396 domains. Yes, two thousand, three hundred, and ninety-fucking-six entries. So much for the plan of only making exceptions for sites in the top hundred (or even thousand) visited list.

Now, several of these, I think we all expected. I think if microsoft.com didn't make the list, we'd all pass out from shock. Others, like amazon.com, google.com, and yahoo.com, make sense simply because they get so many fucking hits every second that adding a single header would blow their bandwidth usage even more through the roof. They also have to put every single design/implementation change through a goddamn fucking gauntlet of tests and justifications before even considering rolling them out to the live site. Making changes for a piece of shit beta, or even a piece of shit release candidate, doesn't make sense. Microsoft will likely (hopefully) fix more of their shit before actually pushing IE8 off the back of the bus and out into the real world, which would just require more work for sites like Google and Yahoo, and a whole fuckton more pissed off users.

Before we move on to the shit list portion of this XML wonderland, I'd like to point out a few of the more amusing entries in the list:

• thepiratebay.org - No particular reason, I just find it slightly amazing that enough Pirate Bay users use IE8 to warrant Microsoft adding the site to the "we don't want to piss off our users" list.
• myspace.com - We already knew about this one, but still...what the fuck does a broken myspace page look like? How the fuck can you even tell?!
• circuitcity.com - Because the "we went broke and no longer have a site, let alone a company" page renders incorrectly? What the fuck?
• mozilla.com - This one should also appear in the shit list section of this post, since I know many developers at Mozilla capable of making the site work just fine for IE8. Instead, I decided to put this into the amusing section not because of the competition angle, but because opera.com does not appear in this list.

And now for the pure "what the fuck?!" entries of pure shit list glory:

• adobe.com
• apple.com
• craigslist.org
• facebook.com
• flickr.com
• sourceforge.net
• twitter.com
• wordpress.com

You guys have no excuse. I know some of you use a lot of bandwidth, but come on! Even fucking craigslist.org?! Either you guys have some serious IE hacks in your layouts, or you have a lot of users who just think your minimalist design looks like shit and kept hitting the "IE broke my internet" button. And twitter.com? You guys throw parties all the time, shit gold, and can't get a one-line "microblogging" web app to look right? I bet you want to sit in the "we get too many hits to change things for our users" list, but no. Yahoo and Google have so many fucking areas of business, they have damn good reason for not rendering everything correctly. You have one area of business, and more than enough talent and money to fix your shit.

Needless to say, I haven't exhausted this list of notable entries. Take a look for yourself and let me know if you find any more pure fucking gold.

Okay, bonus round: barackobama.com and johnmccain.com both make the list, but whitehouse.gov doesn't. Between this and the circuitcity.com thing, I think this demonstrates just how long it takes for changes to come to this wonderful shit list that then gets updated on each and every goddamn user's machine when they fucking feel like letting it update. This should motivate your teams even more to keep your site off this fucking list. If it takes up to a year or more for a reasonable percentage of your users to get the updated "we no longer suck" version of the shit list, this makes it even harder for you and your users, who will remain stuck in IE7's suckage for even longer than they should have had to already.