There has been a flurry of reactions to the IE8 development team's recent announcement about the new version-targeting meta declaration that will be introduced in Internet Explorer 8. In an article I posted on the Metamend SEO Blog yesterday, I looked at how this feature could bring IE8 and Web Standards a lot closer together and find the ideal balance between backwards-compatibility and interoperability. Many, however, did not share my optimism and saw this as another cop-out by Microsoft that would continue to hold back the web standards movement. Being that this is a topic that involves both Internet Explorer/Microsoft and web standards I naturally came across a lot of heated discussion. As I read more and more of this discussion I was once again reminded about how so many people take such an unreasonably hard stance on the issue of web standards and browser support. When it comes to a topic as complex as web standards and interoperability it is crucial that one considers all factors, both theoretical and practical, otherwise the discussion will inevitably end up taking a "your with us or against us" mentality, that does little to benefit anyone. [More]