Two new articles from the latest issue of A List Apart, issue 251.

Beyond DOCTYPE: Web Standards, Forward Compatibility, and IE8 by Aaron Gustafson

For seven years, the DOCTYPE switch has stood designers and developers in good stead as a toggle between standards mode and quirks mode. But when IE7, with its greatly improved support for standards, “broke the web,” it revealed the flaw in our toggle. The quest was on to find a more reliable ensurer of forward compatibility. Is version targeting the answer?

From Switches to Targets: A Standardista’s Journey by Eric Meyer

Grab your galoshes and walking stick and follow along with A List Apart’s Eric Meyer as he considers the vices and virtues of version targeting as a standards toggle.

The subject matter of these two articles are sure to cause a firestorm of reaction, but if A List Apart has proved anything over the years, it’s that they don’t shy away from controversy just because people will get upset. But hey, what would web development be without a little controversy? How else is change made?

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