Is IE8 backwards compatible? [closed]

Question

Hopefully some has some knowledge of this.

I'm fast realising that IE8 certainly can't be ignored anymore. I had previously put it down to either a) just a buggy piece of software, or b) still to small a piece of the market share. Now, however, I'm seeing more and more requirement to make sure sites work on it.

My question is can I switch over to testing on IE8 only and safely 'believe' that the resulting code will still work on IE7?

Any thoughts/knowledge would be helpful. Cheers.

Answer 1

My question is can I switch over to testing on IE8 only and safely 'believe' that the resulting code will still work on IE7?

No.

Answer 2

No, IE8 is radically different from IE7. And it's radically different from any other decent browser too, so you can't rely on other tests...

And yes, it's installed in enough machines now that we need to test for it too already.

The good news is that now IETester actually works (it didn't work at all for me a few months ago, it wouldn't even load) so definitely give it a shot, even if you tried it before and it didn't work for you. And definitely test in the 3 versions.

http://www.my-debugbar.com/wiki/IETester/HomePage