There is much more to web standards than just creating a "table free site" or "valid code". A site built to web standards should adhere to standards (HTML, XHTML, XML, CSS, XSLT, DOM, MathML, SVG etc) and conply to best practices (valid code, accessible code, semantically correct code, user-friendly URLs etc).

Here is a summary of what you should be asking yourself to make your website part of the norm:

• Quality of code
• Degree of separation between content and presentation
• Accessibility for users
• Accessibility for devices
• Basic usability
• Site management

By failing any of these main issues, your site will not be Web Standard. The Max Design can provide you with detailed information reagrding Web Standards and the compliances.

Microsoft aren't the usual ones to sit back and let there software fall behind, so here it is IE8 Beta. Yes hereing the word Beta means it's unstable, buggy, unpredictable? Yes well, being a programmer that is no real surprise nor is it for the general public. But as humans as we are, our focus are on very diferent levels. An end user wants it to work, they want to browse the web, explore... Microsoft provide the tool just for that. A programmer like myself would be more interested in the actual software package, does it support css, javascript, will my site work in this browser? How fast will it load my site or even will it crash...We then move on to explore its new features, plug-ins, etc. We want to get meesy with it!

Ok, so what can we expect to find in IE 8, let's take a look:

Web Slices, keep track of updated sites without revisiting them frecuently.

Compatibility View, allows you to view websites that were designed for older browsers.

In Private, browse sites without them getting added to your browsing history.

Search Suggestions, enhanced instance search box.

SmartScreen Safe, new security feature to block malicious websites that could compromise your data.

ACR (automatic crash recovery), in case of a broswer hang or crash it is designed to restore your web pages.

These are only a few of the new great stuff been packed into this application. If you can't wait for the final release I would recommend you have a steady backup of your system before you install this, as I would recommend with any new software thats still in development stage.

Let's see if it can stand up against FireFox and Opera.