The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has approved the PDF as a standard format for electronic documents. ISO has christened version 1.7 of PDF, the current working version, ISO 32000-1.
"As an ISO standard, we can ensure that this useful and widely popular format is easily available to all interested stakeholders," said ISO Secretary-General Alan Bryden in a statement. "The standard will benefit both software developers and users by encouraging the propagation and dissemination of a common technology that cuts across systems and is designed for long-term survival."

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With Adobe relinquishing control of PDF, the ISO Document Management Applications Technical Committee will review any changes made to the format. The openly published standard provides the technical information required for writing software programs that can create and read PDF files, ensuring that organizations will always have some tools available to render PDFs, even if Adobe stops shipping its PDF viewer.

Awesome.

We've decided that IE8 will, by default, interpret web content in the most standards compliant way it can. This decision is a change from what we've posted previously.

What a bizarre concept, to support standards by default.

AOL has done an about-face regarding third-party access to the company's AIM chat network. AOL's recently launched OpenAIM 2.0 provides open, uninhibited access to services like Meebo, or all-in-one IM clients like Pidgin, allowing them to freely and easily use the AIM instant messaging network.

That's quite a change from AOL's previous stance toward such competitors, which seemed to be somewhere between sticking its head in the sand and unleashing a pack of angry lawyers.

Nobody is buying it. Well. Employees, maybe. Microsoft is once again promising interoperability and adherence to standards, but its own version of each. Interoperability that is safe only for noncommercial software excludes Microsoft's number one competitor, Linux. It is noncommercial and commercial, depending on who is using it. So, right there it tells you that this is a promise to do nothing that matters. Microsoft is currently being investigated by the EU Commission regarding the same two issues, interoperability and its behavior pushing MSOOXML as a "standard". This is a promise to remain incompatible with the GPL, as far as I can make out.

Here's the response from the EU Commission. They totally get that this promise is insufficient. They've heard it before, at least four times. And it doesn't wipe the slate clean regarding past violations, even if they meant it. ECIS's Thomas Vinje also issued a statement [PDF] pointing out that the proof is in the pudding, that Microsoft doesn't get to define interoperability unilaterally, and as for standards, if it meant it, it would support ODF. What the world needs, he says, is "a permanent change in Microsoft's behavior, not just another announcement." ECIS' members include Adobe, Corel, IBM, Nokia, Opera, Oracle, RealNetworks, Red Hat, and SunMicrosystems. Here's Red Hat's statement. Here's Andy Updegrove's take. Todd Bishop's coverage on Seattle PI. And here's the video and transcript of Microsoft's conference call, with Steve Ballmer, Brad Smith, Bob Muglia, and Ray Ozzie. Look at Ozzie's expression in the photo on this page.

To clarify the situation, I asked Chris Wilson what would happen if IE8 were to encounter a valid, well-formed document with a strict DOCTYPE. My worst fears were realized when he confirmed that the browser would behave exactly as if it were its predecessor.

This is gobsmackingly audacious. Imagine a new version of Word that behaves exactly like the old version of Word unless the document it is processing contains a hidden instruction to unlock any new features. That's what Microsoft is demanding that web developers implement. Unless you explicitly say otherwise, IE8 (and IE9 and IE10, ad infinitum) will behave exactly like IE7.

Mistakes that Microsoft made in the development of its browser - for commercial reasons that at the time were perfectly reasonable - have now come back to haunt its modern incarnation in a way that looks impossible to exorcise. So, because of decisions taken in the late 1990s, any future version of IE will be forced to render some web pages as though it were the clunkiest product that ever walked the earth.

Back in 2001, Microsoft conquered the browser world with Internet Explorer 6. Meanwhile Netscape Navigator expired, but not before breathing its last words, rather like Obi-Wan Kenobi facing Darth Vader: If you kill me, I'll become stronger than you can imagine. IE had killed Netscape - or so Microsoft thought.

By 2001, web developers had grown used to the "IE tax". When designing a web page they had to check to see whether the incoming browser identified itself as Internet Explorer (using the "browser agent string" that every browser passes to the server). If so, they served up one set of HTML that dealt with the strange quirks of IE6. If not, they served up the more standardised HTML. This became so familiar that some developers began to think that it was the other browsers that were at fault. But no, it was IE that didn't conform to standards for layout.

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Is being treated as quirky so bad? Yes, for IE. It means that it has to carry a greater overhead of code, some to render the old 'quirky' code and some to render the new, compliant code. Dave Hyatt, who is in charge of Apple's WebKit browser code - also used in the iPhone and in Google's promised Android mobile phone platform - points to this as the real problem:

'We think maintaining multiple versions of the [WebKit] engine would have many downsides for us and little upside. The IE team is, of course, under different constraints and free to make their own choices.'

Except, of course, the IE team can't make many choices. They're stuck with it. The new scheme that they have come up with for Internet Explorer 8 - due some time in the next year or so - demands that web developers include a tag in the headers of the page saying 'X-UA-Compatible', which translates to 'Welcome, standards-compliant IE!' If IE doesn't find that tag, it will assume the web page is assuming that it is an old, quirk-ridden version.

It slipped through the cracks on my radar, but apparently the IE8 team has met with some web standards gurus and decided that in order to move forward with full standards compliance (and support the known quirks of IE6/7 for corporate intranets), a new "version targeting" system should be put in place. Other browser vendors are not amused. Should IE just give up?

There's a whole lot more commentary round-up over here. Highlights : John "JQuery" Resig sees too many problems, James Bennett gives an overview, Hixie thinks it's anti-competitive and toy lemurs act out the controversy.

See also the two follow-up posts from Mozilla developer Robert O'Callahan on why their team doesn't suffer the same issues.