Quirks mode is the solution that browser manufacturers came up with to deal with standards and incompatibility that some (usually older) browsers have with them. Quirks mode allowed the Web browser to display a page that was written for an older version with all the quirks and strangenesses built in. Then, as a designer, you could choose whether to write standards based HTML or put your pages in quirks mode. But what quirks appear in which browsers? Using this article from Quirksmode.org Quirks mode and strict mode you can see which browsers support what features and in which modes. This will help you decide whether to write in quirks mode or standards mode. Be sure to scroll to the bottom to see the table of browsers - including IE 8.


One thing, about which I also sent a message to the author of the article you mentioned, is the issue with wrapping a container tightly around an image element in (fully) Strict mode. A solution to this (except declaring the image to have block display, which can have some downsides) is setting the vertical-align to bottom in the CSS declaration of the image itself. Works in all user-agents I tested with, including MSIE 6, 7 and 8. I believe it’s worthy of mentioning.