As a freelance web developer, and someone who does development in my current job, I’ve had my share of frustration with Internet Explorer’s rendering bugs. IE 5.0 and 5.5 were bad. IE 6 wasn’t much better. IE 7 made great promises, but only got us halfway towards compliance (I still enjoy Dan’s predictions).
Finally, it seems, Microsoft has bowed to the pressure and will finally support web standards in IE 8. On some of the more complicated site designs I have done, my work with CSS has been 3-4 times longer than it has needed to be just trying to fix IE’s quirks. The fact that there are entire websites dedicated to workarounds for IE’s quirks is a testimony to the web developer’s frustration with the biggest brother who frequently played by his own set of rules.
The article on doctypes on A List Apart is a great read for web developers by the way. So is Zeldman’s links to articles of the issue.
I was glad when Microsoft rolled out IE 7 as an update on February 12th (though more than 18 months after it was first promised) because that reduced the number of IE 6 users. I can’t wait until more and more people move closer to web standards. It will make lots of lives easier.