1-4-08 Entry

http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2008/02/01/fear-and-loathing-in-standardsville-the-ie8-opt-in-debate/

This first article delves into how the next Internet Explorer (IE8) will allow you to "opt-in" to using web standards. The gist of the article is that IE8 will automatically render web pages as IE7 renders them currently, unless one includes a specific tag to note otherwise. The idea behind this is that it won't break older webpages that were made to perform well in IE7, but newer webpages can "opt-in" to the newer, correctly rendering, IE8 engine.

http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2007/12/20/ie8-passes-acid2-test-web-standards-project-dies-of-shock/

The second article relates to the first one in that it pertains to web standards, and IE8. Internet Explorer 8 has passed what is known as the ACID2 Test, which is an extreme example of web standards compliance. Not only has it beaten Firefox in this endeavour, but just the mere fact that Internet Explorer, the browser known by many as anything but standards compliant, has passed this test is almost mind boggling. What this means is so long as your page validates, it'll show exactly how it should once IE8 comes out.

http://www.w3.org/TR/html5-diff/

This article goes into depth about the differences between HTML 4 (current version) and the next version which will be released soon (hopefully). It goes into detail about the new tags and attributes that you can apply to new and already existing tags, as well as changes to current elements, and elements that will no longer be supported.