wow, I've seen some retarded comments on these pages before...
but MS _finally_ make their browser standards compliant, only to discover that around 2k of websites have insuficient browser checking and offer up _NON_standard code, and you blame MS?
Wow, wait there a minute, I'm just gonna ask the nurse to ratchet the belt on the back of your jacket up a notch.
As others have correctly pointed out, IE6 wasn't standards compliant because back then, there were very few, if any standards, and the entire landscape was in constant flux.
This is web development, we're talking about? You know, the industry that has to measure time on dog years because of the sheer pace of change? If you can't keep up, then get out.
If you haven't been able to correct your browser identification code by this late stage in the game (very nearly 7 web development years after IE8s release), you've failed. No ifs, not buts.
If we're gonna slag off the redmondian browser, pick something that is actually the browsers fault, like it's truly appalling javascript performance, which causes browser instability on sites with heavy usage.
On the other hand, the accelerator text highlighting facility is brilliant. The ease at which you can add your own custom searches makes it a genuinely useful and productive feature.