SEATTLE (AP) --Micro-soft Corp. gave early testers their first glimpse of its next-generation Web browser, and said Internet Explorer 8 will adhere to the same standards as competitors' programs.
Microsoft's browsers gained notoriety among Web developers for handling Web page code differently than Firefox, Safari, Netscape Navigator and others.
For the most part, major non-Microsoft browsers and outside developers who built Web pages worked with agreed-upon technical standards, while Microsoft was accused of adding proprietary code to those standards. The result: Web pages that looked good in Internet Explorer but broke on other browsers, or vice versa.
At a Web developer conference in Las Vegas Wednesday, Dean Hachamovitch, general manager for Microsoft's Internet Explorer division, made light of Microsoft's past spotty standards and pledged to do better.
Hachamovitch said that in early Internet Explorer 7 days, his kids would hear about broken Web sites and ask, "Daddy, did you guys break the Web?"
"And most of the time I could honestly say, 'No.' But, you know, Web developers might answer that question a little bit differently," Hachamovitch said.