IE8 crowd sourcing compatibility view settings

So, it was, like, just the other day that I said that IE8’s compatibility view button, while useful to us smart Alecs that know about these things, was kind of obtuse.

It’s got two things against it. Firstly, it’s pushing the problem of compatibility down onto the people who are going to be most affected and least able to do anything about it. Secondly, it’s a feature that’s not so much undiscoverable (it is right there on the address bar, after all) as it is unknowable – how can I find the feature if I don’t even know it exists?

So, rather shrewdly, they’re going to be using the wisdom of the crowds to enable the compatibility view automatically when you get to a site that has been flagged as incompatible with the new IE8 standards view.

A brilliantly simple idea, getting other people to automatically make your product better for everyone else. I’ve seen it applied to web sites (Digg, StackOverflow, delicious) but not to applications before.

(Of course, I don’t think it’s as idealistically simple as this sounds. They’re going to use the data from the anonymous, software quality metrics you have to opt-in to, and that data is just going to help MS decide on the top sites, which they will push out at best monthly via Windows Update. But the idea is still good.)