IE9: Microsoft crowd-sources application compatibility

I don't normally subscribe to rumours but it does look like we are going to see a final cut of Microsoft Internet Explorer's 9 Release Candidate.

Have a read here:
http://www.winrumors.com/internet-explorer-9-rc-set-to-launch-on-february-10/

And hey, it's on the web - it must be true, eh?

More importantly, and more on topic with application compatibility, Microsoft has changed the way the Compatibility View (CV) button works from IE8 to IE9.

Quoting from the site

 "before adding a site to the IE9 CV List we (Microsoft) verify that it is incompatible with IE9. We also verify what Document Mode it works best in. This will help us make sure that we ship with the smallest CV List possible at Beta, RC and RTM. 

The CV List continues to be community-data-driven. For the IE9 Beta CV List, we use data from site compat testing and internal usage to determine what sites go on the list. For the RC and RTM CV Lists, we’ll rely more on data from Beta and RC self-hosters. 

For more detailed information on these changes, you can find a Microsoft IE team blog posting here;
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2010/09/29/ie9-s-faster-more-capable-compatibility-view-list.aspx

What I find interesting is the vast difference between the number of websites that are currently listed as non-compatibility with Internet Explorer 8 and the now very much larger number of sites listed as having (through a crowd-source lens) compatibility issues.

You can find out more about the IE8 compatibility view list here: 
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/960321

And, if you have installed IE8, you can download and view the XML results by entering the following URL in the navigation pane: res://iecompat.dll/iecompatdata.xml

The last time I looked, (last Friday) there were 173 items on this list. So, good news for Microsoft, only a few items on the CB list now compared to 1800 items that were on the list 18 months ago.

Now, to view the IE9 Compatibility List you can navigate to the following location: http://ie9cvlist.ie.microsoft.com/ie9cvlist.xml

And whoa! This list is rather big. Now the IE9 compatibility list contains 1111 items. That's right, over 1,000 sites are deemed not compatibility by the self-selected IT community who has tested the IE9 BETA.