IE 8 and why it is what it is.....
Microsoft has traditionally been lambasted and quite rightly so for ignoring the W3C recommendations on HTML browsing for a number of reasons - the main reason cited by Microsoft is that during the early years the browsers were taking each their own independent direction before the W3C was formed and Microsoft has been more interested in backwards compatibility because they have a huge user base (mainly corporate) that they dont wish to alienate.
There is often a misconception that the W3C is the specification to adhere to - this is incorrect, the consortium makes recommoendations not specifications for standardisation. Just liks TCP, POP3 etc are RFC's (Requests for comments) - they are not specifications at all - they are ideas that are principally agreed upon.
So to get W3C compliance, you can adhere to the recommendations they make and build upon them yourself as most browsers have done to get their own specifics. This has not worked out well.
So whilst people shout about compliance there is not really such a thing - the adoption of the recommendations is optional to create compatibility and I believe Microsoft has been quite bold in IE8 in moving towards the recommendations sacrificing their compatibility with their legacy products - hence the requirement for the legacy mode.
So whilst everyone is anit MS cause its MS they have indeed taken a step in the right direction and are just getting lambasted cause legacy sites dont work.
Run a website through the W3C validator and if it passes it will work both on IE8 and any other W3C browser that adeheres to the recommendations.
The bigger problem is extensions to x/html such as DHTML because there are not any W3C standards on handling events or what they say they are called, how to trap them and how to program for them.
You may stand up and say hey what about AJAX yep thats a cool technology but its not ratified or recommended by the W3C - (go check on w3c.org) - the problem is there are so many recommendations but no standards coming out of w3c.
How we are ever going to progress is only ever going to be someone grabbing the bull buy the horns and saying this is how we do it - Each browser vendor does something different at the moment and the software developers are only going to worry about the mainstream. This will be where apple and google will lose out with their browsers, If they cannot get the compatibility with legacy applications on the corporate desktop they will be discarded regardless of how quick and pretty they are...