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Microsoft has previously warned Webmasters that its support for new standards could result in their pages not displaying correctly in Internet Explorer 8.

In a blog post earlier this year, Microsoft technical manager Nick MacKechnie said IE8, unlike its predecessors, would favor widely used Internet standards -- and not Microsoft protocols -- as its default settings. "Browsing with this default setting may cause content written for previous versions of Internet Explorer to display differently than intended," MacKechnie said.

With Explorer 8, Microsoft has promised default support for W3C Internet programming guidelines. Among other things, IE8 will feature default compatibility with Web standards such as CCS 2.1 and HTML 5. It also promises improved support for the Ajax language.

Microsoft is offering developers a downloadable metatag that they can add to their Web pages if they want IE8 to render their content using IE7's default settings.

The warning is consistent with a bulletin released by researchers at Gartner, in which they caution developers about the changes in IE8. Gartner says that IE 8's default standards mode "will result in pages that don't display correctly for some enterprise applications."

Still, Gartner recommends that enterprise developers fall in line with Microsoft's commitment to standards when creating new Web applications. "Strive to design for standards, not browsers," Gartner says. "Don't depend on any one client-side technology. Focus instead on validated user interaction patterns," the researchers add.