Microsoft’s $10K Internet Explorer 8 Promo

The $10,000 Internet Explorer 8 Promo: Follow clues laid down @tengrand_IE8 on Twitter, to find “a cleverly concealed webpage that only Internet Explorer 8 can view.” Seems straightforward enough, except the promo makes sure to ask you to “Ditch the web browser you’re using. If you try to find the $10,000 with Firefox, you’ll get nowhere.” The promo details are here.

Screenshot of Promo Page

Hopefully Microsoft is trying to promote how well IE8 properly displays web pages, being so faithful to existing web standards that it can reveal what competing browsers can’t. This so-called hidden website had better not be dependent on any special web rendering functionality available only through IE8. That would validate critics’ long-time assertions that Microsoft refuses to play the web standards game just to maintain their dominance of the browser market.

Case in point: Internet Explorer 6. The browser, still the most widely used today, continues to give web designers nightmares, thanks to the non-standard methods Microsoft insisted on using to display web pages.