We’ve decided that IE8 will, by default, interpret web content in the most standards compliant way it can.
This is a change from the previous thinking whereby web developers would have to explicitly opt-in to make IE8 render in standards mode. Thank God they've changed it to be default. IE8 is shaping up to be a good browser for web developers, let's hope the improvements keep coming and maybe, just maybe, websites won't need to be hacked to render correctly in IE8.