Internet Explorer 8

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Internet Explorer 8

Aug 28th 2008. IE8 Beta 2 has been released for public download. While Beta 1 was for developers, anyone who browses or works on the web will enjoy IE8 Beta 2.

"We focused our work around three themes: everyday browsing (the things that real people do all the time), safety (the term most people use for what we’ve called ‘trustworthy’ in previous posts), and the platform (the focus of Beta 1, how developers around the world will build the next billion web pages and the next waves of great services)." Download IE8 For Vista Here. Full Read MSDN Blogs.

Jul 3rd, 2008. Microsoft has announced that Internet Explorer 8, beta 2, will have two new security features: the SmartScreen Filter, and the Cross Site Scripting (XSS) filter. SmartScreen Filter previously went by the name Safety Filter and in IE7, Phishing Filter. More details on these can be found IEBlog, at Part III and Part IV.

May 26th, 2008. "Consistent with our efforts to promote further interoperability across the Web, Microsoft will be releasing Internet Explorer 8 to render content in its most standards-compliant way by default.

However, browsing with the default setting may cause content written for previous versions of Internet Explorer to display differently than intended. This creates a call to action for site owners to ensure their content will continue to display seamlessly in Internet Explorer 8. As such, we have provided a meta-tag usable on a per-page or per-site level to maintain backwards compatibility with Internet Explorer 7. Adding this tag instructs Internet Explorer 8 to render content like it did in Internet Explorer 7, without requiring any additional changes."

"We are encouraging site administrators to get their sites ready now for broad adoption of Internet Explorer 8, as there will be a beta release in the third quarter of this year targeted for all consumers." To learn more and get started, please follow the step-by-step instructions located at KB952030.

Mar 6th, 2008. Microsoft has unveiled Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1. A full features page has been revealed which lists the following additions to IE 8.

Activities
WebSlices
Favorites Bar
Automatic Crash Recovery
Improved Phishing Filter
Automatic Crash Recovery

Activities allow users to lookup/send information in a right-click contextual menu, such as retrieving an address map from Windows Live Maps, submitting a story to Digg, sharing a page on Facebook etc. WebSlices allows users to crop a specific area section of a site and bookmark it. Improvements have been made to the phishing filter which continues to block known Phishing sites and now blocks sites known to contain malicious software that could harm users’ computer or steal their information. Download.

Dec 20th, 2007. Microsoft has announced that Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) beta 1, is being targetted for release in the first half of 2008. It will be designed and built for a broad range of customers including consumers, enterprises, partners, web developers, and others.

IE8 is the next generation web browser designed for the new web; making it safe and easy to use web services. It is being designed and built with a broad range of customers including consumers, enterprises, partners, web developers, and others. IE8 will also deliver advancements to our broad customer ecosystem and will enable Web Developers, Designers, and ICPs to develop across platforms and versions, boost productivity, and provide richer user experiences – all without breaking the web.

One of the goals of IE8 is to support the right set of standards with excellent implementations without breaking the existing web. And last week, IE8 reached a core milestone: IE8 in standards mode now correctly renders the “Acid2 Browser Test”. Acid2 is a test that determines how well a browser works with several different web standards. Successfully rendering Acid 2 is an important landmark for IE8 as it highlights the interoperability, standards compliance, and backwards compatibility that we’re committed to for this release.

Here are some details & clarifications about IE8.

What’s ACID 2.0 and why is it important?
At a high level, Acid2 is one test of modern browsers to determine how well they work with several different web standards. Ultimately the key goal of standards is to increase interoperability so developers do not have to write the same site multiple times for different browsers. One of our goals in developing IE8 is support the right set of standards with excellent implementations and do so without breaking the existing web. While successfully rendering ACID 2 is important for many reasons, it is just one of several for the interoperability, standards compliance, and backwards compatibility that we’re committed to for this release.
What is “IE8 standards mode”?
Modern browsers typically have two modes to render web pages, “quirks” and “standards.” Our experience with releasing IE7 taught us that many web sites today expect us to have IE6-compatible behavior. With IE8 we believe we have a deep obligation to interoperability and compatibility with existing web sites, and this has led us to add an additional mode to enable supporting industry standards even better. Developers can now write sites based on standards, insert a flag that tells IE to render in IE8 standards mode, and IE will then switch its rendering engine to use this new mode. This allows pre-existing sites to continue to work, and developers can opt-in to the new rendering engine on their own schedule.
Why does IE need an additional standards mode, and other browsers don’t?
The expectation of pre-existing sites for how “standards mode” functions actually differs significantly across browsers. Many sites today are coded to work properly in other browsers under those browsers’ standards modes, but then hand IE7 a different set of content or styling under that same mode. Our goal is to encourage interoperability for web developers; our new standards mode will attempt to be interoperable with other browsers’ standards modes, so that in other browsers, the page can continue to be rendered by their standards mode.
If most websites are coded for IE7 or IE6, won’t standards mode in IE8 break the web?
No. Internet Explorer 8 is being developed to allow authors to opt-in to IE8 standards mode. This means that websites coded for previous versions of IE (IE7 or IE6, for example), behave in exactly the same way in IE8 unless website authors opt-in to IE8 standards mode by placing a simple tag at the head of their HTML document.

Is this in response to Opera’s anti-trust filing with the European Commission last week?
No. All along Microsoft has said that it will be deliberate in its communication process around IE8, as it have an obligation to our customers to do so in a responsible manner. "We have been working on IE8 for more than a year and ACID 2 has always been one of the milestones we set out to achieve. We understand developers and designer want to know more about IE8 and we are talking about benefits and features relevant to them first."
Will IE support other Web standards such as CSS 2.1, CSS 3.0, HTML4, DOM, etc.?
As we state in the blog post, we are working on multiple efforts in this release to increase interoperability, standards compliance, and backwards compatibility. We will have more to share about specific standards supported in the near future.
What is the goal with IE8
The goal with Internet Explorer 8 is to deliver the next generation web browser designed for the new web; making it safe and easy to use web services. For consumers, IE8 will deliver the easiest and safest way to experience the web and web services in a way that is meaningful to them. For Web Developers and Internet Content Providers, IE8 will enable consistent development across browser platforms, increased productivity, and richer, more integrated user experiences and services – all without breaking the web.
What about other audiences such as enterprises, consumers and partners – are there any new features or tools for end users?
Yes, IE8 will offer a number of innovative and beneficial features for enterprises, consumers and partners that will help them deliver and experience a richer online experience. We will discuss these areas in more detail in the coming months.
What is Microsoft doing about developer concerns? You say a lot about what you think about IE8, but what will we actually see and when?
We think developers and designers will be excited about the advancements in IE8 and today we are providing some additional information on our direction. We realize that the delivery of code is when the browser becomes real for developers and we will make a beta available in 1H08.
How will IE8 stack to up to Firefox and Safari?
We don’t comment on competitors but we are listening to our customers and are excited about the value IE8 provides. This includes the fundamentals that end users care most about: security, performance, reliability, accessibility and similar issues.

IE8 Resource: IE8 Blog.

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