IE 8 Beta 1

Microsoft have now released their first beta of IE8 for Web Developers and Designers; it’s available to download right now!

New features include:

• “Activities” - updated context menus, with links to social networking sites and various other MSN based services
• “Web Slices” - take a slice of dynamic content and keep up to date without loading the browser
• Three different layout engines to choose from: Quirks Mode (to emulate IE 5.5 etc), Strict Mode (for IE 7) and Standards Mode
• Apparently faster and more reliable
• More compatible with other browsers, meaning code should look the same across the board

But why, I hear you ask, would you be promoting Internet Explorer?

Well there are two reasons, one is easy to explain, the other only slightly more difficult:

1. If people are going to be using this browser in the future - no matter whether I agree with them or not - our websites need to look perfect in all browsers, that even includes the Browser of the Devil.
2. Internet Explorer has actually come on leaps and bounds since the old days. IE6, although all developers know that it’s a nasty browser that doesn’t conform to standards, is still the most commonly used browser. It’s lack of respect for standards was borne out of having to bridge the gap between IE 5.5s EVEN WORSE support and the evolving content on the web; as the web has evolved, so have the browsers and with every version of IE released, it becomes closer to compliance. So anyway, my point is, IE is improving as a browser and is still the most popular, so the chances are high that a lot of people will be looking at our websites on IE8 in the future.

So head on over, download, dust off that old PC in the corner (or fire up Parallels) and give it a try. I shall be testing it out over the next few days - I have some scary sites that are hacked and hacked again to get them to work in IE6, we shall see what IE8 makes of them!

Of Course the only way to end this post is to urge you to upgrade your browser to a real one, such as Safari, Firefox or Flock.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 7th, 2008 at 10:46 and is filed under Software, Web Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.