Trend Edition
IE8 Beta is Out
Internet Explorer 8 (beta) is now available for download, and as I predicted in my web trends "the web community will love it - nobody else will notice any difference."
IE 8 does not seem to have changed anything. All the sites I have tested - including this one - works fine. The interface has been changed very little.
The only real difference is this little icon in the toolbar, which changes IE8's browsing behavior to the one used in IE7 (since all the ones works fine in IE8, the button doesn't make any difference).
But, if you do spend some extra time looking at it, you will find that there are indeed a number of changes and new features.
Activities
One is "Activities" that allow you to do things with the text on the screen (see video) - like sending it to Yahoo Mail, translating it etc. It is a nice idea, but I do not think people will actually use it.
Web Slices
Another new feature is Web Slices, which allow you to subscribe to parts of a website. This is actually pretty cool.
Developer Tools
The really cool stuff is of course the things for us web developers. Most noticeably is the built in "Developer Tools", which allow you to inspect the page you looking at, and debug it *LIVE*. You can even add breakpoints and see just what is going on.
This is going save us so much time when we are making web applications. I am super excited about this.
The last great thing is that IE 8 support AJAX interaction. Meaning, that you can now force the navigation buttons (back button etc) in the browser to follow AJAX interaction - instead of just showing the last full page.
Ohh... and, of course, IE8 passes the Acid2 CSS test (see also note about Acid2 copies)
(Videos from Microsoft)
Comments
Daniel Aleksandersen - Mar. 5, 2008
At least we all know why Microsoft what to buy Yahoo! When they release IE8, Yahoo! will have a huge growth in users of their web services. As Microsoft will push «web activities» on everyone, and they will default to Yahoo!’s services. Cleaver plan, M$.
Gautch - Mar. 5, 2008
Yeh but does is support the current rules for CSS?
Also what about PNG's with transparencies?
I guess it is still a beta, so we don't know all that will be in the final.
Thomas Baekdal - Mar. 6, 2008
Gautch, The now "old" IE7 already fully support PNG transparency, so that problem was solved long ago.
IE8 also support the current CSS rules. IE8 even has better CSS compliancy than Firefox 2x. You need Firefox 3 to get the same level of CSS support that already exists in IE8.
Scott O''Raw - Mar. 6, 2008
All very nice, but you think it wouldn't be out-with the reach of Mircosoft to get some decent audio on some of these videos (Web Slices and Activities are the ones I've watched at this point).
They 'clip' terribly on some of the plosives and I can hear the narrator breathing during the time she is not speaking.
Can someone send MS a pop shield and a gate / compressor?
I know I'm being picky and this isn't the point of Thomas' post, but I struggled to follow what was going on through worrying about my laptop speakers being rattled out of their housing.
Thanks for posting this, though, Thomas.
Thomas Baekdal - Mar. 6, 2008
Scott, I agree about the audio quality.
I actually tried to convert the videos into Flash Video, so that I could embed them directly - but my converter reported that the WMV files was corrupted.
I think MS should buy a new video recorder :)
Peder Skou - Mar. 6, 2008
Quick question: Since this is a beta I suppose it doesn't overwrite the current IE7 installation?
Peder Skou - Mar. 6, 2008
Damn. Have you find it stable enough to recommend it? The "emulate IE7" function makes it less risky, anyhow.
Thomas Baekdal - Mar. 6, 2008
Peder, Well, I have only been using it for about a day now (inreality only 3 hours, since I have been away from my computer), so it is far too early to tell.
It does appear to be rock solid. I have had no problems with it.
Realtor - Jun. 29, 2008
In the real world most of our corporate customers are still on IE6. We can't even get them to move to IE7.
Published: Mar. 5, 2008
in Products
Thomas Baekdal is a Writer, Interaction Designer, Change Advocate and Project Manager.
Thomas Baekdal - Mar. 5, 2008
Just noticed... StumbleUpon does not fully work in IE8.
Nor does my very own "WEB2RSS" for some reason (damn...)