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The first beta of Internet Explorer 8 has been released. The big feature is, of course, better standards compliance, and to this IE8 adds a few small bells and whistles.
This release is aimed squarely at developers so that they can get a head start on preparing their pages for the new browser; a later beta will be more suitable for a wide audience.
IE8 B1 passes the Acid2 test, a widely-used benchmark for evaluating CSS 2 compliance, renders correctly. This is a significant landmark, as the IE7 fails the same test. The n ewer Firefox Betas as well as Opera and Safari pass this test as well.
Better interoperability and support for web standards are high priorities for the IE8 team, according to IE general manager Dean Hachamovitch.
Microsoft has also developed a suite of CSS 2.1 test cases, which make it easier to test specific features and see which bits are surpported and which bits still aren't; this shows the company is taking these standards much more seriously, and is very good to see.
The new features on offer are all fairly minor. The Phishing Filter in IE7 is now a "Safety Filter." As well as checking for phishing attacks, IE8 will now filter and block sites that are known to contain hostile code. Its presence is thus more apparent than the phishing filter, as it also states whether downloads have been reported to be unsafe.
IE8 features many more contextual options for web pages and images. "Activities" are a new kind of contextual service that Microsoft is pushing to improve common copy-and-paste-style operations. A couple of the activities, Live Maps and translation, are particularly neat, because they invoke in-place.
It's not all good news. IE8 still lacks features its competitors have. The most glaring of these omissions must surely by the absence of a download manager. IE8 still doesn't understand the "application/xhtml+xml" MIME type, which is how XHTML web pages arguably ought to be served. If offered such a page, IE8 prompts you to save it somewhere, as with its predecessor. There still isn't any SVG support, either.
So for those wanting to give this thing a test run, the advice would be wait... wait some more, until they produce a stable beta atleast.
This release is aimed squarely at developers so that they can get a head start on preparing their pages for the new browser; a later beta will be more suitable for a wide audience.
IE8 B1 passes the Acid2 test, a widely-used benchmark for evaluating CSS 2 compliance, renders correctly. This is a significant landmark, as the IE7 fails the same test. The n ewer Firefox Betas as well as Opera and Safari pass this test as well.
Better interoperability and support for web standards are high priorities for the IE8 team, according to IE general manager Dean Hachamovitch.
Microsoft has also developed a suite of CSS 2.1 test cases, which make it easier to test specific features and see which bits are surpported and which bits still aren't; this shows the company is taking these standards much more seriously, and is very good to see.
The new features on offer are all fairly minor. The Phishing Filter in IE7 is now a "Safety Filter." As well as checking for phishing attacks, IE8 will now filter and block sites that are known to contain hostile code. Its presence is thus more apparent than the phishing filter, as it also states whether downloads have been reported to be unsafe.
IE8 features many more contextual options for web pages and images. "Activities" are a new kind of contextual service that Microsoft is pushing to improve common copy-and-paste-style operations. A couple of the activities, Live Maps and translation, are particularly neat, because they invoke in-place.
It's not all good news. IE8 still lacks features its competitors have. The most glaring of these omissions must surely by the absence of a download manager. IE8 still doesn't understand the "application/xhtml+xml" MIME type, which is how XHTML web pages arguably ought to be served. If offered such a page, IE8 prompts you to save it somewhere, as with its predecessor. There still isn't any SVG support, either.
So for those wanting to give this thing a test run, the advice would be wait... wait some more, until they produce a stable beta atleast.
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