IE8 Team Change Their Mind, Then Release First Beta

Posted on Wednesday, March 5th, 2008

It’s all go in the developer community this week and Microsoft are at the centre of it all!

Version Targeting Missed The Target

First, on Monday, Dean Hachamovitch posted about Microsoft’s Interoperability Principles and IE8. The point of the post was to change their mind over the version targeting idea, no longer will the default mode for Internet Explorer be IE7’s rendering mode. Standards support has now been seen to be of top priority, as is working like the other browsers. This is also in response to the feedback from the community.

Not my feedback, of course, I eventually decided I approved of the original idea so that web site owners who had no idea what web standards were wouldn’t be battered by another round of breaking sites like when IE7 was released. One of the more important lines from Dean’s post seemed to me to be:

[T]his choice creates a clear call to action to site developers to make sure their web content works well in IE.

Now it is up to everyone who owns a site to make sure it works in IE8 or add the meta tag to ensure IE7 rendering. It’s a big job, but we can start now!

IE8 Beta 1 Released

Yes, it’s here! IE8 Beta 1 is available for download now! I’m writing this on a Mac at the moment, but I look forward to getting my hands on it, testing my sites and experiments, testing the web in general. Things to look forward to, as developers, in the new IE are:

  • Full CSS 2.1 support
  • Better scripting performance (though, according to comments on the IEblog article, this hasn’t been optimised for this beta, so will seem slower)
  • Early support for HTML5
  • Built in developer tools

…and much more!

A Bright New Future

So, I don’t mind that the IE team changed their mind. It means less thinking for me, as I don’t have to add meta tags or HTML 5 DOCTYPES, and it means that progressive enhancement lives on as we know it. The issue of multiple rendering engines (IE 6, 7 and 8 to start with, it sounds like) and the weight and complexity of it will still be a question but one that should be answered soon. Finally, it is nice to see the product of all this work and debate and get to grips with it. I will try not to turn this blog into a report on IE8’s wins and losses (like Jonathan Snook’s Twitter stream earlier!) but I am fascinated by the arrival of the newest version of the world’s most popular browser.

All in all it is a bright future for web development and this first beta is a peek into that future of standards support across the board. Let’s hope it is a good peek.

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Comments

  1. 1March 6th, 2008 at 7:12 am

    Neil Says:

    Phil, I’ll be taking IE8 for a spin on Parrallels later, so I’ll let you know how it all goes on the hasLayout frontier.

    How long before IE8 hits the mainstream? I bet that IE7 adoption was seriously boosted by the release of Vista, so unless MS have some kind of initiative (e.g. a service pack) for getting IE8 adoption, won’t this latest version take longer to gain traction?

    Fingers crossed all the Facebook addicts will go wild for the social network features and treat IE8 like a FB application - i.e. spam all their friends with messages to install it. Although, I do question how FB integration will play out with IT departments.


  2. 2March 6th, 2008 at 8:48 am

    Phil Says:

    I think I’ll be downloading IE8 this morning at work, it will be nice to see whether the current project stands up to it! Oh, and hasLayout is supposed to be gone, so no more worrying about it, positioning things relatively or handing out height:1% (well, except for the old versions :( )

    I think the first question is how long will it take before IE8 hits a proper release. I remember IE7 taking a good long while to come through it’s testing, though I only tried it out myself by the time it was at release candidate status. I can see it being nearly the end of the year before IE8 is ready.

    User uptake will be interesting. IE7 has been pushed out twice by automatic updates and is part of Vista, though is still fighting off IE6 for dominance. Hopefully the Facebook thing will make uptake much quicker, though I’m sure the social networking options will be turned off by IT departments who aren’t interested. Then again, maybe Enterprise 2.0 will have gained enough traction for companies to consider Facebook a worthy messaging and networking tool… but that’s a whole different story!

    For now, on with the beta testing!


  3. Pingback by Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 - Primeiras Impressões » Pinceladas da Web - Reflexões sobre XHTML, CSS, PHP e WebStandards
    March 6th, 2008 at 8:33 pm

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