molly.com
Wednesday 5 March 2008
IE8 Beta and Readiness Toolkit
Here it is folks, an actual IE8 beta, overview of features, changes and enhancements, and a readiness toolkit for developers.
Check it out, now, my web soul brothers and sisters!
Filed under: MIX08, WaSP, ajax, announcement, browsers, conferences, general, ie7, ie8, javascript, microsoft, software, standards, w3c, web design and development
Posted by: Molly | 12:08 | Comments (61)
can it be installed without overwriting IE7?
From what I can glean so far, the toolset will eventually allow devs to switch between “views” of IE6/7/8. And, while I will get a real answer for you regarding the overwrite concern, I can best guess from history that no, it cannot be installed w/out overwriting IE7. I certainly wouldn’t try it
I love how it grays out http:// in the address bar.
Now if it would only stop reminding me I’ve got disabled add-ons every page load!!!!
Listed on the “Resources and links” page are a variety of forums and newsgroups, but nothing like the bug-tracking system that was used during the IE7 betas. Too bad, because as much as I love the signal/noise ratio of public forums (not), I prefer submitting testcases directly to Microsoft. Submitting a bug there at least made it feel like you were being taken seriously.
Patrick – no, it replaces IE7. However, the IE7 rendering mode works great.
Gerry – the grey confused me at first, then I realised it actually highlights the domain name. For example, in this site only molly.com is black – the rest of the url is greyed. I quite like that.
I appreciate that this is beta 1 but I’m surprised at how rough the rendering is. Lots of sites are broken in IE8 that I never expected to be, given the concentration improving the rendering engine. Hopefully the devs will make rapid inroads here – it renders Acid2 properly, but messes up the Web Standards Project main site.
Overall I’m quite positive about it. Assuming it stays in beta as long as it’s older sibling did I think there’s time for the community to give lots of feedback and really give it a shine. Here’s hoping the newly-regained dialogue between the IE team and the wider world isn’t a temporary thing.
Rik, As few of my sites are a bit broken but that’s probably more my fault than IE8s. The graying out is a nice added extra, but it grays out subdomain names.
Ooh hang on, one of the little activity things just popped up! Cool!!
It just broke my URL:HyperText Transfer Protocol file type under XP so I couldn’t open links from WL Mail again. I say again, as reinstalling IE7 broke it once before.
For those who don’t want to actually run IE8 as their main browser, there is apparently a Virtual PC Image available for IE8 on XP SP2: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=21EABB90-958F-4B64-B5F1-73D0A413C8EF&displaylang=en
Off the thread a bit, but I originally used FrontPage for all my web design work but junked that for Dreamweaver because of several problems. I looked at Expression Web when it came out but it never seemed much different than FP. Just downloaded EW2 Beta, it’s got PHP, Silverlight, Flash, Photoshop Import built in, and it handles those pesky byte order marks that used to drive me wild in FP!!!
I may consider giving this a go instead of DW!
yep, can confirm the overwrite.
Gerry: I really like Expression Web. It’s a very strong tool, only sorry that there isn’t a mac version.
Molly!!! IE8 is broken! Fix it!!!
Four of my sites, all validated and working in all browsers (IE6/7 with conditional comments), the nav bars are shifted and don’t work. Google maps blow up to full screen size. Some forums, their navbars are shifted or cut in half.
That’s after five minutes of browsing.
Glazman says it fails the same CSS selectors that IE7 fails.
Not a very good start.
Note: Put IE8 in IE7 Emulation mode in order to run Windows Update. Won’t work otherwise.
Hah!!! In Windows XP Home/SP2. Your site works, my first paying job works, Acid 2 test works, and my broken in IE6 personal site renders correctly. Surf’s up!!!
Whoops. My Google Map goes pear shaped as well. The map renders correctly in IE7 emulation mode, though.
Arright! We’re off and running, and … whaddaya know, I’m getting fairly consistent results with several sites. Yay!
Alas, I’m also seeing some rendering gotchas here and there. (Anyone else getting large hollow squares for list-style-type: square? Whither the Holy Grail Layout and its variants?)
’s OK. Take a step back. Re-validate the markup/CSS. Here’s a biggie: double-check your CSS specificity. (“Cascades need not apply.”) Do the “minimal test case” mambo – always educational! Lather, rinse, repeat.
IE8b1 also features a Dev Tools window. The CSS panel is OK, but go check out the HTML panel first. Pick an element and you’ll be greeted with a handy summary of styles/files. (I know, it’s not FireBug, but it helps.)
In the end, you may still have markup that doesn’t work in IE8b1, and you’re convinced it should. Share your findings with the IE dev team, complete with automagic screenshot, using this browser add-on: http://tinyurl.com/39468p
Whenever I’m frustrated in times like this or get CSS/browser myopia, I remember what my wife tells her dance students: “Don’t forget to breathe.”
[...] Nicht nur ist die Beta des IE 8 inzwischen erschienen, es gibt auch Hilfestellung von Microsoft, wie Ihr Eure Websites dafür fitmachen könnt. Schade, dass einfach standardkonform nicht reicht … (via molly.com). Diesen Beitrag bookmarken:These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. [...]
Thinking this was rushed out a few weeks too soon, [e.g. the CSS box model overflow problem and some of the CSS pseudo element issues regarding hover and focus] and wanted it out for the MIX08 conference. However, it is a beta one release. Am sure they will get it all squared away.
I damn sure don’t understand the lack of application/xhtml+xml support but then I have no idea of the complexities that would have entailed. ARIA support was included for Silverlight and browser sandboxed RIAs is a good feature. The P3P was kept .. a pleasant surprise .. old dinosaurs hate to surrender a dinosaur. That was a good idea for address bar emphasis of the domain — should help users with quickly comparing the URI. That may FUBAR my Amazondom.com EV cert and impending socially engineered phish site. Oh, well. Wondering if the horizontal scrollbar in the interface will be removed in, or before, the final release. Some of the zoom issues seem to have been resolved.
Will be interesting to see consumer response to IE8.
That is the extent of my patience for beta testing. A browser is a browser. That is a good point at which to arrive and is almost there with IE and competing products.
—–
Dale Cruse–
I just ran Windows Update on an XP SP2 machine via IE8 in IE8 standards mode … the ActiveX control installed okay and Windows Update is functioning. Ran it twice just to check for sure.
Oh gosh, what a time for my laptop to be gone for repairs! It’s the only Windows machine I have!
I may just have to try this out! Glad to hear its coming and I do expect it to be a bit buggy at first but that’s what shake out periods are for…
Hmm… I don’t have a Windows machine available!
I really would like to see IE8, but it would mean having to load Parallels, go through the rigamarole of installing Windows, and so on and so forth. On the other hand, I do have to re-format the disk on my MacBook (for some, undoubtedly obscure, arcane and ridiculous reason, Dreamweaver CS3 won’t work with my Mac’s “Journaled and case-aware” disk format. Oy vay. I swear these programs get more idiotic by the day.)
I’ll do all that, and load up IE8. Any plans for a Mac version? (Or do we all need to sarcastically note that IE is tied to the OS?)
Carolyn Ann
IE8’s Activity and WebSlice functions are interesting as hell. The licensing arrangements are in place. I am wondering what other browser manufacturer’s think of this. Also wonder how some of this will gel with the microformat people with some objectivity applied on their part.
Rob: Please remember this is an EARLY BETA and a “first look” for developers. It is not the complete, finished product and that’s an incredibly important point to keep in mind. I have every confidence that the IE engineers are doing a great job and are looking to reach the goal of complete CSS 2.1 support. There are numerous improvements in DOM and JS, as well as HTML. And, in standards mode, no more haslayout due to the new rendering engine. This is very strong when you think that IE8 is still a ways from shipping.
Carolyn Ann: IE Mac was put to rest years ago. I doubt there will ever be a return to it. I’m a Camino fan myself.
Molly, while I’m glad to see many improvments, the greatness of IE8 is spoiled by some bad news.
Why was a proprietary XDomainRequest introduced when there’s something more powerful developed at W3C?
Why parts of HTML 5 when they’re not implemented per spec but MS own interpretation and prorietary functions?
IE8b1 is greta so far, but it seems MS hasn’t really learned from their mistakes in the past …
The support for application/xhtml+xml is terrific. It’s nice that Microsoft finally listened to its customers, and all of Chris Wilson’s efforts going towards developing XHTML finally paid off.
I’m also really glad to see support for SVG. We were worried that Microsoft would feel threatened by SVG, since it does somewhat compete with Silverlight. But no, Microsoft would not be that petty, because it listened to its customer requests and gave us what we want.
It’s good to see MS turn over a new leaf and be a part of the community, rather than do its own thing, and then use its size to force through proprietary implementations.
It´s importent to have a standard like XHTML, PDF or XML. So everyone can use the same documents. The IE8 will set new standards in security and service. I hope the tested version won´t have so much bugs than IE7 or IE6.
I’m asking – why it took so long for them guys from redmond to realize there are some standards ? What was that … 10 years ? And without installing IE8 I’m sure there will be some Mi*****ft “standards” …
I think it was really quick from 7 to 8. Especially the dialog with webdesigners and xhtml-experts is remarkable (Microsoft!). I guess version 8.5 or 9 comes faster as we suggest – then hopefully with standards in mind at all.
I’m waiting for stabile version 8, maybe than’ll push out 6. IE6 is more simple than IE7 but less stabile. Still over 50% of my IE users (my web site visitors) use IE6
I love the signal
a lot of Bugs
microsoft is doing a great job,
Well done IE8 very promising.
thanks.
thank you.
very nice.
cool
ohh really:)
thanks. very nice and very cool.
Thank you very much. It’s very useful.
very nice
tification for not doing so must be legacy application support.
ification for not doing so must be legacy application support.
yahoo love you site,really?
thank you nice sharing
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thanks
thankss