Microsoft's next-generation web browser, Internet Explorer 8, has arrived. In a surprising move, after the demo of IE8 and its new features at today's session of the MIX08 conference, the startling announcement was made: "It's available for download now". The new browser showcases many new features and improvements, like Facebook and eBay integration, standards compliance, and the ability to work with AJAX web pages. What's most notable about IE8, though, is more than a sum of its parts. If anything, this launch shows that Microsoft is not taking Firefox's creep into browser market share lightly.
I'm sure there are more features to be discovered, but the ones that were highlighted just now in the demo at MIX08 included the following:
Standards Compliance: There were hints that IE8 would be a remarkable offering on the IE Blog as they released tidbits about the browser's capabilities. For example, the announcement of IE8's passing of the Acid2 test (a test for standards compliance) marked a milestone in IE8's development. The standards mode was originally going to be turned off by default letting web developers code for it by including a "meta" tag to make use of IE8's new standards compliant mode. Later, Microsoft came to their senses and made the default the standards-compliant mode. Meanwhile, Firefox also claims to have passed the Acid 2 test, but an open bug on bugzilla.mozilla.org seems to say otherwise. (our coverage). One commenter on the thread notes, "So, we essentially do pass the test. However, in some situations, it might still fail, that's why this bug is open."
Facebook Integration: Yes, seriously! With a Flock-like feature as an unexpected surprise, Microsoft capitalized on their partnership with the popular social networking site, Facebook, to allow IE8 users the ability to get status updates from Facebook right from their browser toolbar.
eBay Integration: Like Facebook, this feature also uses IE8's new technology, called "WebSlices", which introduces a new way to get updates from other sites via the browser itself, without having to visit the web site. With WebSlices, IE8 beta users can subscribe to portions of a page that
update dynamically, in order to receive updates from that page as content
changes. EBay will offer webslices, too, letting you track your auctions from the browser toolbar. Basically, WebSlices look like Favorites on your Links toolbar but they have a little arrow next to them - clicking on this arrow will show you a small window of live web content.
Live Maps Integration: Another WebSlice was integration with Live Maps. It appeared that you could even highlight text on a page, like an address, and then right-click and choose Live Maps from the context menu to get a WebSlice preview of that location on a map in a small pop-up window. How convenient!
Integration with Me.dium: Me.dium integration will be supported in IE8 via WebSlices. Me.dium will now help web surfers discover and view WebSlices directly from the sidebar. The Me.dium sidebar will alert users to the presence of WebSlices on any page – and even allows users to read each WebSlice, without leaving the Sidebar. In addition, Me.dium will make real-time recommendations for other WebSlices on other relevant web pages and provides direct links to them based on the real time activity of other Me.dium users.
Me.dium Activities in Action
Working with AJAX Pages: IE8 will offer better functionality when it comes to AJAX web pages. The example showed a page where you could zoom in using AJAX technology. Previously, hit the IE "Back" button would take you back to the last page you were on. Now, "Back" will zoom you out.
We can now find out what other features IE8 has to offer, since the beta is now publicly available for download. To get IE8, you can download it from here: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/ie/ie8/readiness/Install.htm.
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I wonder if the bundling of Live Maps will be deemed as anti-competitive.
Posted by: Joe Anderson | March 5, 2008 12:34 PMYou got the link wrong. It should be:
Posted by: Andy | March 5, 2008 1:04 PMhttp://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/ie/ie8/readiness/Install.htm
Yep -- he just put an extra period on the end.
Posted by: Mickey | March 5, 2008 1:09 PMWell, the current beta of IE8 doesn't seem to pass ACID2 very well either (at least not for me). They have plucked his eyes off :-(
Posted by: Vish | March 5, 2008 1:10 PMThis looks great. Me.dium is changing the way people surf, simply amazing. I'm really looking forward to checking all of this out. Maps and facebook with a single click, Nice!
Posted by: jenniferlauren | March 5, 2008 1:11 PMkudos to MSFT - they have done an awesome job with a cool product that is going to open the doors to innovation from the developer community. If you have the browser you can get Me.dium's social discovery activity here: https://me.dium.com/ie8
Posted by: tobias | March 5, 2008 1:20 PMSorry - left off a slash... https://me.dium.com/ie8/
Posted by: tobias | March 5, 2008 1:22 PMThis is great news for all front end developers. Let's just hope it lives up to its promise.
- Jawad
Posted by: Jawad Shuaib | March 5, 2008 1:24 PMI wonder if it will a) coexist peacefully with IE7 so developers can easily test both browsers, or, b) like in the past, blow away earlier versions so its impossible to test without hacks or virtual machines? My guess is the latter.
I'm happy to have more standards compliance, but could care less about the gee-whiz features (anyone remember IE4 Active Desktop and "Channels"?). Those belong in extensions for people who want them. A browser should be lean and clean by default.
Posted by: Scott Becker | March 5, 2008 1:40 PMinstalled on xp2 has already crashed half a dozen times, I know its a beta but still!
Posted by: rav | March 5, 2008 1:44 PMA lot of the 'features' described above appear to be unnecessary addons. The Facebook and Me.dium addons seem particuarly faddish. It's great that ie8 passes the acid test though - it's about time M$ made the leap to standards compliance. It's a great boost for standards for sure, and should make developers happier.
Posted by: Sam | March 5, 2008 2:25 PM@Andy: link fixed - thanks! :)
Posted by: Sarah PerezGood news: Passes Acid2 (translation: great CSS 2.1 support, including things like display:table), defaults to standards mode (both previously announced).
Bad news: Still no support for application/xhtml+xml, not even close on Acid3 (Opera 9.5 9755 passes 61), not good support for CSS3 selectors (granted that's not officially a final spec, but Opera 9.5 9755 gets 100%).
I'm dubious about some of the new features... interesting how Microsoft seems to continually rely on tying together their spectrum of offerings. IE8 includes convenient shortcuts to other web sites for various info... and many of those sites just happen to be Microsoft sites. I don't blame them for linking to their own services, but ironic that Microsoft is essentially "bundling" again.
Some of the new features seem similar to things like gadgets in iGoogle... this release is as much about Google as Firefox. Very happy to see that the WebSlices setup does not introduce proprietary tags and even uses the hAtom microformat.
I'm sure many users will find things like activites and WebSlices handy, but it still seems to me that Microsoft is way behind the curve on features innovation with web browsers. Many of these features have long been available via plug-ins. However, I'm glad to finally see features like session recovery.
All in all, this release is good news. It definitely demonstrates the IE team is serious about web standards now, and it signals we'll be seeing IE updates more frequently. IE8 is still behind other browsers in many ways, but kudos to the IE team for the progress they've made - it's going to help developers and users a bunch.
Posted by: theharmonyguy | March 5, 2008 3:42 PMAh. I thought I tasted bile and couldn't figure out why... now it all makes sense.
Posted by: Zaphod | March 5, 2008 4:18 PMhopefully this is nothing like the other internet explorers they released earlier..
Posted by: Robin | March 5, 2008 4:21 PMDoes this overwrite MSIE 7, or can you run it concurrently?
Posted by: Eric J | March 5, 2008 4:23 PMOkay... IE8 has oodles of new features, and standards compliance, and whatnot. But the real question is...
... is it any faster? I was a pretty devout IE7 user, until I tried out Firefox. IE7 is just TOO DAMN SLOW! If IE8 can at LEAST match Firefox in terms of speed, then, and ONLY then, will I consider switching back.
Posted by: JediMaster | March 5, 2008 4:27 PMIE8 implements much of the functionality necessary for Microsoft's new cloud-based technologies, and not much more. About the only real move it's made in regards to standards is _some_ improvements in JS, and a work with CSS 2.1.
The real downside is no support for application/xhtml+xml, and from the documentation I'm seeing, we'll never see XHTML support for IE. Nor SVG.
This may not seem like much, but it is a significant break in the veneer of 'standards support' MS is wrapping itself in.
Oh, and don't try accessing my site if you're running the new IE8--I serve my pages up as application/xhtml+xml, and now I have to figure out if I have to 'break' them, just so IE users can read them.
This was Microsoft's thumbing its nose at the standards community, not embracing it.
Posted by: Shelley | March 5, 2008 4:48 PMExcuse me, meant to say, "...now I have to figure out if I want to 'break' them, just so IE users can read them."
Posted by: Shelley | March 5, 2008 4:50 PMThis is a step in the right direction for m$ however its still not enough for me to think that IE is better for FF. A lack of plugins and addons doesn't help neither does the speed of IE7.
Posted by: PFWD | March 5, 2008 4:52 PMBut credit given where credit is due.
Firefox and IE can battle it out!!!
But Opera is the best browswer (meant for users who like Web 2.0)
Its fast and the best!!!
Posted by: Karan | March 5, 2008 5:06 PMIE8 still has some issues with CSS 2.1, and it can't even load the W3C CSS test list properly. The CPU usage shoots to 100% and stays there.
http://blog.vftw.com/view/web/internet-explorer-8-beta-1-quick-test/
Posted by: vftw | March 5, 2008 5:21 PMThe point of the WebSlices stuff wasn't that those sites are "integrated" into IE8, but that *any* website can implement WebSlices and Activities.
I'm delighted with the (intended) full support of CSS 2.1 and beginnings of HTML5 support. Even just the query selector API solves a lot of problems (look how much code in JS libraries is dedicated to solving that, and how much attention is given to performance bake-offs).
The improved developer tools are also welcome, including script debugging (without that stupid MSE script debugger), style tracing, the ability to switch rendering/script modes between IE5, IE7, and IE8.
I could care less about application/xhtml+xml since XHTML has no traction and draconian parsing is a non-starter.
Alex Russell (of Dojo fame) asked Chris Wilson if IE8 would add SVG support or "fix" VML, and Chris basically made it sound like they wouldn't. Alex was bummed, but those of us who are happy to use Flash or Silverlight for charts and vector graphics can stand to wait for those features.
Posted by: dnl2ba | March 5, 2008 5:29 PMThis beta is broken on many sites I have checked, e.g.,
Posted by: Bill | March 5, 2008 5:29 PMhttp://buzz.yahoo.com. It is completely not viewable. It is a shame for microsoft to claim it is better CSS complaint while it is actually worse. I cannot believe software of such bad quality can be released to public.
I jumped on the IE7 beta only to uninstall it and never upgrade from IE6. Why am I even considering downloading this. Ok, I'm going to do it. Blue screen of death, here I come.
Posted by: PPX | March 5, 2008 5:34 PMI didn't see anyone respond to the question earlier, if installed, with IE 8 beta overwrite IE 7 or will it run side by side? Two concurrent versions....
Posted by: Jeff | March 5, 2008 5:39 PMI'm still running on IE 6... Dammit - one more web browser to try to account for. Watch FireFox follow suit in a few months. Sigh.
If you're a drudge fan: drudgetracker.com
Posted by: Jimmy L | March 5, 2008 6:03 PMIE8 overwrites IE7. But there is a toolbar button in IE8 to have it emulate IE7 for compatibility and testing.
Posted by: Bunghole | March 5, 2008 6:08 PMFinally, now Microsoft can compete with Firefox!
Posted by: iPod Touch Tutorials | March 5, 2008 6:11 PMNot too sure about IE8's support for HTML5... for instance, check out this page in the beta - definitely not displaying correctly. Looks to me like IE8 is entering quirksmode on an HTML5 doctype, but I'm not sure. From what I'm reading, HTML5 should renders in standards mode, so maybe there are CSS issues here.
JavaScript fixes do seem to be disappointing... not only is Acid3 pitiful, but some of the W3C test suites fail often.
@Bill: Not sure what you're seeing - buzz.yahoo.com looks beautiful in IE8 on my box. Passing Acid2 is a huge indicator of improved CSS support - IE8 is definitely more CSS-compliant. Sites using browser checks may still feed IE8 non-standard code, so that could cause some rendering issues, but hopefully such cases are rare after the IE7 roll-out.
@dnl2ba: HTML5 certainly has more traction right now, but don't write off XHTML - it's better suited in some applications, such as when using extensions like MathML. I wonder about the HTML5 support, though... have you read anything about how much Microsoft is supporting with this version, or this beta?
@Shelley: I wouldn't go quite that far, though it is disappointing... and lack of SVG is disappointing too.
@JediMaster: I only use IE for development testing, so I can't give much comparison to IE7, but so far it does seem a little faster to me... certainly seems to load faster. Probably not as fast as Firefox or Opera, though.
Speed reminds me of a point I forgot to mention in my original comment... has anyone noticed the bit about Loosely-Coupled Internet Explorer? Supposedly it's for stability, but I was a bit surprised - it sounds like multiple tabs in IE will now be like multiple windows in IE of old, where every tab is a separate process. That sounds like a performance nightmare to me... memory usage in multiple IE windows historically was much higher than multiple tabs in Opera, for instance. I'm wondering how this will play out for heavy users... and it doesn't seem necessary with session recovery.
@Karan: Well, yes, Opera is the fastest and best, but not everyone has realized that yet. :)
Posted by: theharmonyguy | March 5, 2008 6:48 PMI used to be a homeless rodeo clown but now I am a world class magician !
Posted by: FPM | March 5, 2008 8:37 PMIntegration with facebook?
Posted by: mayooresan | March 5, 2008 10:25 PMthats way too cool man!!! :) Now installing IE 8!!!
need to be tested !!!
Posted by: anewlove | March 6, 2008 12:44 AMThis explains the nausea I had when I woke up this morning.
Truth is that IE is a very average browser, plagued by security issues, slower than a sloth on holiday and it would not know a compliant web page if it fell over it, I could go on...
There are better alternatives out there (and not just Firefox - although I use it). I just can't get excited about a product that does not deserve any excitement what so ever.
I will reserve my final judgment of IE till the dust settles. But if history has anything to do with it, it will be the usual browser slop from Microsoft that gives people the impression that IE is the only thing you can look at the web with.
Posted by: Dave Gray | March 6, 2008 12:55 AMI bet its going to be just like IE7
Which was quite like IE6.
What a fast 'upgrade'.
Booo-urns.
Posted by: CoolDula | March 6, 2008 2:29 AMHope it will be really better then IE7!!
Posted by: IT | March 6, 2008 2:37 AMi hate IE ...
Posted by: subcorpus | March 6, 2008 2:44 AMit just never works ...
not that all the products of MS is like that ...
but IE the prgram i used o use the most ... it would always crash on me ... everyday ...
now using opera ...
I was pretty happy with IE 7, specially the interface. Today with high expectations I installed the IE 8. There are many problems. It’s not stable like the previous versions. It hangs all the time!
I don’t know why the Microsoft is so keen on copying the firefox. When we run the IE 8, it opens 2 taps just like firefox.
Did you see firefox beta 3? I think soon IE gona loose the battle with firefox!
Posted by: mayooresan | March 6, 2008 3:26 AMThere did not seem to be much mention of IE8s VERSION TARGETING in the article. For more information please see Eric Meyer's write up:
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/fromswitchestotargets
Posted by: Ottscay | March 6, 2008 3:32 AMWow that's nasty. A fourth of the browser's screen taken up by the clunky UI. Time for IE to go on a diet.
Posted by: Giuliano Maciocci | March 6, 2008 6:38 AMsound good but I used firefox
thanks
Posted by: trend step | March 6, 2008 6:44 AMOh my god, oh my god!
where do i start, ohh ok with the look and feel :)
ok so it has the vista look and feel, fine to be expected, but why oh why is the File Edit View ... under the buttons and address bar.
As Giuliano said needs to go on a diet FAST!
What is with the huge spacing used for each UI component, the Favorites icon and font are way to big, and even if that was not the only thing they have been givven so much padding that even your mum could fit into it and still have room to turn around.
as for the tabs, well same story really.
Not to mention the SAFARI SEARCH ICON that has just been flipped horizontally, and lets not even start on the usability or readability of the glow on the text in the title area :)
the initial descriptions and threads about IE8 sounded promising but i think this will definitely be the end of IE now, good job Microsoft :) Firefox/Safari will take over the rest of your users now for sure
Posted by: iPeeFreely | March 6, 2008 6:52 AMI'm glad Microsoft is taking IE more seriously from a standards point of view. However for those of us struggling with the very real limitations of IE6 still, IE8 seems like a dream.
Our stats for our web application still has 60%+ of our users on IE6. I just hope when IE8 comes out Microsoft will force the existing XP users to upgrade to IE7. Now that would make development at lot easier than it is today.
Posted by: Derek | March 6, 2008 7:51 AMI posted some screenshots showing how it is not at all standard compliant, even for readwriteweb:
Posted by: pavs | March 6, 2008 10:17 AMhttp://www.windowhaxor.net/2008/03/06/why-internet-explorer-8-still-sucks-balls/
Still pushing the live search???
Posted by: dai | March 6, 2008 10:23 AMDefinitely not the best upgrade and the features aren't impressive or even worth the upgrade unless you use Microsoft's Live Products extensively. Otherwise, I'd hold off until developers get a hold of it and release more activities. At least it has potential, but it's still playing catchup to everyone else.
Posted by: Corvida | March 6, 2008 1:21 PMWow... back button for AJAX is there... I know there's a tweak to make that work for IE7- but I wonder how it'll behave after this..I'm guess they have to use meta tag to specify IE 7 mode. All in all, by the time I'll be excited about this is when IE 6&7 dies off... and by that time.. hello IE 10!
Posted by: kevin | March 6, 2008 5:35 PMFor all of you whining that IE doesn't meet standards... um... all my records point out that IE is used by over 90% of all visitors to all my sites. I guess that would make IE THE standard.
Posted by: Robert | March 6, 2008 11:28 PMRobert that has to be the single most dumbest argument I have ever seen.
Posted by: pavs | March 7, 2008 12:43 AMAn absolutely excellent choice that Microsoft decided to make standards compliant mode the default on Internet Explorer 8. Developers around the world are a little bit happier today.
Posted by: CSSteve | March 7, 2008 3:42 AMFunny how Microsoft still ignores valid DTHML/CSS. Instead of implementing the stuff good for once, they try to "improve" (what means, a little more CSS 2.1 than the IE7 and a little bit of CSS 3.0).
I have tested the browser on various websites and programms and have discovered (see my blog at RSIM - Internet Marketing Blog) some failures.
Posted by: Ralf Seybold | March 7, 2008 3:56 AMIf you have a look at the Dell-Website you will discovery that various ads and some look and feel will be different than watched with IE7, IE6 or Firefox.
DHTML (simple DIV-visabilites) on the FAZ (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung) is shown wrong.
The WordPress-Admin-Site is not shown correct and some features cannot be used (I have tried to update an entry).
To me it looks like Microsoft is still ignoriing basics. And they know it (otherwise what is that Emulate IE7-Button for?)
(And by the way: What browser is this! You have to restart your computer after installing! That's absolut nonsense.)
I went to the IE8 tech session after the keynote (which surprisingly had plenty of room... all the Silverlight sessions were full, though). Here's what I wrote afterwards:
http://www.cio.com/article/193350
Actually I feel almost guilty. I still had several pages of technical notes (some of which got the guys sitting next to me to mutter, "About F'ing time!") and didn't have time to include the info in the article.
You DO know the sessions are online, right? You can see Chris' whole video at the Mix site.
Posted by: esther schindler | March 7, 2008 5:58 AMI couldn't get the beta to fully work on several sites :(
Tried it on http://music.yahoo.com, others. Worked on http://www.justexpressing.com
Microsoft needs to work on this more.
Posted by: Sakura | March 7, 2008 8:15 AMI'm not surprised IE8 is already not working. It probably will be just as buggy as all prior versions of IE and cause many security threats. Typical Microsoft to add all these nice features and forget about getting the basic features to work correctly.
Posted by: Michael | March 7, 2008 8:33 AMCan we port it to Ubunutu?
Posted by: Nikhil Dev | March 7, 2008 10:16 AMAmaziiiiing.. Forefox? it's a big challenge.
Posted by: Ono Karsono | March 7, 2008 2:45 PMMethinks your trackbacks no worky, so here's a manually done trackback: http://www.hotmediamess.com/2008/03/05/standards-compliant-internet-explorer-8/
Posted by: John | March 7, 2008 3:34 PMI was wondering what there is to offer for the web user who's not based in the USA.
Posted by: Phillip Cunningham | March 7, 2008 8:53 PMI am running XP sp2, I installed IE 8
Posted by: Frandall | March 8, 2008 10:48 AMIt crashed 3 times, I tried the emulate IE 7
and it said I needed to restart my computer,
I restarted and once again I got IE 8, no emulation,
I restored XP to before IE 8, then IE 7 did not work
I had to install IE 7 in order to fix problem..
I E 8 YUK....for now...
Yea only MS could call that passing Acid2. That's not a pass at all. And for Acid3 it scores 11/100. FF3 Beta 3 Scores 54 and passes Acid2 no problem.
Let's hope that hold off the release until it scores 100% on both tests.
Posted by: Yani | March 9, 2008 5:50 AMTo post 18 by Shelly ... good for you. Serve it up as application/xhtml+xml. XHTML should only be read by an XML parser. Point your IE users to the MozzIE plug-in on Sourceforge.net (assuming there will be an IE8 compatible version of it from Mr. Nunn).
To post 23 by dnl2ba ... "draconion parsing"? HA! Tag soup is lame. You think XHTML has no traction? View the source of this very web page and check the Doctype ... it's XHTML 1.0 Strict! XHTML is everywhere but being read by the wrong parser thanks to Microsoft. Compound Document Formats (CDF) could be a new and exciting way to develop web pages by mixing XHTML, SVG, MathML, XForms, etc. into a single document via namespaces. But do you think Microsoft wants to see that happen? Of course not. They just want to sell Silverlight and screw CDF.
Posted by: GaryLASQ | March 11, 2008 9:12 AMThe best browser EVER CREATED!
period
Posted by: steveballmer | March 12, 2008 8:49 PMAlways IE is a copule of steps behind other competitive browsers(like the tab introduction etc), hope this will be a step ahead...or is it now ???
Posted by: consoleart | March 20, 2008 2:01 AMThe lack of SVG support and maybe other things as well are probably very deliberate.
Posted by: Thomas | March 22, 2008 1:17 AMWith no SVG, the need for the upcomming silverlight stuff will be increased, and that is strategical vital for M$.
R/sir
please send me IE 8 for advance interner surfing.
thank's
Posted by: rajkumar | April 2, 2008 9:54 PM