RSSMicrosoft accelerates in 2009 with RC1 of IE8
By Scott M. Fulton, III | Published January 26, 2009, 5:01 PM
In the clearest sign to date that the company's roadmap really is being fast-forwarded, Release Candidate 1 of Internet Explorer 8 -- a critical component of Windows 7 -- was released this morning.
Microsoft's pledge to make IE8 behave according to generally accepted standards, will mean that many sites will have to behave differently than ever before. Up to now, many sites have chosen to structure their code around the default behavior of IE6 -- the last version designed to be non-compliant by default.
But just how well those sites have to behave has been a moving target since the IE8 beta process. Now, one of the browser's engineers said this morning, the company is ready to call a halt to any additions to its standards compatibility, so sites' engineers are now free to start making the changes they'll have to make to ensure they can still be read.
"The technical community should expect the final IE8 release to behave as the Release Candidate does," reads a blog post from team general manager Dean Hachamovitch this morning. "The IE8 product is effectively complete and done. We'll post separately about the thousands of additional test cases we're contributing to the W3C. We've listened very carefully to feedback from the betas. With the Release Candidate, we're listening carefully for critical issues."
In Betanews tests this afternoon, we were happy to discover that the new Betanews front page renders perfectly well in IE8 RC1 without the need to turn on "Compatibility Mode" -- the fallback mode that the browser now uses for sites that haven't changed to reflect general standards. Our old design, as we noted at the time, failed standards mode miserably.
We also noted that when IE8 was installed in a system where IE7 was previously installed, as Microsoft promised, it acquires all of IE7's preferences as "express settings" even when they don't refer to Microsoft. Most importantly, when our previous default search provider was Google instead of Live Search, the browser's default search choice was shown as Google.
Our first reader to review RC1, kindbud1, reported having trouble with the installation process. "First you have to download nearly 20 MB, uninstall, install, and reboot," the reviewer wrote. "But then upon restart, you have to run something else... which downloads another mystery package...and puts you through a second install process (during which you cannot do anything else with your machine)...and then it automatically reboots a second time! Oh, and of course you have to completely reconfigure the thing the first time you try to run it."
This was not our experience. On our virtual Windows XP Professional SP3 test system, we were able to download a 16 MB package, run the installation program, have it download updates to the system, reboot once, and then run IE8 RC1. However, our test system had recently been updated with security packages from Microsoft, and we also had Service Pack 3 already installed. Conceivably, kindbud1's test system may not have been similarly updated prior to installation, which would explain his having to reboot and download a "mystery package."
One of IE8's new features suggests to its users other sites "similar" to the one you're currently looking at, based on assimilated data in Microsoft's online search engine. We were particularly interested to note that the Web site that Microsoft believes to be most like Betanews...is Apple.
As always, the question that many of you repeatedly ask...How standards compliant will IE8 be, really? If what Hatchamovitch is saying is accurate about standards mode being written in stone now, the news isn't very good.
A 20% score out of 100% on the generally accepted Acid3 test is certainly not what the Web Standards Project would consider to be "in the ballpark." For the heck of it, we tried the same Acid3 test in IE8 RC2's compatibility mode, to find it actually didn't score that much worse: 14%.
Guys here is proof that IE8 is nothing to get excited about. It is still The Slowest Browser Available:
http://news.cnet.com/830...=newsEditorsPicksArea.0
Life Is Good On A Mac.™
Score: -1
|Someone has voted for you I see, how does it feel to get a thumbs up ? I've never been given a thumbs up, still I live in hope. IE8 ain't the slowest, it just keeps crashing all the time. My version of Chrome has just updated to the latest and greatest, gosh it's fast. Suggest you all dump Foxy, Opera and any of the other old guard you are still using, it's time to go forward with Google a name you can trust, Chrome is the browser of the future.
Score: 1
|Well Sturge hope I made your Day?
Score: 1
|I rather not trust things that are tracking me. :)
Score: -1
|Thanks morrig, I'm now a happy chappie.
Score: 0
|installed on my XP machine running SP3 with all updates. now using as default browser replacing firefox. no problems at all so far. nice one MS. installed quickly in 2 mins max. and it does require a reboot after install.
Score: 1
|Installed on two machines. If installed over IE beta 2 the new installation was different, took longer and needed a couple of reboots. If installed over IE7 the installation only took a couple of minutes and only need the one reboot. The result however on both machines was the same in the end, after much joy at being able to start using this once excellent browser once more it crashed, again, and again, and again, bloomin' shame. Back to Google Chrome for me then, now that's a browser and a half for you.
Score: 0
|IE8 RC actually is a great browser and not comparable to the Beta 2. If just the delicious plugin was better I could easily see me using it full time.
Score: 0
|Firefox is still the best but I wish had protected mode just like in IE
Score: -2
|Mac OS X has sand boxing technology built in. Now you can use Firefox or Safari without any worry whatsoever.
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|You do:
http://noscript.net/
Score: 0
|That's only protecting you from JavaScript. IE's protected mode isn't actually part of the browser; it's really part of the OS, which is why it's only available on Vista and later. It separates EVERYTHING in the browser from the OS, including JavaScript but also including Shockwave/Flash, Java, ActiveX (which in turn covers a gamut of potentially exploitable plug-ins like Adobe Reader, WebEx/GoToMeeting, etc.)
Score: 0
|It's nice that using the Express setup defaults the search provider to Google instead of Live Search if that was the IE7 setting.
Score: 1
|"A 20% score out of 100% on the generally accepted Acid3 test is certainly not what the Web Standards Project would consider to be "in the ballpark."
Acid2 compatibility is the one that "breaks the web" the most in its current form as it tests (mainly) CSS. Acid3 tests DOM, ECMAScript and SVG rendering which isn't greatly used in standards form at the current time.
It's a lot closer to "the ballpark" that I expected it to be initially.
Score: 6
|I Don't know what part of the interwebs you are from, but have you been online lately?? Okay, we'll forget about the SVG part, but the whole WEB is *about* DOM and java/ecmascript nowadays!
Score: -2
|I thought about giving a facetious answer, but genuinely:
Websites that will be broken come the final release of IE8 are those built by designers who give no toss about standards. Those that use ECMAScript, AJAX et al. are those created by designers who know what they are doing (in 99% of cases).
"Fixing" Acid3 compatibility in IE would affect only those web developers who know what they're doing (currently). Fixing ACID2 breaks websites because considerably more developers are hacking CSS together to work in IE. These developers don't know what they're doing and don't know why it's broken again once IE8 is released.
Those hacking CSS about MASSIVELY outnumbers those who are AJAXing their websites.
I hope that explains it.
Score: 1
|LOL. Safari, that's such a unreliable browser. Internet Explorer is more reliable than Safari. But I still much rather use Firefox as my primary browser and IE as my secondary.
Score: 3
|Will not install on Vista running IE 8 beta It say not support by this OS
Score: 0
|Score: 1
|Will this be part of Windows update for Win7 users? I guess I'll find out when I get home.
BTW, the beta of IE8 passes ACID 2 with 100/100.
Score: 0
|i also tried with the Vista version on 7... and doesnt work either, so we'll have to wait a bit.
Score: 0
|LOL. Internet Explorer, what the heck is that? Who really uses that anymore? Here's the browser created for human beings: http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/safari.html
Life Is Good On A Mac.™
Score: -12
|"Who really uses that anymore?"
According to the latest share stats? 68% of all users.
Safari? 7.9%
Did I mention you're an idiot? No? Well, you are. :)
Score: 0
|Actually, on my photography business site, IE (all versions) pull in over 80% of the hits.
Score: 1
|LOL. Safari, that's such a unreliable browser. Internet Explorer is more reliable than Safari. But I still much rather use Firefox as my primary browser and IE as my secondary.
Score: 1
|i concur, lol
Score: -1
|lol wow your head is stuck so far up something internetboy...
Score: 0
|amazing that you add a trademark to your posts now.
lol idiot
Score: 0
|He doesn't know you can't trademark "stupid"... ;)
Score: 1
|Accelerators sounds stupid and like bundling to me.
Score: -1
|They are add-ons. Don't like them?
*gasp*
Don't install them.
http://www.microsoft.com...tures/accelerators.aspx
Score: 1
|yes but it passes the Acid2 test, and thats really all that matters
Score: 1
|You're right, real usability doesn't matter at all as long as it can pass a test which has no real impact on real world scenarios. Good call!
Score: -1
|It didn't pass the Acid2 or Acid3 Test...
"...To pass the test, a browser must use its default settings, the animation has to be smooth, the score has to end on 100/100..."
Internet Explorer doesn't score a 100. It's very far from passing.
Score: -1
|It does pass ACID2. Perhaps you don't know what it means?
ACID3 it doesn't pass.
Score: 0
|As openly stated by the test creators, Acid2 represents real-world scenarios, but Acid3 does NOT. Since Acid2 already covered the key requirements of normal HTML and CSS, Acid3 was specifically designed to hit the extreme, unusual, and obscure aspects of JavaScript, DOM, SVG, and even elements of CSS3 which have NOT been officially accepted by W3C as standards yet.
Score: 0
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