RSSConfirmation: Internet Explorer 8 beta testing has begun
By Scott M. Fulton, III | Published February 26, 2008, 6:06 PM
As selected testers first received invitations from Microsoft yesterday, numerous reports speculated as to the nature of the IE 8 Beta 1 test. Late last night, Microsoft sorted out those reports for BetaNews.
In a response to a BetaNews inquiry, a Microsoft spokesperson confirmed that the Beta 1 testing process for Internet Explorer 8 has begun. To help distinguish it from the public preview process, in which prospective customers are given peeks at how the finished product might work, Microsoft officially calls this a "Techbeta."
But individuals who had either read or were told that the company had launched a beta project for IE 8 on its Connect site, found themselves dismayed to see no such page existed...at least, not for the general public.
In the case of IE 8, regular Connect users are not being asked to submit solicitations for invitations. Rather, the company already knows who it wants to examine the first builds of IE 8 to be distributed outside the Redmond campus walls.
On the minds of users everywhere is the question of how well IE 8 keeps Microsoft's promise to enable it to adhere to W3C standards. The company's developers have already acknowledged that a kind of de facto standard has already emerged around Web site construction suited for IE 5, back when standards adherence was not so much a company priority. Given that fact, IE 8 is expected to be able to carry on IE 7's "bias" feature of interpreting pages as per IE 5 standards or Web standards.
But this time, earlier alpha builds of IE 8 have been said to pass the Acid2 test, an independently developed test of Web standards adherence that has a browser render a happy face when it follows the rules. Firefox 3 Alpha 1 -- released last year -- was the first Mozilla browser to actually pass Acid2, and IE 8 may be the first of Microsoft's as well.
i like design ,but when can utilise?
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|Who cares. No one of any common sense uses IE. Its the worse browser out there.
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|i wish i had your business where you could ignore 85% of the market.
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|No need to ignore them. Code to WC3 standards and you're good to go.
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|I'm testing Minefield right now and the performance is astounding. Good Luck IE!
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|I found IE7 to be better than Opera or FireFox 2.0, but FireFox 3.0 beta 3 is in a different league. So it's FireFox beta 3 as my default and IE7 as my backup. Looking forward to having a go with IE8 though. Opera now way down the list of browsers to use, a shame it used to be the best.
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|the reason I use firefox still is that I once, scanned my cousins computer she had 127 viruses just from visiting myspace.
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|I designed my own two websites to be used with IE perfectly, if the other browsers dont scale it properly or display the tables coreectly, I don't give a crap.
They work perfect with Firefox but that's the only one I have tried. People who refuse to use IE because it's Microsoft are retarded. They always want to appear different just for the sake of being a non-conformist.
Sometimes you have to use the most popular browser and the most popular O/S if you want things to work properly.
As soon as IE7 came out with tabbed browsing and multi-site drop down search, Forefox got deleted as those were the only two features I liked. No more Google bar etc... IE7 works fine and is the standard of web browsers.
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|Fine with me if you think that way, but please stop trying to force it on everyone else.
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|Thanks for the info. Now lets move on to those who do more with a web site than boring their friends with photos of the last bbq.
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|I didn't see him holding a gun to anyone's head, did you?
I don't even recall him asking anyone else to use it.
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|If you guys think IE & FF are bad, try Opera.
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|nice try...
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|Try Opera? I'm a web developer, and I must build sites for all main browsers: IE, FF, Safari and Opera. Working is specially great when you test your work on Opera because it fits almost perfect with web standars, safari is very good too.
People who can't make their sites work on Opera ussually are people who doesn't know much about web development and web standars.
Opera is maybe the best browser to develop for.
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|I did. Still waiting for a decent browser to arrive.
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|What's wrong with FF?
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|He can't stand the fact that it runs like crap on crap computers. :p
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|opera has a great testing extension called web developer? and unbelievable access to the dom through an extension called firebug?
don't get me wrong it's great that you like Opera but can you spare us your retarded opinion that people who don't make their sites "work on Opera" don't know much about web development and web standards? It's not one of the three main browsers either ... you hit what? 98% between IE (PC), Firefox (PC/Mac) and Safari (Mac)?
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|Yea Opera is s***. I would choose either of the latter two over it.
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|Sad thing is a very large percentage of people are still using ie6 even today, Over a year after ie7 was released. Granted even today it still breaks programs like Lotus over the web.
So with that in mind, how can the web designers try to start to fix their code for IE8 if such a huge part of the internet still uses ie6?
I would assume that all those sites that break in firefox today, although I rarely find them would not work in IE8 either. Shouldn't this mean though that all the sites that work in firefox, which should be standards compliant, IE8 will work as well?
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|Anyone tried the Acid3 test? FF3 nightly is getting 58/100... and IE7 gets 5/100 (I think, you can't really read it).
Ouch. :P
http://acid3.acidtests.org/
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|Just did. They need to correct their coding so it works wit IE4. Ok, ok, bad joke. :P It showed up as a mess in IE7. Interestingly I got 50/100 as a result.
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|I got 14 on IE7 for XP...are either of you using Vista by chance? I'll need to try it from my vista box at home this evening and see if it makes a difference.
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|I got 50/100 for Firefox 2.0.0.12
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|50/100 on FF 2.0.0.12 on linux.
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|Yep 5 from ie7 on vista :)
Sure glad i have never ever seen a website messed up like that test was for me
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|On the latest FF nightly build (Gecko/2008030305 Minefield/3.0b4pre) it gets 67/100...
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|Bring it on. FF2 is in need of help and so far FF3 ain't shaping up to be the jaw-dropping successor I thought it would be. Maybe IE8 will breath some life back into competition.
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|Firefox 2 is currently the best browser available. Firefox 3 may not be as major of an upgrade as IE 7 was from IE 6 but it's still a big improvement on an already excellent browser.
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|I am bored of hearing this. FF is slow and a resource hog. Using Maxthon for a few years now.
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|Might be but the overall navigation speed with a customized browser is 10 times faster than IE6/7.
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|Cute login name by the way.
FF2 is a buggy POS. I like many of the features, but it's poorly written code. Anyone with a process stack trace can watch it slowly blow up if you leave it running all day. I don't care if it's on XP, Vista or Ubuntu. It needs serious under-the-hood fixing. FF3 started off in the right direction, but some of the recent UI decisions are just flat dumb. It's like Mozilla is having their jump-the-shark moment. MS left me cold with IE7 also. I seriously don't relish ANY browser out right now. Not Opera, nor Safari nor Konqueror, etc. etc. They all seem to do part of the job, none do it all. I'm not satisfied, so I'm hoping competition will keep things moving forward, rather than declaring one a "winner" and then it stagnates.
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|Please tell me your UI complaint isn't the placement of the "home" button, FFS...
I can't remember if it was you or someone else in the B3 release thread whining about that.
It took me all of 10 seconds to find it and get used to where it is...
Apart from that, even if it is a huge failure in one's eyes, the rendering and footprint seem to have improved *greatly* (so far...still in beta.)
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|Are you kidding? 10X faster my ass. FF is a lumbering dinosoar compared to IE7.
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|Maxthon is IE-based, also known as lots of bugs.
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|What about Acid 3? I could say IE7 is a dinosaur.
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|You can switch the engine in Maxthon. I did never feel the need though.
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|WOW...I may have to try that then.
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|I don't know why everyone thinks Firefox 2 is so slow. Am I the only one that has not had a single performance problem or crash under Windows XP or Vista? I've been able to run Firefox 2 with as little as 512MB of RAM on a single core AMD Athlon XP 1800+ processor under Windows XP with no performance penalty whatsoever.
The instance of Firefox 2 I'm running right now has been running for two days and counting. It is just as fast as when I first launched it.
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|Firefox 3 Alpha 1 from more than a year ago was the first Firefox browser to pass Acid 2.
- A
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|Thanks for the clarification.
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|throw in a decent popup blocker and fill those activex holes and just maybe ill switch back but i doubt it
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|Doesn't IE7 have a popup blocker? And in protected mode it blocks activex by default?
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|It seems that Microsoft would fix Vista Service Pack one before cranking up the IE8 Beta. Only one FUBAR at a time please.
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|Why would the IE team be working on SP1?
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|Where did you read that the IE team was working on SP1 Banquo? Thats not what my post says or even suggests.
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|No, your post suggests that Microsoft only works on one project at a time, and can't have two different teams. :p
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|Let me be the first to put a big fat red X through that last paragraph by posting this this quote and the following link, and then shutting up. I'll let the (688) comments on the MSDN weblog do the talking for me:
"If you (the page developer) really want the best standards support IE8 can give, you can get it by inserting a simple element. Aaron gives more details on this in his article."
http://blogs.msdn.com/ie...patibility-and-ie8.aspx
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