Internet Explorer 8

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Windows Internet Explorer 8

Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 on Windows XP
Developed by Microsoft
Preview release Beta 1, 8.0.6001.17184 / March 5, 2008 (2008-03-05); 101 days ago
OS Windows Vista, XP SP2 and 3, Server 2003 SP2, Server 2008
Platform x86 (32-/64-bit)
Available in English[1]
Development status Beta
Genre Web browser and feed reader
License Proprietary (MS-EULA)
Website Internet Explorer 8 Beta

Windows Internet Explorer 8 (commonly abbreviated IE8) is the next version of Microsoft's Internet Explorer web browser, succeeding Internet Explorer 7. A Beta 1 targeted for web designers and developers was released to the general public on March 5, 2008.[2] A Beta 2 targeted for all consumers is scheduled to be released in August, 2008.[3]

According to Microsoft, security, ease of use, and improvements in RSS, CSS, and Ajax support are its priorities for IE8,[4][5] along with significantly better support of web standards than its predecessor. As a result of better standards compliance, IE8 will break compatibility with web pages that were designed around the bugs and quirks of previous versions. To soften the impact of these compatibility issues, IE8 will enable web designers to turn off all breaking changes in IE8. There are three modes that IE8 can render, named, "Quirks," "Strict," and "Standard." When there is an old DOCTYPE or when there is no DOCTYPE, IE renders it like IE5 would (quirks mode). When a special meta element or its corresponding HTTP header is included in a web page, IE8 will render that page like IE7 would (strict mode). Users can switch between the three modes with a few clicks and then restarting Internet Explorer.[6]

Contents

[edit] History

IE8 has been in development since August 2007 at the latest.[7] In February 2008, Microsoft sent out private invitations for IE8 Beta 1,[8] and on March 5, 2008, released Beta 1 to the general public,[9] although with a focus on web developers.[10] The release launched with a Windows Internet Explorer 8 Readiness Toolkit website promoting IE8 white papers, related software tools, and new features in addition to download links to the Beta.[2][11] The Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) added new sections detailing new IE8 technology.[2][11][12]

[edit] Features

The first beta release of IE8, which was demonstrated at the MIX08 conference, contains many new features, including WebSlices and Activities.[6]

[edit] Activities

Example of a map Activity using the IE8 Activities Smart tag.
Example of a map Activity using the IE8 Activities Smart tag.

Activities are contextual commands that allow a user to invoke an online service from any other page.[13] Actions such as selecting the text or other objects will give users access to the usable Activity services (such as blogging with the selected text, or viewing a map of a selected geographical location), which can then be invoked with the selected object. According to Microsoft, Activities make copying and pasting between web pages easier.[6] IE8 specifies an XML-based encoding which allows a web application or web service to be invoked as an Activity service. How the service will be invoked and for what categories of content it will show up is specified in the XML file.[14] Similarities have been drawn between Activities and the controversial Smart tags, feature experimented with in the IE 6 Beta but withdrawn after criticism (though later included in MS Office).[10]

This is an example of how to describe a map Activity using the OpenService Format:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<openServiceDescription xmlns="http://www.microsoft.com/schemas/openservicedescription/1.0">
    <homepageUrl>http://www.example.com</homepageUrl>
    <display><name>Map with Example.com</name><icon>http://www.example.com/favicon.ico</icon></display>
    <activity category="map"><activityAction context="selection">
        <preview action="http://www.example.com/geotager.html">
            <parameter name="b" value="{selection}" /><parameter name="clean" value="true" />
            <parameter name="w" value="320" /><parameter name="h" value="240" /> 
        </preview>
        <execute action="http://www.example.com/default.html">
            <parameter name="where1" value="{selection}" type="text" /> 
        </execute>
    </activityAction></activity>
</openServiceDescription>

[edit] WebSlices

IE8 Favorites menu displaying a WebSlice in a flyout Window
IE8 Favorites menu displaying a WebSlice in a flyout Window

WebSlices are snippets of the entire page that a user can subscribe to.[13] WebSlices will be automatically kept updated by the browser, and can be viewed directly from the Favorites bar, complete with graphics and visuals. Developers can mark parts of the pages as WebSlices, using the hAtom and hSlice microformat. WebSlices have been compared to Active Desktop, introduced in Internet Explorer 4 in 1997.[15]

“ The description of Active Desktop is very nearly an exact description of the new WebSlices feature in IE8. They do exactly what Active Desktop was designed to do --- grab information from the Web, and display it in a kind of widget inside Internet Explorer. ”

—Preston Gralla, Computer World

[edit] Address bar improvements

The address bar features domain highlighting for added security so that the top-level domain is shown in black whereas the other parts of the URL are grayed out. Domain highlighting however cannot be optionally turned off by users or websites. Other features of the address bar include support for pasting multi-line URLs and an improved model for inserting the selection caret, and selecting words, or entire URLs in the Address bar. The inline autocomplete feature has been dropped from Internet Explorer 8.[16]

[edit] Other features and improvements

IE8 Developer Tools
IE8 Developer Tools

Other new features in IE8 includes a redesigned Favorites Bar, which can now host content such as WebSlices, web feeds as well as documents, in addition to website links. The phishing filter has been augmented with Safety Filter that prevents sites known to spread malware from loading. Users need to make an explicit choice to load a blocked site; however this feature can be disabled using Group Policy. A crash recovery mechanism has been incorporated; if the browser crashes, web pages being viewed are recovered when the browser is restarted.[13] Full-page zoom now reflows the text to remove the appearance of horizontal scrollbars on zooming.[17] For developers, IE8 includes tools that allow HTML, CSS and JavaScript debugging directly from the browser.[14]

Internet Explorer 8 includes performance improvements across the HTML parser, CSS engine, mark-up tree manipulation as well as the JScript runtime and the associated garbage collector. Circular Memory leaks, which resulted earlier due to inconsistent handling of JScript objects and DOM objects, have been alleviated.[14] For better security and stability, IE8 uses the Loosely Coupled Internet Explorer (LCIE) architecture and runs the browser frame and tabs in separate processes. Glitches and hangs don't bring down the entire browser. It also leads to higher performance and scalability. Permissions for ActiveX controls have been made more granular - instead of enabling or disabling them globally, they can now be allowed on a per-site basis.[17]

[edit] Standards support

IE8 improves rendering of content authored to various web standards (like HTML, CSS and JavaScript) in standards mode.[18] Such changes might cause it to break compatibility as it behaves significantly differently compared to IE7.[19] In order to maintain backwards compatibility, sites can opt-into IE7-like handling of content by inserting a special meta element into the web page, that triggers the "IE7 standards mode" in the browser, using:[18]

<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=7" />
Acid3 rendered by Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 in standards mode
Acid3 rendered by Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 in standards mode

While the behavior of the browser is unchanged from Internet Explorer 7 in "IE7 Standards Mode", in standards mode (the default IE8 rendering mode), IE8 supports Data: URIs, HTML object fallback, the abbr tag, CSS generated content and the display: table CSS rule, in addition to fixing a lot of CSS and HTML parsing bugs.[7] As a result, IE8 Beta 1 passes the Acid2 test in IE8 standards mode (now called "standards mode").[20][7] Also, the proprietary hasLayout property will be eliminated when using IE8 in IE8 standards mode.[21] Microsoft has stated that Internet Explorer 8 will improve only some of the standards being tested by Acid3.[22]

Compliance with the CSS 2.1 specification has been one of the main goals of Internet Explorer 8. In addition, it also supports some CSS3 features. IE8 also partially supports CSS 2.1 Paged media (including the @page CSS rule and the left, right and first page selectors). In addition, it also supports the DOM: Storage, Cross Document Messaging (XDM) and the Selectors APIs. IE8 also supports cross-domain communication via the XDomainRequest object, that exposes a programming model similar to XMLHTTPRequest. IE8 features an enhanced and standardized DOM, that brings it in line with implementations in other browsers. Attributes and properties in DOM objects are now handled differently, and the behavior of the getAttribute, setAttribute and removeAttribute modifiers have been changed to match the behavior of other browsers.[14] Internet Explorer 8 also supports the Accessible Rich Internet Applications specification for enhanced accessibility in Ajax-based rich Internet applications.[17]

[edit] Version targeting

Internet Explorer 8 features stricter adherence to web standards, which in some cases is incompatible with the behavior exhibited by previous versions of Internet Explorer. As a result, web pages coded to the behavior of the older versions will break in IE8. This would have been a repetition of the situation with IE7, which having fixed a lot of bugs from IE6, broke pages which used the IE6 bugs to work around its non-compliance. This was especially a problem for offline HTML documents, which may not have been updatable (e.g. stored on a read-only medium, such as a CD-ROM or DVD-ROM).

To avoid this situation, Microsoft proposed Version Targeting whereby a page could be authored to a specific version of a browser using the X-UA-Compatible declaration either as a meta element or in the HTTP headers.[19] A browser with a newer version than what the page has been coded for would emulate the behavior of the older version so that the assumptions the page made about the browser's behavior holds true.

Microsoft proposed that a page with a doctype that triggers standards mode (or almost standards mode) in IE7 would by-default trigger IE7-like behavior (called "standards mode") in IE8 and future versions of IE. The new features of IE8, along with the breaking changes, could be enabled by explicitly using the X-UA-Compatible declaration to trigger what Microsoft called the "IE8 standards mode". Microsoft's reasoning was that by making the choice to opt for standards compliance explicit, pages that do not want the behavior will not trigger the IE8 standards mode.[19] IE8 standards mode could also be triggered by the HTML5 doctype. Doctypes that trigger quirks mode in IE7 will continue to do so in IE8.

The proposal was met with much controversy. Jeremy Keith, writing for A List Apart, felt that tying pages to browser versions would greatly hinder progressive development as championed by web standards.[23] Håkon Wium Lie, Chief Technology Officer of Opera Software, authors of the Opera web browser, stated in an article for The Register that the move was an example of monopolistic behaviour due to Microsoft's dominating position in the web browser and operating system markets.[24]

Peter Bright of Ars Technica claimed that the idea of using a meta tag to pick a specific rendering mode fundamentally misses the point of standards-based development, but positioned the issue as one of idealism versus pragmatism in web development, noting that not all of the Web is actively maintained, and that, "demanding that web developers update sites to ensure they continue to work properly in any future browser version is probably too much to ask."[25]

On March 3, 2008, Dean Hachamovitch announced that Microsoft had changed their minds, opting instead to make the IE8 standards mode (now called "standards mode") the default in IE8 (i.e., pages with doctypes that trigger standards mode in IE7 as well as newer doctypes).[18] Version targeting would still be present but now would be used to opt-out of progressive development and use the IE7 standards mode. While this move was praised by many of the same people who had criticised Microsoft's original choice, including Microsoft's competitors,[26] the subsequent release of Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 revealed that many web sites do not work in this new standards mode.

[edit] Releases

Internet Explorer 8 Release History
Version Release Date Windows XP Server 2003 Windows Vista Server 2008
32-bit 64-bit 32-bit 64-bit 32-bit 64-bit 32-bit 64-bit
Beta 1[2] March 5, 2008 SP2 and above SP2 Only Yes Yes

[edit] References

  1. ^ IEBlog : Installing IE8
  2. ^ a b c d Internet Explorer 8 Readiness Toolkit
  3. ^ IEBlog : IE8 Beta 2 Coming in August
  4. ^ LaMonica, Martin (2007-05-03). Microsoft hints at general plan for IE 8. CNET News.com. Retrieved on 2008-03-11.
  5. ^ Reimer, Jeremy (2007-05-02). Microsoft drops hints about Internet Explorer 8. ars technica. Retrieved on 2007-05-02.
  6. ^ a b c Mary Jo Foley. IE 8 to feature WebSlices, Activities. CNet Blogs. Retrieved on 2007-03-05.
  7. ^ a b c IE 8: On the Path to Web Standards Compliance - ACID 2 Test Pass Complete. Microsoft (2007-12-19). Retrieved on 2007-12-20.
  8. ^ Foley, Mary Jo. "Private IE 8 beta 1 test build coming soon", ZDNet, 2008-02-23. Retrieved on 2008-03-01. 
  9. ^ Internet Explorer 8 Readiness Toolkit
  10. ^ a b Paul Thurrott. Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 Review. Windows IT Pro. Retrieved on 2008-03-12.
  11. ^ a b http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc288472(VS.85).aspx MSDN "What's New in Internet Explorer 8"
  12. ^ http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/ie8whitepapers MSDN IE8 White Papers
  13. ^ a b c New and exciting features. Microsoft. Retrieved on 2008-03-05.
  14. ^ a b c d How do I make my site 'light up' with Internet Explorer 8?. Microsoft. Retrieved on 2008-03-05.
  15. ^ Preston Gralla. IE8's new WebSlices feature: Welcome to 1997. Computer World. Retrieved on 2008-03-12.
  16. ^ Address Bar improvements in Internet Explorer 8
  17. ^ a b c How do I keep my site and add-ons working with Internet Explorer 8?. Microsoft. Retrieved on 2008-03-05.
  18. ^ a b c Hachamovitch, Dean (2008-03-03). Microsoft's Interoperability Principles and IE8. MSDN Blogs. Retrieved on 2008-03-03.
  19. ^ a b c Aaron Gustafson (January 21, 2008). Beyond DOCTYPE: Web Standards, Forward Compatibility, and IE8. Retrieved on 2007-03-22.
  20. ^ Internet Explorer 8 and Acid2 A Milestone (2007-12-19). Retrieved on 2007-12-19.
  21. ^ Mielke, Markus (2007-12-20). RE: FW: IE Blog: Internet Explorer 8 and Acid2: A Milestone. W3C. Retrieved on 2007-12-28.
  22. ^ Chris Wilson. Windows Internet Explorer 8 Expert Zone Chat (March 20, 2008). Retrieved on 2008-04-15. “The ACID3 test is a collection of interesting tests, spread across a large set of standards. Some of those standards will see improvements in IE8 - in fact, IE8 already improves on IE7's score - but we are focused on the most important features and standards to make web developers' lives easier. The ACID3 test does not map directly to that goal.”
  23. ^ Jeremy Keith (February 21, 2008). They Shoot Browsers, Don't They?. A List Apart. Retrieved on 2007-03-05.
  24. ^ Håkon Wium Lie (February 19, 2008). Opera CTO: How to fix Microsoft's browser issues. The Register. Retrieved on 2008-03-21.
  25. ^ Peter Bright (January 24, 2008). Wisdom and folly: IE8's super standards mode cuts both ways. Ars Technica. Retrieved on 2008-03-21.
  26. ^ Gregg Keizer (March 7, 2008). Opera: IE8's changes don't let Microsoft off legal hook. InfoWorld. Retrieved on 2008-03-21.

[edit] External links

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