Submitted by About a year after the first beta (which was followed by another beta and a release candidate), Microsoft has announced the release of the final version of Internet Explorer 8, the company’s newest browser. The focus of Internet Explorer 8 is better standards compliance, security, and making “common online tasks faster and easier”.
Internet Explorer delivers better standards compliance, but note that the point of comparison is Internet Explorer 7, and not the competition. This means that while the competition is pushing out beta releases that fully support Acid3, Internet Explorer 8 is finally ready to support Acid2.
Since IE8 comes with a whole load of changes to the Trident rendering engine to support all those standards, IE8 comes with a compatibiltiy mode that web developers can activate using an html meta tag. If IE8 reads such a tag in website, it will render said website in IE7 style, so they don’t break.
There are also new features like Accelerators, Slices, and visual search suggestions. Accelerators allow users to invoke online services from the right click menu on a selection. For instance, by selecting “Warmenhuizen, The Netherlands” and activating the maps accelerator, you’ll find out where I live (just turn right before nowhere).
Web slices are similar to the feature in Safari where a user can make a snippet of any part of a website and have it continuously update itself. Web developers do have to specify slices in their web page, and the format for doing so has been donated to the community as public domain.
Obviously, Internet Explorer 8 also comes with a boatload of bug fixes and performance improvements, as well as stability fixes. You’ll be able to download the new release starting 16:00 GMT.
Personally, I’ve never been a fan of IE7, and IE8 will not make me change my mind. The issue is not so much the whole standards thing (although that only enlarges the resentment), but the interface. I have this paranoid idea that the Internet Explorer UI team has a photo of me in their office, and Ballmer ordered them to design an interface that would annoy that guy as much as possible. I just don’t get the interface. Everything is in the wrong place, doesn’t do what you expect it to, it’s an inconsistent mess graphically, and far too busy and screamy for my taste.
Still, that does not negate the fact that improvements are being made in standards compliance, and that can only be seen as a good thing.
This means that about 4-6 years from today, writing web sites will be a significantly better experience.
EDIT: just pretend that typo isnt there in the title. Should learn not to write stuff before my first coffee…
Edited 2009-03-19 14:02 UTC
Timeframe sounds about right. The large(ish) international consultancy firm I work for only very recently approved its empoyees to (optionally) upgrade from IE6 to IE7 on their workstations. The company wide default browser is still IE6.
No it doesn’t. IE 8.0 does not support standards and it’s slow. It may pass Acid2 but it just fails with JavaScript, the technology of web 2.0.
You do relise that first of all Acid3 test is not the be all and end all of tests – even the people who wrote the acid3 tests don’t make grandiose claims that you are making.
Regarding standards; your post is nothing sort of a blatent attempt to lie about Internet Explorer 8 to justify your own browser decision; can’t you just be happy that Internet Explorer has finally been updated so that it actually renders things as they are supposed to?
Good lord, I swear if you were any more negative it would sound as though I was stuck in an emo mosh pit at a My Chemical Romance concert.
Edited 2009-03-19 20:34 UTC
“JavaScript, the technology of web 2.0″……oh, dear.
Finally all the big players in the brower market have kept to the same standards
Now all those web developers who used ‘ie hacks’ will need to update their code, I doubt this will be the fastest transition though as there are still plenty of ie6/7 systems out there
> Finally all the big players in the brower market have kept to
> the same standards
You are kidding, right?
it passes acid2.. what else do you want?
give me an example where its not compliant?
Acid3? IE achieves acid2 compliance just as javascript eclipses css in importance. Yay.
CSS problems can keep a page from looking right. Javascript problems can keep a page or application from working at all.
Edited 2009-03-19 19:47 UTC
Acid3?
Well, first show me all those page who needs Acid3 compliance, there pages barely using Acid2 compliance.
Pretty much any page that uses javascript is in Acid3 territory. Nice try, though.
Precisely. Javascript performance, working through DOM2 and DOM3, is the area of major, intense competition in almost all browsers at this time. I think tracemonkey is the name of the new accelerated javascript engine in Gecko (with which they are having some trouble), but the javascript engine in Webkit (the name of which escapes me for now) seems to be leading the pack at this time. Impressive.
Meanwhile, IE hasn’t yet even got off the start line in this race … and the trigger on the start gun was pulled eight years ago.
PS: The name of the accelerated javascript engine in Webkit is “SquirrelFish”, and later, “SquirrelFish Extreme “.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webkit#JavaScriptCore
Edited 2009-03-19 22:46 UTC
Precisely. Javascript performance, working through DOM2 and DOM3, is the area of major, intense competition in almost all browsers at this time.
And all for the sake of marketing, since there is no market yet for such technologies, and pretty much no one is interested yet.
Just like there is no interest in Silverlight?
There is indeed a market for such technologies. Rich web content (especially in the context of its delivery to innumerable non-Windows clients such as web-connected mobile phones and Internet tablets) is a very large and growing market.
Something like it, DOM2 and DOM3 provide the solution to problems already solved (or with a work around) already, plenty of time and money have been expended in the current web apps. that work today, migration to DOM2 or 3 is not a priority, it may happen, but not anytime soon.
Crusifying IE8 for not supporting them is silly, is not a world need yet, do it when the world is really demanding it and not because it is just another excuse to hate MS.
Edited 2009-03-19 23:58 UTC
Another major omission in IE that I forgot to mention is Xforms.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xforms
If IE fails to implement DOM2/DOM3, Xforms, SVG, SMIL, full CSS and a plethora of other web standards too numerous to mention, then IE on Windows desktops will be the only web-connected clients that cannot render properly the majority of the future rich content on the web.
IE on Windows desktops (with no other browser installed) is a small and shrinking market … especially compared to the booming market in the mobile web devices. Pretty soon, it will be irrelevant that IE fails to support all this stuff. People who do use a Windows desktop, when they encounter a site that does use standards-compliant technologies to deliver rich web content, will just use an alternative browser (almost any one will do) to access that content.
IE is miles and miles behind in this race, and ever more falling further behind.
So much so that there is speculation on the web that IE will never catch up, and the IE8 will be the last ever version of IE.
http://weblog.infoworld.com/enterprisedesktop/archives/2009/03/is_v…
http://thingsaboutcomputer.blogspot.com/2009/03/will-ie8-is-last-ve…
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/379/1051379/microsoft-kill…
In other words, I’m not cursifying IE. I’m merely pointing out that it is way, way behind, and by all appearances dying.
PS: I’m sorry, but DOM2/DOM3 was the the solution well before the “problems already solved (or with a work around) already” were worked around with IE kludges. You have got the cart before the horse on that one.
Edited 2009-03-20 00:20 UTC
Again, when world really demands it we will know it and if IE or the offitial MS browser by then is not up to date it will pay the price.
Any words, links, etc. you put today are merely especulation.
BTW, list the browsers that meat all the DOM,SVG, etc, etc. demands and have more than the 10% of the marked share today, not even Firefox has it.
Oh, and also list the top 10 sites that demand that the browser has DOM2, 3, svg, etc. etc. compliance.
Edited 2009-03-20 00:26 UTC
Not, it is not. IE 6 usage is in decline. The uptake of IE7 and IE8 do not match the decline of IE6. Non-IE browsers have recently pushed passed the 50% mark according to even conservative figures … independent figures would put non-IE browsers even further ahead.
The thing about non-IE browsers is that they all perform reasonably well when it comes to standards, and all are way, way better than IE.
So currently over 50% of the web-client-on-desktop-or-laptop market, and all of the web-client-on-mobile-device market, can render rich web content using (a mostly complete subset of) standards-compliant technologies. The Windows desktop client market is well served with non-IE alternative browser choices. Penetration of attempted-lock-in rich-content-rendering technologies such as Silverlight is dismal in comparison.
You do the math.
Edited 2009-03-20 00:34 UTC
Im still waiting for the list, do you have it? or you are making all from thin air?
Clearly, you don’t need all of the capabilities of all of those technologies. Indeed, lower-power devices such as mobile phones just don’t have the grunt (or the storage) to implement some of them.
But you do need to have made a start. All web browsers, except IE, implement a pretty good subset of these technologies.
Fortunately for the poor souls stuck on Windows, that OS is well served with alternative browsers that implement a very good subset of thos technologies.
So, your “list” effectively amounts to (in a “good enough” sense) to essentailly the following:
– Everything except IE.
Edited 2009-03-20 00:41 UTC
So, you can’t provide a list of the browsers that complain all the DOM2, DOM3, CSC, etc, etc. with more than 10% of market share. Neather you can provide a list of the sites that require them.
Clearly, you don’t need all of the capabilities of all of those technologies.
Exactly, because there is no demand yet, as I said from the beginning.
Please, don’t waste my time anymore.
Edited 2009-03-20 00:49 UTC
Oh, so your thought then is that IE has to compete only against just one browser (according to you with more than 10% market share) that has to be 100% compliant with all web standards (even though the standards themselves contain optional parts).
OK, then, here is an interesting link that I think you will find is close to home for you:
http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&q=%22head+in+the+sand~*~@…
Hint: the competition against IE is not “a browser with greater than 10% market share”. Rather, IE’s competition is “all web browsers that have a good-enough subset of web standards compliance”.
As I said, that list more or less amounts to:
– Everything except IE.
The market share of browsers on that list (when we remember to include non-desktop web clients such as mobile phones in our accounting) approaches perhaps 60% to 70%. And growing.
Edited 2009-03-20 00:59 UTC
Dude, the debate is over, and you lost.
You are fraud.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw-man
Don’t waste my time troll.
Im ignoring you now.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22svg+games%22&meta=
This is fun … in more ways than one.
PS: Look, more games:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22javascript+games%22…
More fun. For some.
Edited 2009-03-20 01:38 UTC
You can do better. The links on this page are all dead, and point to 404 errors. They do not exist anymore. You are smart enough to know that you should at least make sure your “proof” functions and exists.
This link at least works. The games are rendered equally well in Firefox and IE8..I decided to test them and see. All you succeeded in proving here is that IE8 actually works like it is supposed to.
It was a google search. There were 800 hits. The first link points to 404 errors, but the second & subsequent ones do not.
Second link for SVG games in the google search:
http://avi.alkalay.net/2007/08/svg-games.html
Try those.
As for the javascript games … yes, IE 8 does work (after a certain non-compliant fashion) with javascript. It runs about 40 times slower though.
FF 3.1 beta and Webkit both have an accelerated javascript engine that IE8 lacks.
Sorry … a fair try on your part, but no, you didn’t make your point.
The point is to make sure they work. You posted here the first link that came up. Since you are making the claims, it is up to you to provide proof. Not for me to search and find it for you.
Much better. You might get the hang of backing up your claims with facts. That would be a good thing. SVG is not supported and it should be. The fact is though that MS is getting better.
Is this speed discernible by the naked eye? 10 seconds is 10 seconds, whether it is run by FF or IE. The average user will not notice a difference, and hell, I don’t see a difference when my watch reads 10 seconds for the same thing in both browsers. I for one don’t know what part of javascript IE does not render properly, but that I will look up elsewhere.
Actually I did make my point. You have failed to make yours sir. When you post items like you do, and by your own admission DO NOT USE OR TRY the software you bash, you really cannot have a clue as to whether it works or not. You state your opinions and I respect them. Until you actually use the software in question though, you can’t really know how it works now, can you?
I didn’t post one link … I posted a google search which yielded 800 links.
You checked out only the first one … your error, not mine.
IE has been in non-compliance with web standards now for over ten years. People repeatedly reported lack of compliance with DOM2 causing syntatically correct pages to fail to render properly in IE as a bug to Microsoft many years ago … Microsoft closed such bug reports saying this lack of compliance in IE was **BY DESIGN**. Saying that is effectively an admission that Microsoft knows it is peddling a shoddy product, and it is doing so deliberately.
SVG compliance has been a requested feature for over eight years … request ignored by Microsoft.
IE’s lack of compliance to standards has required untold millions of hours extra effort by web page designers to code around. Who pays for that?
Sorry, but no. They simply are not “getting better”. Not a bit of it.
You will notice it when it is an inner loop.
Ars technica posted a demo video of firefox playing a video, and at the same time running javascript doing motion detection of that video.
http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2009/02/mozilla-demos-impre…
“The most impressive demo that he showed during his presentation used JavaScript in worker threads to programmatically detect motion in a playing video. This one has to be seen to be believed”
Try doing that in IE! A decent speed for running javascript in geko-based and webkit-based browsers opens up a whole range of new things like that demonstration that are just not possible in IE.
No, you didn’t make a point. You utterly failed to follow the links given, you just tried the top one. I can’t do anything about the top link of an 800-hit google search having gone off line. Sorry. that was just your lack of persistence to see what I was talking about.
What makes you think I have not tried IE8?
If I am forced to use a Windows system (and in today’s world in a tech job that is unavoidable), then IE8 is vastly preferable over earlier versions of IE … just as much as almost any other (more standards compliant) browser is preferable over IE8.
Vista … I haven’t used. So far, thankfully, even hopelessly-locked-in-to-Windows shops haven’t foisted that one on me in a work context.
Edited 2009-03-22 09:16 UTC
Actually, I have used IE8 (because it is far better than IE7 or IE6, and one is sometimes in a work context forced into having to use IE), but that is beside the point really.
Your quetion is … how could I asses how well IE works, compared with how ell other browsers work?
Well, IE8 gets a score of just 20/100 for the Acid3 test. Webkit gets 100/100, and gecko gets 94/100. Hmmmm. So what does Acid3 test?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid3#Standards_tested
Hmmmmm. DOM2, CSS, ECMAScript, HTML 4, SMIL, SVG and XHTML (amongst others). IE8 just 20% compliant.
Hmmmm. “Agnostic” web standards, the very same ones which would deliver rich media content equally well to all web client devices. At a time when Microsoft is pushing its proprietary Silverlight (works best on Windows, patents pending). Hmmm.
The Microsoft development team for IE apparently had a comment on Acid3 something along the lines that “it doesn’t test in the direction where we are going with IE”. No shit, sherlock.
Edited 2009-03-23 02:09 UTC
Pretty much any page that uses javascript is in Acid3 territory.
Using your own logic IE8 is Acid3 compliance, because it renders most (if not all) of the “Acid3 territory”.
Solution: Stop using f–king java-scripts.
Real solution: Use a browser that gets Javascript compliance correct according to standards.
Even better solution: Use a browser with DOM2/DOM3 compliance, Xforms compliance and an accelerated Javascript engine that gets Javascript compliance correct according to standards.
Essential approach to real solution or even better solution: Don’t use IE.
Edited 2009-03-20 01:59 UTC
correct me if im wrong but does the open source darling of browsers (firefox) pass the Acid3 yest?
p.s. The answer is no it does not
Acid 3 is a series of 100 tests. Firefox 3.1 beta passes 93 of them. IE8 release passas just 21.
I am aware of how the acid tests work
Safari/Chrome and Opera are the only ones able to pass it at this time
Last time I checked the stable versions of Safari, Chrome and Opera still failed. Only the development/beta versions passed.
Ah, if by “standards” you mean CSS 2.1 (without even proper W3C DOM CSS), then you are right.
Apart from that the list of examples is very long but Acid3 is a good start.
It doesn’t have DOM2 (let alone DOM 3), by design. This is an ages-old shortcoming of IE, a deliberate omission of a major web standard.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dom2
Not having DOM2 in turn leaves out a major component in javascript compliance.
It doesn’t have SVG.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svg
Again, a major omission in IE. SVG became a web standard as long ago as 2001.
In a couple of years, we will be coming up on the end of a decade of major non-compliance in IE.
It is several steps behind other browsers in its implementation of CSS.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Css
It doesn’t have SMIL.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronized_Multimedia_Integration_La…
SMIL (in conjunction with fast Javascript) is, of course, a perfectly viable alternative to something like Silverlight. Trust Microsoft to go with its own, proprietary way of doing something, trying to make everyone have to use Microsoft software to do functions that should actually be universal standards.
SMIL 3.0 is the current standard. SMIL 1.0 was first put up as a web standard in 1998 … so we are already at the first decade of non-compliance for that one.
Finally, there is Javascript.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Javascript
IE has a slow and “unique” implementation of javascript, implemented in such a way that Javascript written to work in IE often won’t work the same way in other browsers, and what works well in other browsers doesn’t work in IE.
If IE implemented these standards properly … then we wouldn’t have any need at all for non-standards on the web such as Flash and Silverlight and ActiveX. All people would have equally rich access (depending on the capability of their equipment) without having to use one particular platform or another … there would be such a thing as consumer choice in IT.
acid3?
An image say more than a thousand words.
http://img19.imageshack.us/img19/5579/ie8osnews.jpg
Ms will eventually remove the IE7 compatibility mode? As long as that’s there, and if it’s going to be there for a while, many web developers will have no motive to change their code.
You’re right; it reminds me of the argument over the Windows compatibility in OS2; it provides compatibility but to what extent is it used as a way to legitimise never actually having to provide a native version?
Microsoft needs to make a break from the past; people complained about Windows Vista but Windows Vista never made a totally clean break from the past and thus it is stuck in a merky half way point where applications kinda work rather than a simple black and white, yes it does work, no it doesn’t work.
Internet Explorer 9 should be aimed to be released in a year, pass Acid3 compliance, a faster java script engine – possibly leveraging .NET/CLR JIT, and remove ALL backwards compatibility. Companies by that time would have had over a year to upgrade their products. If companies can’t be bothered upgrading their products then customers of those companies should be offered by Microsoft free versions of Microsoft’s equivilants as punishment for those companies failing to take care of their customers.
I for one am sick and tired of the hand wringing involved by companies who have known about Internet Explorer 8 for almost 2 years and the need to make their products compliant – but instead they spent the money on private jets, large bonus’s that are totally unjustified and cutting R&D and staff numbers simply to artificially boost the share price at the expense of long term product development and maintenance.
Edited 2009-03-19 20:45 UTC
Thom, I wholeheartedly agree with you about the terrible user interface of IE7 and later. It is one of the primary reasons for me to use Firefox, even at the time of version 1 and 2 of FF when memory leaks were annoying. And now, thanks to some great FF plugins, I am an FF addict
I was fully mistaken when I replied to the safari post (paraphrase) ‘no browser when properly used can make your eyes bleed’ I was horribly naively blindly wrong… I am only a few hours in so I will reserve anything about features for a hot minute.
How in world can this be the best they could do?
One more time: hug an independent developer today! Thank them for giving you choices.
This is the best they could do?
Lawd it stinks on soo many levels! Fuh Huggeley!
Can you remove it from the Microsoft OS Yet!? This is the main feature I have looked forward to since IE4. Fingers Crossed.
That’s a mighty fine horse ya got thar.
You can thank the Mozilla and Opera guys for this release. If it weren’t for them, we’d all be using a browser more or less similar to Internet Explorer 5.5 with no innovation and depending on Java applets to run any rich interactive content.
Don’t forget about Webkit, and/or Safari as well.
In which case we mustn’t forget to thank khtml (the embeddable html component found in KDE) from which webkit was derived.
I went to download this and it kept coming up as RC1, then I actually RTFA linked in the summary and its not released til Noon
1 hour and 17 mins and counting.
over at http://www.neowin.net they have posted direct links to RTM files
Ive downloaded and am running IE8 on Vista (build ends in 18702).
It’s amazingly quick, as quick and sometimes quicker than chrome on the same pc.
We have everyone in the web browser arena for this release, however i think out of them all Firefox has been the browser to put the most pressure on Microsoft. So congrates to compeition as it proves once again that competition drives innovation and improvements for everyone.
I will agree 100% with you on this point. Before Firefox was released Microsoft said they would not release any more stand-alone versions of IE, and future versions would be “tied” to a specific version of Windows (i.e. IE7 + Longhorn, IE8 + Windows 7, etc). Once Firefox came out and started to gain market-share, Microsoft decided to reverse direction and release IE7 as a stand-alone application. Granted, it does not have everything when used with XP as it does with Vista, but Microsoft did release it as a stand-alone application. Now we have IE8, and starting with Windows 7 we can have a version of Windows without IE installed.
Sorry, but no. You will reportedly be able to “turn IE off” (whatever that really means) but it will not be un-installed.
Having said that … I’d rather have IE8 on any Windows system that either IE6 or IE7, and I will recommend IE8 to Windows users who ask me.
Edited 2009-03-21 09:04 UTC
Actually I am somewhat underwhelmed by this release, while I applaud the efforts obviously undertaken to support CSS properly, I see where the competition is and where Microsoft stands and all I can say is. First of all there is a huge load of people who still have not moved away from IE6 so even the new release so the pain everybody in web development has to endure wont change. But at least there now is a common ground which is CSS 2.1 which everyone can follow for all other browsers which makes the support of ie8 more or less a no brainer. But IE7 still will be an issue for the years to come if those not migrated yet will to migrate to ie7 first (which unfortunately will happen)
But the main reason why I am underwhelmed is the still lacking support for the newest ECMAScript standards, which again leaves us without real namespaces and real inheritance, instead of rolling your own both constructs would have helped a lot to improve framework interoperability. And the fact that Microsoft was able to fork SVG successfully for silverlight but not supporting the real thing in their own browsers in 2009 still is a shame
So what is left, a release while I personally applaud it from a web developers standpoint leaves me cold!
Several of my “common online tasks” involves using javascript extensively. When all other major browser players significantly enhances that experience, and IE8/Microsoft does *not*, I would say that claim is a flat out lie.
I imagine it is faster and easier than IE7.
Finally the trash is out
Don’t use it, just put it in your trash can…
You mean Recycle Bin, right?
How long ^aEURTMtill it hits Windows Update is what I^aEURTMm interested in.
I’m forcing everybody where I work to upgrade to 8. Well when it becomes available on the Windows update site.
The main reason for this is because I’ve tested the company’s upcoming website in the beta and RC versions of IE 8 and it works flawlessly without the need for code tweaks.
IE 8 is still far behind other browsers, but at least it’s better than it has been. I can’t force people to adopt firefox, safari, or opera, but I can at least get them to upgrade to IE 8.
Aren’t you contradicting yourself a bit here? Might as well force them to use Firefox. Or better yet, don’t force anything, just provide Firefox and IE8.
No. They have websites they have to use that won’t work in anything but internet explorer. Thank you US Government for helping the Microsoft Monopoly.
Ooh, the temptation to go on one of my Ayn Rand/Libertarian trademark rants over the evils of big government and how it entrenches monopolistic bebehavior is very intense
Lets put it this way; if government wasn’t so big, and people’s reliance of having to interact with it on some level was that of being trivial (and the limited amount required was done using open standards formats) – then maybe we wouldn’t have the entrenched Microsoft monopoly because of it
when will it be released for Linux?
The third Tuesday after never.
For uber 1337 haxors the release for Linux was today. I bet you there are uber 1337’s getting it to run in WINE as I type.
No, I think there is zero 1337 haxors who actually want to run it, either through WINE or natively !
Edited 2009-03-19 22:29 UTC
Don’t be so certain of that. There are countless tutorials on how to run both IE6 and IE7 in WINE. I gurantee you there are ubber 1337 haxors trying to get IE 8 running just so they can say they did it and then they will write a tutorial just to get some noob to pat him/her on the back.
Edited 2009-03-19 22:56 UTC
I have not used IE since the first release of Firefox. I was not impressed at all with IE7, it seemed like a just good enough stripped down browser. After just downloading IE8 I must say I am actually impressed. And it is indeed a very fast browser. Currently just got done comparing it to Chrome, Firefox, and Safari beta 4 and it stacks up very well. It remains to be seen whether I will use this as a primary browser, I still have a preference to Firefox. But hopefully, just maybe the Firefox team will get off their asses and release an improved browser as v3 has become really just a dog.
I agree for the most part. In fact I am writing this post from IE8 and its decent. I ran some javascript benchmarks and looks like it is definitely quicker than IE7 was but still a bit behind when compared to Firefox 3. However I dont see any speed differences when it comes to browsing experience. I still dont understand what it means when people say that the browser feels faster…is it startup time or page render time? I guess I cannot tell the difference between Firefox loading up a page and IE8 loading up a page because it seems on my machine they all load up equally as fast.
copy elements of it.
Firefox 3 merges the Back/Forward navigation stacks into one button, which is a convention introduced by IE7.
Chrome removes the menu bar and adds Page and Tool dropdown controls, this is also a convention introduced by IE7.
I’ll also note that when IE7 came out, many Microsoft bashers ripped apart these particular things, but they were totally silent when FF and Chrome adopted them.
My problem with IE7’s UI isn’t the UI itself, but the slowness of its implementation. I’ve not tried IE8; hopefully that’s been improved. Chrome, I think, has the potential to have the best UI; there are numerous annoying quirks that need to be addressed first.
Well said. Don’t forget the phishing filter or IE8 slices, back to the XMLHTTP stuff.
Personally, I think IE8 is a good approach. The meta element to force IE7 compatibility is a good solution.
Used it for a few hours and it looks faster than IE7 and as stable. I’m curious to give the new Javascript implementation a try…
Mind you, XUL is pretty handy too, unmatched by any other browser.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=xul+apps+-defaced&meta=
It is not a standard, but it is based on standards:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XUL
Then there is always HTML5
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Html5
DOM scripting
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOM_scripting
XHTML
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XHTML
ODF viewer for web browser
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1888
SOAP
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOAP_(protocol)
XQuery and XSLT
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XQuery
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XSLT
Lots and lots of innovation for which Microsoft has a huge catchup required to get anywhere close to the current state of play.
People who don’t know better are likely better off running version 8 instead of version 7.
There will be a lot of people out there who won’t download Firefox or Opera and will think Safari will cost them since it comes from Apple. If Internet Exploder version 8 is any safer than version 7, I’d rather have them running version 8. There are likely a lot of people still on version 6 who need to change.
It’s definitely not a perfect choice, but any move from the old, screwy coding for IE 6 will be a blessing and getting people off that browser version will be a start.
I really hope this new version of “Internet Explorer” will inspire web developers / web designers to stick with the existing standards, instead of spending time in creating hacks and workarounds for the defective previous versions of “Internet Explorer”. Being compliant to standards is numero uno, at least on my very individual list, when it comes to browser capabilities. Those who create their HTML ‘n stuff in a standardized manner won’t have to rewrite anything at all, no special “re-working” for “Internet Explorer”.
You do realise that IE8 has almost negligible market share. On its own it is the browser with the least influence right now.
Non-IE browsers already comply pretty well with standards, and non-IE browsers already account for well over 50% of all browsers … yet unfortunately those facts have still not resulted in the utopia where “Those who create their HTML ‘n stuff in a standardized manner won’t have to rewrite anything at all, no special “re-working” for “Internet Explorer””.
Edited 2009-03-20 04:59 UTC
I think 13 hours isn’t enough time for the production version 8 to have much marketshare or influence at all.
My thinking is that it doesn’t matter how many knowledgeable people move away from IE 6 because they’re probably not using it, unless forced at work, anyway.
We need the people who don’t realise how dangerous it really is to change at least, to a newer version. Some people will find Firefox or Opera or even Safari on their own, but most people will wait until the browser is placed in front of them without thinking.
Exactly – right now, and there’s still lots of crappy HTML n stuff around that was made to work on older “Internet Explorer” versions. If only the “compatibility feature” would disappear, this “non-HTML” wouldn’t work anywhere, and developers could concentrate on the standards, instead of on the workarounds for a particular browser.
I’m aware of the fact that most (!) other browsers treat HTML and the other standards as what they are: standards that you better follow (instead of inventing your own “MS-HTML”). I’d like to see at least this one MICROS~1 product in this group, so it would be less problematic to write HTML that is interpretable as it should.
Don’t get me wrong, it doesn’t appear very often that I comment on MICROS~1 stories here, and especially when I do a quite positive comment (as I did and do at the moment) I put hope into it. The future will tell if MICROS~1 will finally come to that point that they respect existing standards and stop keeping theirselves out of the “conformity group”.
The web stuff I do usually runs very well on all browsers I take into testing, starting from Lynx (important for blind users) up to Firefox 2 and 3 and Opera and Safari. The only browser where problems were reported to me was this “Internet Explorer”. I really hope this will stop. If I write valid HTML, I expect the browser to handle it correctly.
By the way, my favourite browser functionality would be a built-in validator. And if the source isn’t valid HTML, it displays an error box “This page doesn’t containt valid content and cannot be displayed.”
Are we including the neglicable market share of mobile browsers here or what?
Because on the desktop, there is no way IE has less than 50% market share. Sadly, it’s still somewhere around 60-80%, depending on location.
Of course. One doesn’t have to be sitting at a desktop in order to be using a browser to access the web. These days, one could easily be using one’s mobile phone.
Well, even with all those crappy mobile browser included (and by god they suck, including the iPhone’s), IE’s share is still somewhere around 60-70%. Sad, but true.
http://marketshare.hitslink.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=0
Mobile browsers barely make a dent in the total browsing market since, well, they suck.
Edited 2009-03-20 09:47 UTC
I see your hitslink bet, and I’ll raise you a w3schools.
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp
Edited 2009-03-20 10:11 UTC
Those statistics are heavily skewed, and W3C even admits that. It’s also quite obvious that they are, since they come from just one website (W3C’s), a website which is most likely visited by computer savvy people anyway.
The NetApp stats come from like 200 major sites that are not focussed on one specific group. The NetApp stats obviously are also just an approximation, but they are a lot more reliable than the ones from just the W3C website. That’s pretty damn obvious.
Me thinks you slept during statistics class. Our own OSAlert stats aren’t reliable either for the exact same reason.
Damn lies and statistics. Yes. Exactly.
The point is, which is wrong? … your source, or mine, or both?
When there is this level of discrepancy in statistics … follow the money.
Who on this planet has any financial interest in skewing web browser statistics?
PS: Firefox has an update facility, served from a mozilla website. They can count how many unique IPs fetch updates of firefox (and remember, most firefox on Linux is installed via repositories, and does not update from mozilla’s site). Anyway, mozilla is aware from its own statistics that firefox’s share is higher than many web browser statistics sites credit it for.
Edited 2009-03-20 10:44 UTC
“If all else fails, call in the black helicopters.”
It’s always the same with you, isn’t it? If you can’t win an argument, you will just call in the black helicopters.
I’m sure the DSM-IV has something to say about that.
Whereas I would have said you were naive, and totally willing to believe whatever (commercial POV) story was fed to you.
It is like growing mushrooms … you keep them in the dark and feed them bull…t.
Oh, BTW … when you can’t win an argument, you just sprout insults at the other party. And delete posts you don’t like.
Edited 2009-03-20 10:53 UTC
Yours, since yours are way off from every other published study. Since you like posting wikipedia links so much here is one for you:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_usage
All studies report IE usage between 60-80%.
So they do. How about that? They used to include independent statistics such as w3schools, and have a discussion about the wild variation, but I see they no longer do that.
Hmmmmm. Moderated out of existence, hey?
Still, it is still possible to find some sites that report honestly the makeup of their visitors browsers:
http://www.osnews.com/story/21172/A_Look_at_Browser_and_OS_Stats_fo…
One can “prove” anything at all with statistics, hey? … when one is paying the statistics compiler.
They don’t include w3schools because data from a single web site is USELESS. Just as the OSAlert usage data is by itself USELESS. The studies on that page include data from a MULTITUDE of web pages averaged together to compensate for outliers.
Websites such as w3schools and OSAlert attract a very specific niche of users which are technology oriented and are more likely to use alternative browsers and OSs, but the majority of web users aren’t. Data from any technology or IT website will be highly skewed. Thats why you use multiple pages and average the results to compensate for outliers such as OSAlert.
To illustrate just how skewed the OSAlert results are look at the number of Linux hits. It’s 25% while estimates of the actual linux market share put it around 2%. Or do you actually believe 25% of computers run linux?
Just as OSAlert is highly skewed towards linux/firefox, microsoft.com will be highly skewed towards windows/IE and apple.com will be highly skewed towards OSX/Safari.
To summarize, web site usage data for a single web site, such as w3schools, is USELESS.
I realize what you are saying about w3schools, and the data it presents being skewed by the nature of the means of collecting their numbers.
Do you realize, however, that the method used in collecting data can be just as easily skewed in the other direction? Whatever one wants the result to say … the data can be made to say exactly that.
Sometimes, even the same number can be made to say different things. As an example, some foods in my local supermarket claim loudly on their packaging to be 98% fat-free … they never point out that they are 2% fat.
Servers, for example … a lot of stats will point out the “market share” on servers by quoting the amount spent on servers … Linux can cost $0 on a server so the figures for that share aren’t going to add up all that quickly, are they?
Anyway, “browser market share” is a classic manipulated statistic. For example, at one point some statistics reported for this were a bit more honest, and they would show a firefox usage rate on weekends that was much higher than the rate on workdays. This was almost certainly due to people using firefox on their systems at home, but being forced to use IE when at work. This would be a very similar effect (but occurring for a different reason) to the numbers that OSAlert would collect.
So what happened to that information? Suddenly, the “market share” information on the (commercial) web suddenly reported only the weekday rates.
And once again, I pose the question to all and sundry … who on this planet has a financial interest in skewing reported usage rate statistics?
You do the math.
PS: In summary … all web browser market share statistics are exactly as USELESS as w3schools or OSAlert statistics are. All of them. Whatever they say.
The ONLY fact that we can derive from them is that the true facts are being obscured to us.
Edited 2009-03-22 09:43 UTC
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSlutmu-xiI
Sorry Thom, no math at all on that link.
This becomes progressively harder to do with more websites polled. The more websites you use the less effect any outliers have. The usage data from w3counter is based on 21,014 websites.
But let me guess you will dismiss that saying somehow w3counter is in microsoft’s pocket.
What?
Anybody with an IQ above 50 can figure out 98% left out means 2% left in. I don’t see how this somehow proves that “even the same number can be made to say different things” as you claimed.
(BTW on low fat milk packaging in the US thay give the percentage of fat left in)
What people want to use is irrelevant. What is important is what they are actually using most of the time. If people do most of their browsing at work on IE then IE has the highest market share, no matter if people would like to use something else.
Every browser popularity poll I’ve seen is dominated by Firefox, but that doesn’t mean jack if people can’t use it for the majority of their browsing for whatever reason. So IE still dominates the page hits statistics.
Just like I would like to drive to work, but I’m actually taking the train. The fact that I don’t want to be on the train is irrelevant, but I’m on it nonetheless and contribute to the public transportation usage statistics.
This might have been a reasonable arguememnt if what was quoted to you was actual page hits statistics.
The problem is that what is quoted to you is actually, more often, say page hits during working hours statistics. For desktop clients only. Where the browser string is one of a selected few recognsied. For selected sites. Or some other way of skewing the results to say what someone has been paid to make them say.
Take a look at the data from w3counter: http://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php
The statistics are compiled using the last 25,000 unique hits on each website. There is no distinction based on time of the hit. They track 21,000 websites. These websites were not selected, but volunteered. If you have a site you can sign up to have it tracked for free. They recognize pretty much all browsers and break it down by version. As you can see they even have Firefox 1.5 in there edging out Safari.
So tell me exactly how Microsoft has manipulated these stats to keep IE on top. Be specific.
It is advertising. Disguised advertising, but advertising nevertheless.
What they say they do and what they actually do are not necessarily the same thing.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/22/why-advertising-is-failing-on-…
Have a look at the “three problems with advertising in any form” in the article linked.
How can one tell that it is advertising? In this case (web browser statistics), it is actually advertising of an ad delivery mechanism. Well, ask yourself why these figures would be tracked and published for any other reason?
Edited 2009-03-22 23:43 UTC
To summarize, you have no proof that these sites forge their data. You just assume they do. You assume they do because Microsoft is paying them. But you have no proof they are paying them. You just assume they do. You assume they do because they want to advertise their browser. But you have no proof that they want to advertise their browser in such a manner. You just assume they do.
What possible reason would Microsoft have for advertising an “ad delivery mechanism”? Especially since the ads this mechanism would be delivering would likely not be Microsoft’s ads, but third party ads, and they would render equally well in the competition’s browsers?
According to your asinine theory Microsoft is using it’s cold hard cash to bribe data collection sites in order to help out third party advertisers that didn’t really need help in the first place.
Do you even know what the hell you’re saying at this point?
I do have to thank you however for giving me an awesome idea. I’m gonnna start a browser data collection site and in a couple of days Microsoft will knock on my door carrying a big fat check. I can retire in my 20s just by forging some browser stats so Microsoft can sell more “ad delivery mechanisms”.
One word. Silverlight.
I’m saying that Microsoft want Silverlight to be the means of delivery of rich content over the web. They want other standards that can achieve the same as what Silverlight delivers to fail. They don’t want other browsers to be able to render Silverlight content with anything like the capability of IE. They want to make it so that, if an end user wants to see rich content on the web, then they must use a Microsoft platform.
The rich content would be supported by advertising. It would be more desirable content through being rich (ie we are talking about on-demand videos and other interactive content). Therefore, it would attract the premium advertising. Adevrtising revenue would be split between content providers (ie. Hollywood) and content delivery infrastructure providers (ie Microsoft).
Silverlight will be a “rich content delivery mechanism”. The rich content will be displayed amongst heavy advertising surroundings. Where is your problem with this? This is already starting to happen.
http://gigaom.com/2009/03/19/youtube-goes-live-thanks-to-microsoft/
It will only “catch on” if Microsoft can do enough attractive deals with rich content providers, and advertisers can be assured they are not restricting their potential audience too much if they agree to deliver their ads only to Microsoft IE client platforms.
Therefore, in order to convince advertisers and content providers that it is OK to choose Silverlight as the exclusive delivery mechanism, it is necessary to have it be popular “knowledge” that firefox is used only relatively sparingly.
A usage rate of firefox of 20% or over is not acceptable to Microsoft’s business plan. Therefore, regardless of what the “audience” is actually using, the published statistics will say that firefox usage is 20% or lower.
Edited 2009-03-23 05:55 UTC
Apparently no one told the Silverlight devs this since Silverlight 1 and 2 run in the Windows versions of Firefox, Chrome and Safari just as well.
Which is why the same statistics that say IE has 70% of the market also have Firefox with 20%+ usage and gaining steadily while IE is loosing steadily. I guess Microsoft has been sloppy with sending the checks.
I mean if these reporters are all in Microsoft’s pocket why are they reporting that IE usage is decreasing? They are reporting that it is still by far the most dominant browser, but it is slowly and steadily decreasing. Wouldn’t Microsoft silence this type of information? Doesn’t this go against Microsoft’s business plan of being a long term solution? Yet, the data is available and you can chart IE’s decrease over 5+ years of historic data available.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSlutmu-xiI
[[You do realise that IE8 has almost negligible market share. On its own it is the browser with the least influence right now.]]
If Microsoft push IE8 in their upgrades, its market share could increase *very* fast though.
Only at the expense of other versions of IE.
If that happens, I would welcome it. IE8 is better than other versions of IE.
The problem is, most web developers nowadays know how to write correct page code which is following standards, but then there is one thing, you dont want it you really hate it, but customers insist of supporting old IE versions. If you do not support IE6 you will loose the contract period, it is that sad…
So in the end you end up writing perfectly passing standards code and then sink 20% of additional time into IE6 hacks via conditional include and 5% additional time into ie7 hacks… IE8 so far for me has been sort of a no brainer, thank god, but I do not try to use anything newer and avoid SVG (unfortunately)
IE 8 gets 20/100.
http://img6.imageshack.us/img6/8122/acid3.png
I haven’t tried FF 3.1 beta 3 yet to see how compliant the bleeding-edge Gecko engine is but FF 3.0.7 gives me 71/100.
FF 3.1 beta 3 is only about 93/100.
http://hothardware.com/cs/forums/t/42342.aspx
It also still has a bug or two in tracemonkey. This latter point is apparently the hold-up that is still keeping it in beta.
Now I have to find a way to block IE8 from being downloaded on work computers, until we can get everything tested.
IE8 is a pig…..I’m not looking forward to this.