IE8 Beta Available for Download

Let's see what it means to be fully compliant with existing standards!

[swa66]

IE8 beta release available for download

Link for XP SP2:
[microsoft.com...]

It's also available in different flavors for Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003 and 2008

Let's see how they come true on their promise to be fully standards compliant.

Release notes are in KB949787:
[support.microsoft.com...]

[youfoundjake]

I downloaded it.
acid test2 passes just fine.
hey look there's a smiley face.
Once thing i did notice, the domain name in the url is always bolded, where as the service and page are lighter. That's pretty cool, should help against phishing.
Wonder how many are going to make use of the webslices.

[johnnie]

Is there an SP2-X64 version available?

[fside]

Apart from their 'safety filter', I wonder what's really new or useful in this IE 8? I suspect the reason to get it would be to check out different page rendering, or perhaps new features added to DOM, etc.

[JAB Creations]

Some notes I've been taking. My site is VERY unstable in IE8B1 with all the options turned off. I can say I have seen a lot of improvements and most of the bugs I do see I am fairly certain will get fixed before the final release of IE8.

- John

Some notes I've taken thus far...
- CSS3 Selectors Test
IE7: 329/578
IE8: 334/578

- Focus pseudo-element now supported!

- Styled select elements!

- Standards compliant opacity not yet implemented.

- application/xhtml+xml not yet implemented.

[fside]

They manage, yet, to get rounded corners? As Crockford pointed out in one of those Yahoo lectures, Mac had rounded corners in the mid-80s.

[mikedee]

It looks like IE 8 was only released so that they can push their online services through the 'Activities' feature. It is very intrusive and obviously defaults to live services without any other options.

Expect a court case later on for Microsoft abusing their browser monopoly to expand into blogging and maps software.

The whole Acid test thing looks like it was just a piece of marketing so they can push this new browser onto everyone.

[edited by: engine at 12:46 pm (utc) on Mar. 6, 2008]
[edit reason] language [/edit]

[MatthewHSE]

I'm assuming this replaces IE7, right? In that case, is there any word on whether or not the "Emulate IE7" feature will stick around in the final release? Failing in that, have instructions been developed yet for a standalone IE7 installation?

[supafresh]

yay, yet another browser to add to the internal testing lab.

[swa66]

Is there an SP2-X64 version available?

Yes, scroll to the bottom of what I linked to initially
and you'll find the alternate versions.

[microsoft.com...]

[edited by: swa66 at 6:16 pm (utc) on Mar. 6, 2008]

[g1smd]

I was also just about to ask how to install this alongside, rather than in place of, IE7.

[swa66]

I installed it in a cloned virtual machine, worked reasonably fine, except that it has still unfixed issues and it also has some new bugs.
Personally at this point I'm afraid we'll have a new target to test and find workarounds for.
Time will tell what they fix and what they'll consider features.

[SEOMike]

Ok, can someone fill me in? Didn't IE7 just come out? They are already replacing something they released in October of 06 and forced on Feb 12 08? Why? What is so important about IE8 that they couldn't just patch into IE7? Two questions:

1. what's so bad about IE7 that IE 8 has to come out so soon?
2. why should we continue to use IE when they keep replacing it and breaking sites?

FireFox all the way for me.

[Trace]

IE 8 has not come out. It's the first of probably several betas.

edit:
also, IE 8 does not break sites that are properly coded.

[edited by: Trace at 6:53 pm (utc) on Mar. 6, 2008]

[youfoundjake]

The one thing that jumped out at me most is while logged into my wordpress panel, the "view my posts" tab is blown all the way out to the right.
Fails the acid test 3 with 35/100 on a good load.
But I like the webslices, already incorporated into my site.

[badgering]

Im hearing some promising news about a near copy of firebug available for IE8! how sweet would that be.

Has anyone tried it out?

[johnnie]

Yes, scroll to the bottom of what I linked to initially
and you'll find the alternate versions.

I may be getting blind, but I really can't find anyhting related to XP SP2 X64

[Propools]

Dude, I'm just now cruising with IE 6.0.2900.2180..........whatever

What happens when they get to version 10? Will they land in the marketplace with a 'bang' or a 'thud' when they claim "We're the first Multi-Billion dollar company to come out with a Double Digit browser". That's it. Just change the name from IE to DD, which we can affectionately call Double-D.
And NO, I'm not being sexist with that comment. :)

But I'm certainly not leaving my trusted FF.

[Trav]

@Trace:

Mebbe so, but then I guess Wired, Slashdot and CNN all need to re-write... their sites and Nav break in the default IE8 rendering mode!

it's a snake eating it's own tail...

[youfoundjake]

Just saw that wells fargo said they no longer support the current version of the browser i was using.
ie8
but emulating ie7 worked just fine.

[ByronM]

Ok, can someone fill me in? Didn't IE7 just come out? They are already replacing something they released in October of 06 and forced on Feb 12 08? Why? What is so important about IE8 that they couldn't just patch into IE7? Two questions:

1. Firefox 2 was release Oct 2006 as well. Are you saying you don't want firefox 3 shortly?

1. what's so bad about IE7 that IE 8 has to come out so soon?

Competition for Standards Compliance for a change. Good Thing [TM]

2. why should we continue to use IE when they keep replacing it and breaking sites?

Not sure what your talking about. Every browser has broken something in all their release glories. No one is perfect. IE7 added some much needed functionality to what is an IE6 core. IE8 is a much needed rendering update/compliance/compatibility update and incorporates many of the features that Firefox is adopting from its own core partners.

FireFox all the way for me.

I like firefox, but there is no reason to hold firefox to a lower standard than its competition. I'm not SOLD on IE8 either, but i don't find it a BAD thing like yourself.

[GrendelKhan TSU]

FireFox all the way for me

FYI: Once again... FF is horrible for Korean internet and many important Asian sites.

dunno about IE8 beta ... but if they get some more styling and bugs out... IE all the way this side of the global.

[tedster]

What is it about Korean and Asian sites that is a problem for Firefox?

[HowYesNo]

png transparency fixed?

[bill]

What is it about Korean and Asian sites that is a problem for Firefox?

For Korean sites it's probably the ActiveX support. They have sites in that market that simply won't work on anything but IE.

It's not quite as bad in Japan and China, but there are still sites that I can't seem to get working right in anything but IE. They sometimes have site specific plug-ins and the like, but it's nowhere near the level you get in Korea.

[icedowl]

I just tried IE8 Beta 1 and had to remove it after viewing several sites, many of which are definitely not ready for it. However, my major problem with IE8 is that clear type text (especially on the clear type tuning page) looked like crap. Work needs to be done in that arena before I'll make the switch.

It was reassuring that my own sites were not screwed up by this new version and that I won't have to go through any songs and dances to have them appear properly. Unfortunately, that won't be the case for a lot of others and I will definitely feel their pain.

[MatthewHSE]

png transparency fixed?

Wasn't that fixed in IE7? It seems to work for me.

[tedster]

The png format has a lot of depth. IE7's png support is improved [blogs.msdn.com] but still not 100% [libpng.org].

Here's a quote from libpng.org (the second link above)

full alpha support as of version 7.0b1... inconsistent/broken gamma support

handles PNGs with gAMA chunks differently (inconsistently) from HTML and CSS colors, from unlabelled images (GIFs or PNGs), and from PNGs with sRGB chunks (see 7.0b1 screenshots)--apparently uses display-system gamma of approximately 1.93 instead of 2.2 (i.e., colors appear slightly dark)

For many uses this is major progress, but there are still limitations -- especially when combining png graphics with IE filters.

[Propools]

We finally got an IE 8 user in our G analytics. And my IE 999.1 has gone away. Anybody else getting IE 8 showing up in their analytics?

[beauzero]

I have been using it for about a week and it is working fairly well. The exceptions are sites like live (find this very funny) and google maps.

There is a meta tag that you can use to force the browser to use "shortcuts" for IE6 and 7 vs. the user having to figure out "I need to click on Emulate IE7".

The biggest help will be for .NET developers esp. those using VS 2008. You were right in the firebug copy...they have had a Developers Toolbar for IE from at least IE6 that allowed you to look at cookies etc. The biggest problem has been debugging client side javascript which has gotten a little worse with AJAX add ons for 2.0 Framework. Exponentially worse with the release of Silverlight 2.0 beta 1 (silverlight 1.1 in alphas...same base though).

Its really geared towards the Blend/Expressions/XAML/Silverlight development that they are pushing. Yes it just conveniently happens that following standards makes that much easier. Go figure but they are at least making an attempt at getting on the band wagon.

thoughts?