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...]

[fside]

> sites like live <

All those boxes and animation gimics. You say that M$'s own pages are broken by Mr. Wilson's [blogs.msdn.com] latest effort? I'll have to get another XP disc prepared. I wouldn't mind taking a look at this beta. Heck, you could argue that IE 6 only just recently went OUT of beta. IE7 never got a chance.

[deMorte]

Does anyone have an idea when IE8 will be introduced to general population? Is it going to be less than a year? More? I'm not too happy if in a year I'll have to test pages with IE6, 7 and 8.

[poppyrich]

The IE team held an online ("ask the experts") chat this past week and said that there is no set release date. IE8 will be released when it's ready.

I believe it. I think IE7 was rushed to coincide with the release of Vista and the result of all that was somewhat traumatizing and they don't want to go through that again. A lot of new people on the IE team. And they are listening very carefully, I can tell you firsthand.

My instincts tell me the release will be no earlier than 4th quarter of this year. But I wouldn't be surprised at 1st qtr 2009.

[mikedee]

It is a shame that their communication normally goes like this:

IE Team : We are going to do X, we cannot do Y because of our customers. If you think X is the best solution then you do not understand the real world.
Developer 1 : Thats a stupid idea.
Developer 2 : Yeah - really dumb idea for reasons A, B and C.
IE Team : You guys are just anti-Microsoft and do not have proper jobs in the real world.
MS Shill : I think X is a great idea, dont listen to those other developers.
... repeat 100 times ...

IE Team : We have decided to listen to the community and do Y instead of X, aren't we great!
MS Shill : Woohoo - you guys sure do listen to the community!
Developer 1 : Great - since you listen to the community, where is SVG support, HTML 5 support and please start working on the ACID 3 test, you are still way behind. Also can we have a public bug tracker?
IE Team : Glad you all like what we are doing! [pats self on back]

The fact they call themselves the 'experts' is very telling about their attitude to the rest of the world. They have not been the experts in web browser development since 1998.

[zafile]

I've checked my most important Web sites coded using XHTML 1.0 Transitional and XHTML 1.0 Strict.

I've noticed the main problem with the rendering in IE8 are the horizontal menus. Most of the menus are slightly broken.

Only one Web site showed pretty bad rendering but it was caused by a tag which was omitted by the original designer. I added the missing tag and now the site can be browsed pretty much flawlessly using IE8.

I'm going to wait for the next beta to see if I have to redesign the horizontal menus in the rest of the Web sites.

By the way, one of my very important Web sites uses Google maps. What a mess!

[webfoo]

IE 7 is bad enough. I've heard bad things about how 8 will have backward compatability issues, rendering in different modes. M$ should entirely drop IE and just start distributing Firefox. In fact, the UN should outlaw IE, and make everyone use the same browser (FF) thus ending the incompatability issue.

[fakedsysadmin]

I think Web developers that implemented excessive functionality should be reprimended or fired. This is when implementing excessive functionality without taking into consideration rendering in future browser versions.

I propose to reprimend first the Google guys that designed Google maps. What a pitty when looking at Google maps with IE8.

[Trace]

You guys are unbelievable. For years you've complained that Microsoft wasn't following standards, now you're complaining because they are trying to. Are they there yet? No. It's beta 1!

What really gets me is the fact that you would try to push Firefox onto everyone. Why Firefox? Why not actually recommend a good browser? Opera maybe? Konqueror? Safari?

Fanboys *sigh*

[explorador]

I'm using this new IE 8 beta. Things don't look good. I spent hours developing my websites testing them with IE, Firefox and Konqueror and finally they looked good on all of them.

Now Ie8 comes out and some features just won't display ok and sites are being displayed awfully.