Submitted by The IE team at Microsoft has released the 2nd beta Internet Explorer 8. Contrary to the first beta, which was aimed at developers, this one one is aimed at normal people like you and me. The list of new features and changes is decent, all focused around three themes (marketing alert): “We focused our work around three themes: everyday browsing (the things that real people do all the time), safety (the term most people use for what we’ve called ‘trustworthy’ in previous posts), and the platform (the focus of Beta 1, how developers around the world will build the next billion web pages and the next waves of great services).” Go get it.
i think i am a bit against the curce here, but i am actualy rather excited about MS having a competitive offering again.
It is still dog slow, but some features are really nice.
Most people that still use IE will love it.
Firefox lovers will demand the good features from mozilla.org
Nice part about Firefox, we can get Addons in the mean-time that do the extra things we want (like the private mode).
So we now have 2 browsers (of major 4) that can actually fully pass Acid 2 test: IE8 beta 2 and Opera 9.5x.
Safari 3.1.x and Firefox 3.0.x both fail (“nose” is still off by a few pixels compared to the reference rendering). Funny.
See it here:
http://www.webstandards.org/files/acid2/test.html
Open both links (“Take The Acid2 Test” and “the reference rendering”) in 2 tabs and then switch quickly – watch the nose: FF and Safari fail.
Edited 2008-08-27 22:13 UTC
I just did the Acid2 test on firefox 3.0.1 on doze and it looks exactly the same as the reference picture.
From memory, what your talking about is the acid3 test.
And having not installed ie8b2 I cant tell you if it passes like Opera does.
No, it does not look the same – watch closely the nose and you’ll see that it is off by 1px or so. If you switch the tabs quickly (just hold CTRL+TAB) you should be able to see it clearly, with both Firefox and Safari.
And the issue is well known (you think I was the one that spotted it first? Not really
Edited 2008-08-27 23:18 UTC
So, by how many pixels is IE 8 off for each of the tests linked by this page:
http://www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG/WG/wiki/Test_Suite_Overview
I think you might find that each and every one of this set of tests is an EPIC FAIL for IE.
100% USELESS.
… Just thought I’d try to introduce a bit of objectivity and balance into this discussion concerning a possible 1 pixel offest, here.
Then of course there is acid3 …
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_3#Desktop_browsers
Yet more EPIC FAILURE for IE.
Funny.
Edited 2008-08-27 23:37 UTC
How does that make FF or Safaric pass Acid2? It does not.
By the way, not many developers/designers really care about SVG today. In the future, we may, but today – not really.
On the other hand, Acid 2 matters today more than ever.
Quit trolling and let’s put some pressure on Mozilla and Apple to fix their browsers so that we all can enjoy at least Acid 2 being supported by all major players. They should simply fix the problem, the same way MS is fixing IE. Don’t you think that would be better?
Web designers don’t care about major, approved web standards functionality but they do care about 1 vertical pixel?
ORLY?
On what planet is this?
Oh yeah, they do care about that 1 vertical pixel. They care about it very much. It is exactly something like “it is off by 1px @!@%@$!” that is making them go crazy.
Not with IE8b2 or Opera though
The planet where people with a life couldn’t give a single frak about Acidtwothreetestsbogusnonsensehocuspocus.
Does it render teh google maps? Facebook? Redtube.com?
Good, means it passed the only test that matters: the real world test.
That can’t be the same planet full of web developers who incessantly bitch all the time about IE’s non-compliance with web standards then, and how they code to the standards and then are force to jump through countless torturous hoops to get it to work with IE … let alone all different versions of IE.
If all browsers worked to standards and had scalable graphics (also to standards) … then the web is suddenly “code for one, code for all” … even when that “all” includes tiny screens on handheld devices.
http://209.85.141.104/search?q=cache:GeTL-A7VD0oJ:www.hpl.hp.com/re…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Device_Independence
http://www.w3.org/TR/di-princ/
It actually matters quite a bit, Thom.
Well, web standards and and acid tests are more about helping developers than users. Users don’t really care if a page doesn’t render quite right. They care very much when they click and nothing happens, or enter their user name and password, press the button and nothing happens.
Hopefully, web standards and tests will help developers ensure that happens less frequently in the future. But only if Microsoft gets serious about their javascript compliance, which is not a given.
Edited 2008-08-28 00:05 UTC
When you look at the whole of the market of devices that can currently access the web, and the trends in that market (that is, including mobile phones, handhelds, tablets, PDAs and netbook … all devices with small screens) … suddenly Microsoft and IE becomes a much smaller part of the picture than many currently assume.
The day is not far off when it will make sense for web developers to just create fully standards-compliant device-independent web pages and simply forward any complaints (from a relatively small part of the total audience) that “the site doesn’t work properly on IE <whatever> on Windows” directly to the Microsoft browser development team.
What if Facebook, RedTube and Google Maps include special code for each browser ?
They don’t because unlike some fanatics they are normal humans who regonize how important it is to have solid experience instead of perfect technical site. I think that’s what IE team also did since IE 8 has some nice features that are more important to users than full standard support. Smart web developers can get thru missing parts of IE 8 browser and yet making working enviroment.
Web designers care a *lot* about “just one pixel”. It’s ‘little’ bugs like that which drive even half-assed web developers like me crazy. What if “sometimes” when you ran a command it did almost what you asked, but not quite. Do you accept “occasionally off by one” from a calculator? I wouldn’t.
It’s critically important–especially on the vertical, where fixing it is harder–that things be sized precisely the way the code says it will and precisely the same way between browsers.
I think you have somehow drfited miles and miles away from the original concept of presentation over the web in such a way as to be device-independent on the client.
How about starting with the design intent of HTML and the web in the first place:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Html#Semantic_HTML
“Rather, semantic HTML refers to an objective and a practice to create documents with HTML that contain only the author’s intended meaning, without any reference to how this meaning is presented or conveyed.”
“Semantic HTML also requires complementary specifications and software compliance with these specifications. Primarily, the development and proliferation of CSS has led to increasing support for semantic HTML, because CSS provides designers with a rich language to alter the presentation of semantic-only documents. With the development of CSS, the need to include presentational properties in a document has virtually disappeared. With the advent and refinement of CSS and the increasing support for it in Web browsers, subsequent editions of HTML increasingly stress only using markup that suggests the semantic structure and phrasing of the document, like headings, paragraphs, quotes, and lists, instead of using markup which is written for visual purposes only, like <font>, (bold), and [i] (italics).”
“Safari 3.1.x and Firefox 3.0.x both fail (“nose” is still off by a few pixels compared to the reference rendering). Funny. ”
“Quit trolling and let’s put some pressure on Mozilla and Apple to fix their browsers so that we all can enjoy at least Acid 2 being supported by all major players. They should simply fix the problem, the same way MS is fixing IE. Don’t you think that would be better?”
Wait, i can’t get it. On my machine, Safari 3.1.2 passes the Acid2 perfectly, the rendered face looks exactly the same as the reference rendering, exactly the same.
Safari has passed the Acid2 test for a while now (Firefox too i presume, but i did not try), i can’t believe that you come up here proud like a real microsoft fan boy telling us that IE passes the test, but not Safari (or Firefox), when in fact Safari has been passing successfully this test for three years…. Yes three years before IE, do you realize that?
http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/hyatt/archives/2005_04.html
I am also running Safari 4 beta on my laptop, yes of course it succeeds in Acid2, but it also get a full 100/100 in Acid3.
So it seems that you are either completely confusing things or you are trolling…..
Forget Acid 2. How about Acid 3? If the browser is not Acid 2 compliant, the page may not look quite right. Big deal. If it is not Acid 3 compliant, the page may not *work*. Big difference. You know… click on a button or a link and nothing happens?
The good news on the Acid 2 front, though, looks like the fact that the latest versions of the two most used browsers either pass it or come so close to passing that the difference hardly matters. The nose is, after all, only 1 vertical pixel off.
Perhaps someone could post an IE8 beta 2 Acid 3 result? The compliance of beta 1 was horrid. I think it got 8 out of 100 or something.
Acid3 = just 18 out of 100 for IE 8 beta 1.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_3#Desktop_browsers
acid3: 22/100 for beta2
but to my surprise it imported all favorites from ff3 instead of ie6 XD
I confirm. Just tried this morning and here’s what I’ve got for acid 3:
IE7 : 12/100 (that’s more of a guess, it looks too crappy to even be sure)
IE8b2 : 22/100
FF3.1 nightly: 85/100
Safari 3.1.2: 75/100
It also seems that js is just as slow in IE8 as IE7 but MS has time left so let’s hope they at least work on that…
Forget Acid 2?
In order to talk about Acid 3, don’t you think it would be good to first pass Acid 2?
Oh, I see. FF and Safari still can’t fully pass Acid 2, so it is not important now. Yeah, right..
Gonzo, quit trolling. Is the reference image 1 pixel different than FF and Safari renderings? Yes, it is. But the creator of the Acid2 test himself has said that these browsers pass, because both versions are valid.
The nose is supposed to rest on a half-pixel, and the standards do not define whether it should be rounded up or down. Two browsers round the .5 up to 1, and the other two round it down to 0. Neither is more correct than the other.
It does kind of suck that the standards don’t define this behavior, but you can’t just randomly pick one side and then say the other is wrong.
Indeed. Very interesting. He’s modifying the test not to rely upon sub-pixel rendering which was never his intent in the first place.
Acid 2 and Acid 3 test different things:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_3
Acid 3 tests javascript compatibility.
I suspect that you are operating under the misconception that I am a Firefox fanboy. This is not the case. I like FF very much. But I’m not married to it. I am very interested in WebKit, as well, which has unique advantages of its own.
(I’m beginning to wonder if you are not an IE fanboy, though, just based upon your tone in this thread.)
The reason that I see Acid 3 as being more important is as I stated earlier. Poor javascript support is more likely to result in truly *broken* pages than poor CSS support. We already see it. And as AJAX-style applications become more popular, that is only going to get worse unless we see better compliance out of Microsoft.
Edited 2008-08-28 02:58 UTC
If you have to compare betas, then at least take all of them into account. E. g. Safari 4 Beta – It passes Acid3. So we now have a beta of IE which is irrelevant (and dog slow) for future tasks before it is even released. Applause MS!
Agreed, and you beat me to it. I have the latest beta of Safari 4 installed and it passes the Acid2 test just fine.
Have they got rid of the (technical term coming up) ghastly IE7 interface?
If not, IE8 will be dead upon arrival for me.
But the increased competition would be good. Hopefully this will help get rid of any sign of IE6 very quickly, but I doubt that will happen.
I generally don’t care for internet explorer, but I really think microsoft is cooking up a winner here. I especially like the grouping of related tabs by color.
But how do they determine the grouping of the tags? From the articles I’ve seen, it’s just tabs opened from links on the active tab that get “grouped” with it. But, what if the link is to an external page completely unrelated to the content of the tab with the link?
If the grouping is under the user’s control, then I can see it being useful. If it’s just “you opened a link on this page, therefore it must be related to this tab, and is now part of the same tab group”, it won’t be all that useful. And I know I’d find it annoying if that’s how it works.
…I just want them to bring web compatibility to the next level, meaning a strict adherence to W3’s CSS/(X)HTML standards. Nothing more, nothing less. Is that too much to ask from a multi-billion dollar company? I don’t think so… 😐
Edited 2008-08-27 23:12 UTC
I will wait on my repository updating the package and hosting it, then I will,
“sudo aptitude install ie8beta”
Oh, wait…
Love this quote from the IE blog:
But they don’t. No doubt because they don’t even come close to any of their competition…
Yeah, so basically in a lab, IE8 is faster. But in the real world, it’s not. Is that it?
I tried to install, I get green for the “Downloading” part, red for the others, and a did not complete dialog at the end. Great job
It’s great that IE is getting better, since many users are not aware of the much better options that are available. They still deserve to browse safer and faster, even if it still pales in comparison to Opera or even FF.
“Internet Explorer 8 is the latest version of the familiar web browser you are most comfortable using, helping you get everything you want from the web faster, easier, more privately and securely than ever before.”
And here I was thinking that was Firefox
With TraceMonkey coming in FF3.1 (supposedly), IE8 will be slow as a fat worm compared with it. How much people will jump into FF? And having the code so deeply rooted into Güindous, how much effort will it take to match FF’s performance without breaking Güindous? They better ship IE8 along with its coffin.
Good one. Unfortunately, until someone comes up with a decent way to manage FF using group policies in a MS Windows domain, a lot of IT departments will stick to IE because they can at least control its use and configuration better.
If you know of a (fairly easy) way to manage FF installations then I know about 2000 PCs which will be happy to run it.
IE has been slower than Firefox and especially Opera for a long time. Both are clearly better options, but the fact that it’s taken so long for either to garner big gains in market share indicates that simply being faster does not immediately translate to market share. Trace Monkey will speed up Firefox significantly, but it will still take a lot of effort to educate average users as to why other browsers are better option. To the average user, IE is fine.
Works good with acid test 2 but fails acid 3.
Love the speed too.
I think it did worse on ACID3 than the previous beta did.
I understand that IE wants to integrate a bit more than your other browsers but I still was dumbfounded that the installer wants a reboot after installation.
It is a browser. The year is 2008. And I would need to reboot?
This is not ment as a rant. I was just really suprised.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/08/29/hakon_lie_ie8_interoperabil…
OK, intranet pages not viewed in standards mode by default.
Probably that is not a bad decision (in view of compatibility for intranet pages of business applications) … but it is not what they said they would do.
the worst part was the install. reboot?? twice?? it’s only a browser! and pity the poor blind guy whose screen reader doesn’t work until the whole process is finished.
second worst part is the broken page button. the icon or tooltip needs to be improved so that it’s more obvious what it’s supposed to do and when you are in which mode.
i hope that by ie9, enough websites will be written to standards and they can get rid of the broken page button entirely.
third worst is the panic over ms “breaking their promise” about web standards. compatibility mode by default for intranet pages makes perfect sense, and the default for every other type of page is standards mode.