IETester is a free WebBrowser that allows you to have the rendering and javascript engines of IE8, IE7 IE 6 and IE5.5 on Vista and XP, as well as the installed IE in the same process…
Beyond DOCTYPE: Web Standards, Forward Compatibility, and IE8
Progress always comes at a cost. In the case of web browsers, users bear the cost when developers take the rendering of certain authoring tools and browsers (especially Internet Explorer) as gospel. When a new version of that browser comes along and fixes bugs or misinterpretations of the spec (or introduces new ones) or in any way changes behavior, sites break and our clients, bosses, and users get very unhappy…
Running IE6, IE7 and IE8 on your Mac
I use a Mac, which means testing my work in IE6, IE7 and IE8 is a pain. I have Parallels installed but I don’t want to buy extra copies of Windows just to test in IE. Plus, Parallels doesn’t compress the virtual hard drive so each OS takes about 10 - 20GB of space.
The good news is that Microsoft provides free VirtualPC disk images for each of their browsers.
The bad news is that they wont run on Mac and VirtualPC wont run inside Parallels or VMWare Fusion — but I’ve found a solution! We can convert the disk images to work for VMWare Fusion or VirtualBox…
IE8 Blacklist: forcing standards rendering opt-in
A year ago Microsoft announced (through A List Apart) that standards compliant websites would be forced to opt into a standards rendering mode in IE8. The uproar from the web standards community was loud and clear: the default should always be render in standards compliancy mode. Microsoft backed down.
So it is with considerably surprise and anger to read that Microsoft have quietly gone back to their original position. The gist of it is if you want to be sure your site renders in standards compliant mode in IE, you have to explicitly opt into it. Otherwise you risk being blacklisted and thrown into IE7 Compatibility mode….
Breaking: Internet Explorer 8.1 Eagle Eyes Leaked
Smashing Magazine tries to be at the forefront of new and exciting developments in the wide world of the web. You might have heard that we met with the IE 8 Chief Strategist in the past, so it should come as no surprise that we like to keep up with the latest events in the web browser industry.
Even with the successful recent release of Internet Explorer 8, in some underground circles there is already talk going around about the next version of Internet Explorer: IE 8.1, codenamed Eagle Eyes. Loaded with exclusive features such as a new JavaScript engine, support of WebSlices and full web standards support (CSS 3), IE 8.1 is speculated to debut in this summer.
In this article, we take a closer look at the new features of Internet Explorer 8.1, compare it with other browsers and share with you our first-hand experience with the browser. Overall the browser is faster, more flexible, more stable and also more secure and performs already much better than a recently released IE 8. One word sums up our experience with IE 8.1: Eagle Eyes is the browser that Internet Explorer should have brought on the market a long time ago - and now it’s finally here.
As you probably know, Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 was “officially” released yesterday. If you were caught off guard by this and haven’t had time to test your sites in IE8, don’t lose sleep; you can make IE8 render pages like IE7 using a simple META tag…
Is IE8 the end of the line for Internet Explorer?
IE8 is the last version of the Internet Explorer Web browser. At least, that's what I'm hearing through the grapevine. It seems that Microsoft is preparing to throw in the towel on its Internet Explorer engine once and for all.
And just what will be its replacement? I’m getting conflicting stories on that one. Some are still claiming that Microsoft will go with WebKit, which, thanks to the popularity of Apple's Safari browser and also Google's Chrome, is rapidly becoming a de facto standard for all non-IE and non-Firefox implementations.
Others insist that that the whole WebKit story is merely a feint and that Microsoft will in fact be adopting a brand-new engine coming out of its Microsoft Research division. Dubbed "Gazelle," this new engine will supposedly be more secure than Firefox or even Chrome, making copious use of sandboxing to keep its myriad plug-ins isolated and the overall browser process model protected…
Internet Explorer 8 Essentials
Like it or loathe it, a new release of Microsoft's Internet Explorer is upon us once again. For this eighth iteration of their browser, they are focusing heavily on security, ease of use and improvements in RSS, AJAX and CSS. That's a rather general outline, so we'll dive into these new features for a closer look…
Since IE8 shipped last week, I’ve been following reviews and user feedback closely. A lot of the reactions to Microsoft’s new browser come down to personal preference: Some people like the usability-oriented tweaks Microsoft made, others think the browser is too busy or cluttered. It’s hard to argue with opinions.
But two criticisms have come up repeatedly that can be measured empirically, so I thought I would do that here. One is the burning question of whether IE8 is faster or slower than its competitors; the other is whether it makes reasonable use of system resources. In this post, I explain why some people are seeing performance issues (and share an obscure system tweak that might just cure IE8 performance and stability problems). I also take a closer look at why some browsers use more memory than others…
Microsoft's IE 8 incompatibility list: 2,400 major sites (and counting)
In an effort to improve Web users’ compatibility experience, Microsoft added a new, user-selectable Compatibility List to the Release Candidate test version of IE 8 that the company released in January.
Microsoft describes the list — Version 1.0 of which includes 2,400 sites that don’t render properly in IE 8 (in other words, an “incompatibility list”) – as a tool designed to “make sure IE8 customers have a great experience with highly trafficked sites that have not yet fully accomodated IE8’s better implementation of web standards.” There is a downloadable list for IE testers using Vista and another version of the IE 8 list for XP users…
IE 8 still does not resize text sized in pixels
As most accessibility and usability aware web professionals know, Internet Explorer does not by default allow the user to increase the size of text whose size has been specified in CSS pixels.
Some believe that is in fact the correct behaviour, while others (me included) think IE should do what all other browsers do – give the end user complete control over text size without having to change obscure browser settings…
Internet Explorer 8's compatibility blacklist is a minefield. There are serious shortcomings and issues which, if IE8 is launched in it's current state, will be as embarrassing to Microsoft as the launch of IE7 was back in 2006.
On Thursday when I wrote about IE8's Blacklist forcing standards opt-in, it seemed a simple choice of supporting one or both of IE8's standards and Compatibility rendering modes. Or if your site appears in the IE8 Compatibility Blacklist, then you needed to do nothing since you got the Compatibility Mode rendering which is exactly the same as IE7.
That is what the IE Team are saying. But in practice it's a different story…
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