Internet Explorer 8 Beta Features Revealed

Admodieus writes "It seems as though the veil has been lifted on the Internet Explorer 8 beta. Microsoft has revealed a list of the new features in IE8, including two interesting new additions called Activities and WebSlices. From the site: 'Activities are contextual services to quickly access a service from any webpage. Users typically copy and paste from one webpage to another. Internet Explorer 8 Activities make this common pattern easier to do ... WebSlices is a new feature for websites to connect to their users by subscribing to content directly within a webpage. WebSlices behave just like feeds where clients can subscribe to get updates and notify the user of changes.' Also aboard the upgrade train is automatic crash recovery, a favorites toolbar, and improved phishing filter protection. Microsoft has also posted links to download the beta, but none of them are working right now."

Comments

SVG

[ccguy]

I'm sorry to see that there's no SVG support.

As for what _is_ there, well, most of the pages are broken, unavailable ("This project is not yet published"), so if the public documentation is any indication of the development status I'd say IE8 it pretty closed to the usual MS standard :-)

Re:SVG

[pilgrim23]

This from a "user" not a developer:
I just this last week tried IE 7 for the very first time. As a user of IE 6, Opera, Firefox, Safari, and having used Every browser from lynx Cello and Mosaic up through the offerings of today, I am not unfamiliar with various browser styles, feel, ways of doing things. From my early experience with it, I can say that 7... to use a standard automobile analogy: The engineer is 5' 2". He designed the seat fixed in one position and not adjustable. The rearview mirror fixed in positon as well; Seat belt? forget it! He likes the parking brake in the back seat so that's how it is going to be.
Microsoft seems to have an irrepressible arrogance when it comes to design. They also seem to have a less then stellar competence in other areas. The former seems to be a fall back for lack ehibited in the later. IE 8 is from the same designers? No thank you

Re:SVG

[Metaphorically]

I have to say I'm not surprised but it's still a real bummer. They mention SVG (along with MathML & others) in the section on recognizing namespaces but they don't imply that they'll support it. It does sound like it could be possible to have a helper (Behaviour I think they called it) that could render inline SVG with the appropriate namespace in an XHTML document. I'm too far out of that loop to know for sure if that's a realistic possibility though.

I get the feeling that they're going down the path they have so many times before where there's one level of support for their version of something (in this case Silverlight) and a second-class level of support for "everybody else" (in this case SVG). So that if we do get some third-party to support SVG in IE via an approved MS mechanism, it'll be as an alternative to Silverlight.

Re:SVG

[masdog]

I think you answered your own question before you even asked it. There is software out there that was designed to work with IE5.5 and IE6 that hasn't been updated to work with IE7 yet. I can see in-house projects as being one of those areas, but there are also large commercial systems that have been customized to meet the customer's needs that may not be able to apply IE7 compatibility patches without some sort of patch customization.

Just because Microsoft pushes an update doesn't mean that the update has been tested with end-user systems. That is IT's job, and if IT finds that the update breaks critical systems that the business depends on, they won't push the update out until it is fixed.

Re:SVG

[T-Bone-T]

What is wrong with designing a fixed interface that will be immediately recognized and useful? When Office 2007 came out, people claimed it would kill productivity because things got moved around. If you use IE7 all the time and aren't good with computers, it makes getting a new computer smoother because you don't have to be confronted with an unfamiliar interface.

Re:SVG

[ianare]

Uh, wouldn't having an unchanging interface make a window easier to forge? You can just grab a screenshot of IE7, having full confidence it will look exactly the same for everyone.
Maybe you are referring to the little dropdown that shows up in pop up dialogs?

Re:SVG

[Strange Ranger]

The last place I worked for (and left) has a zero-tolerance policy towards anything not Microsoft. Not too long after I left orders came down that anyone who had FF was to remove it. Immediately. Or else.

Ironic, funny, sad, etc... IE has historically been a nightmare for corporate IT for all the reasons that have been beaten to death here on slashdot. In order to remedy this most companies' IT departments have long since used windows group policies, or policies for domains, or whatever they're calling it these days (yes it's been awhile, go ahead and slam me), in order to lock down IE. The way I remember it you would log into the network and your windows registry would be immediately "owned" by the policies. Where I worked you couldn't even add a site to the trusted list. Heck even the IE logo got replaced with a corporate one, just to remind you where you worked.

This all makes decent sense if you have to use IE, especially the older versions. Now along comes Firefox, which would obviate much of the need for locking the browser down to thin-client levels. But who's going to give up all that control? Certainly not the MCPs or PHBs.

Sure there are exceptions and complexities to this oversimplification, but much of it is just a case of the bigger monkeys in the cage trying to protect their positions of power.

Re:SVG

[Plunky]

Not everyone wants a customisable interface with thousands of widgets and doohickeys.

No, but millions of people want to turn off the one thing that annoys them, and for each of those people its a different thing..

Will someone please...

[AKAImBatman]

...tell Microsoft that we don't give a flying hoot about Activities and Internet Julian Fries. As developers, we want to know if they'll support CSS2 (and God-forbid even some CSS3 *gasp!*), DOM2, SVG, ECMAScript 3rd Edition, and half-a-billion other standards that they've been ignoring. If they want to make developers really happy while future-proofing their browser, they'll support HTML5 and ECMAScript 2.0.

I'm not holding my breath, though.

Re:Will someone please...

[crush]

And not just the above, but the "WebSlices" crap is just another way to muddy the Atom/RSS waters. We do NOT need another feed "standard" thanks.

It'll all end in tears....

[caluml]

Users typically copy and paste from one webpage to another. Internet Explorer 8 Activities make this common pattern easier to do ... Oh god. This sounds just like the "Hey, let's let the email client run scripts", and "Let's hide the nasty, confusing file extensions from the users" decisions.
Some things should just be a little tricky to do. Like saving a file from an email, locating it, (chmod u+x in *nix), and only then executing it.

Re:un, effing, real.

[rucs_hack]

All they're really doing is saying that IE8 is now pretty much equivilent to the other browsers.
Of course these features already exists in other browsers, they know this, or they wouldn't have bothered. They left IE6 alone for ages until Firefox got a foothold. They're hardly going to put that in a way that makes it sound like its just a catch up exercise though, are they, it has to sound exciting and new. After all, to them, and most IE only users, it *is* new.

Actually, any improvement over IE's favorites system would be a good thing, I have to use it from time to time, and it's quite badly implemented.

AJAX Navigation Support

[jeremyds]

One of the more interesting features included with IE8 is "Ajax Navigation":

AJAX Navigation enables users to navigate back and forth without leaving the AJAX application and could be used navigating a page without performing a traditional full navigation. This allows websites to trigger an update to browser components like the address bar by setting the window.location.hash value, firing an event to alert components in the page and even creating an entry in the travel log. This is actually a proposed standard in the HTML 5 specification and it's nice to see Microsoft implementing it. The inability to bookmark or navigate to a page that's been updated using AJAX has always been a pain in the ass.

Re:AJAX Navigation Support

[nevali]

You miss the point--people will have to write code specifically for this feature (which, incidentally, won't work in other browsers for a while yet), when if they were going to do that they could just have written it to work in the first place.

What makes you think people who can't manage to beat out a couple of lines of pretty simple code are going to be able to write code for "AJAX Navigation support" and do it in a way which degrades gracefully?

The whole thing is something that will make life easier for web developers in the long term, but have little effect in the short term. What it won't do is magically make life any easier for end users.

Whats with all the change?

[flowpoke]

It seems that with each major version, they (and most other folks) try to reinvent everything and cloud it with branding. NO ONE enjoys radical change with little to no benefit. The interface needs to be more transparent, not cluttered with new terminology and features that matter NONE when compared to things like speed, stability and security.

I don't think MS will ever get it...

It ain't hard

[erikharrison]

They use the computer. For god's sake, you didn't have to go to a website to get the Sasser virus, infected machines would attack random IPs. If you bought an XP machine when Sasser was rampant, I knew many people who were infected on first boot, before they could even install a firewall or virus scanner.

You've never been emailed a Word document (with a VBA virus)? You've never installed AOL (which overwrites your netstack)? Never been redirected to a warez site (via a compromised legit website)? Hell, for years Wal-Mart used to sell software packages full of dubious "shareware", TurboTax was at one point under legal fire for installing a backdoor, you can't put a Sony audio CD in your machine for fear of installing DRM crippleware behind your back, and OEM machines are loaded with potentially insecure adware begging you to upgrade to the full version.

While it's not entirely inconceivable that you have always run Windows machines behind a hardware firewall, run expensive third party antivirus packages, never run other third party software (thus discarding the best reason to use Windows), and use your machine only for browsing websites you are 100% sure are uncompromised, it is absolutely beyond belief to me that you can be running Windows since 3.x days and not be aware of how easy it is for a machine to get loaded with garbage. As I pointed out, it's not even safe to plug in a vanilla XP machine into the internet without risk of being immediately infected.

Re:From a developer perspective

[Crazy Taco]

The result is that now, almost 2 years after its release, almost a third of my users are still on IE6. Personally, that is really frustrating.

Actually, that's probably not the reason people are still on IE6. I work for a major Fortune 500 company, and we are all still on IE6. This post is brought to you on IE6. Why? Because businesses, especially large ones where all the people are, are really cautious to adopt new technologies. They want to be sure they will work with all the custom software they've written. In our case, some programs depended on very IE6 specific things, or were hacks of some sort, so we are STILL on IE6, and that's all that is supported here. And as a web developer, I have to develop in IE6 so I can see what my users will see. I would love to upgrade, but can't until the company moves us all forward. So that's probably why you have so many IE6 hits; anyone on a laptop issued by a large corporation is probably still using it.

A tribute to Top Gear

[gnarlin]

A new Internet Explorer from Microsoft. Will it smoke the Firefox? Will it outsing the Opera? Well, let's find out!

First, it only runs on ONE platform. Microsoft windows. Making a multi-platform program today is easy. Even a toddler can do it. All the cool programmers and companies are doing it. There are so many toolkits that can do it that you are really spoiled for choice. Even if they really want to use the windows API they could still check to make sure it runs with wine. Google can do it, so could Microsoft. There really is no excuse in 2008 not to, except perhaps if you are trying to hold on to a sagging monopoly.

Second. You can't modify it, redistribute it or use it to run a nuclear powerplant. Simply put: It isn't Free software. Looking under the bonnet is a must for any youngster that wants to know what makes the engine go and to tweak it. Sadly, Microsoft aren't up to that challenge.

Finally, I don't like the icon or the color. It's a letter, you know, from the alphabet. Here try clicking this: e

Ugly, isn't it.

So what happened when I tried to run it? Well, since I don't run an operating system from that particular company I instead tried to run it, with some WINE (http://www.winehq.com). This is a piece of software that Google use with great success to run its windows native Picasa application on GNU+Linux and BSD operating systems.
Right from the getgo: The wheels spin, but the installer crashes and burns as it fails to install the program right at the beginning. What a letdown.
My conclusion then: It's simply rubbish. You can have Mozilla Firefox for half the price and all the benefits of the Freedom it brings. Also, Firefox has a new beta out that smokes IE8 right from the starting line. In fact it can be installed and run right now on almost any platform you can think of! Microsoft are still stuck in the 1990s thinking that you only make cars for one type of road and that people aren't interested in modifying them. Until they change their ways they will always be second class.

Final lap score:
0 out of 10.