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Microsoft Releases Internet Explorer 8 RC1
mikemuch writes "IE8 has left beta as of noon Pacific time today. The development team now considers the browser platform- and feature-complete, but won't say how long until it goes gold. PCMag.com got an early look and has posted a full review of Internet Explorer 8 RC1. The release candidate differs only slightly from Beta 2, most notably in tweaks to its InPrivate Browsing feature, aka porn mode. That feature has been decoupled with InPrivate Filtering, which blocks third-party content providers from creating profile of your browsing habits. RC1 also improves on performance, especially in startup time, but still trails Firefox and Chrome in JavaScript speed. Protection against the relatively new threat of 'clickjacking,' where a site tries to get you to press buttons underneath a sham frame page, has also been added — the first browser to include such protections. Versions for 32-bit and 64-bit Vista, as well as for 32-bit XP are available, but Windows 7, which will ship with IE8, is stuck with an older beta for now."
They can keep all their little incremental security and interface updates. What use are a few little tweaks in IE8, when Firefox offers me add-ons like adblock plus, noscript, slashdotter, etc.? Besides, I can always open a site with IE Tab if I need to.
Firefox is even nice enough to spell check my form entries for me (it caught me misspelling "incremental" just now).
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Protection against the relatively new threat of 'clickjacking,' where a site tries to get you to press buttons underneath a sham frame page, has also been added â" the first browser to include such protections.
No, not the first. Maybe the first to be shipped with the functionality turned on by default.
It's just that, with FireFox, anything that isn't related to bare simple display of HTML pages, is usually tucked into separate plugins.
But the Noscript plugin has featured click-jacking prevention almost from the next day after click-jacking came in the news.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I don't really care about their tabs, 'Awesome Address and Search Bars,' privacy or really anything else while they still only score 20 on the Acid3 Web standards test. IE has historically been such a pain in the ass for the entire world because of poor adherence to standards. The article says Microsoft takes standards seriously but the test says otherwise.
Yeah the obligatory complaint about those 30% or so that keep using 6 (according to my stats). Maybe with 8 out 7 will become the 6.
The only way to open IE at the house is in the "run" tab, the wife and kid don't know where that is.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
I was about to install it when I noticed: Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 and Visual Studio .NET (version 7.0 from 2002) are currently incompatible. If you install Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2, Visual Studio .NET will crash. No workaround is currently available.
Yeah, I kind of need .NET 1.1 to work for some parts of my job.
Yes, when Internet Explorer 8 is released, Microsoft will finally have implemented decent support for CSS 2, a specification published over a decade ago. I hope everybody here on Slashdot will join me in welcoming Microsoft to 1998. Truly, they deserve all the credit they are going to get for being so ahead of the curve. Keep innovating, Microsoft! Don't let those slow-coaches at the W3C hold you back!
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
No? What's that? Microsoft closed out the bugs as "works as intended?" Fail.
In case it's not clear, I have a firey hatred for IE8. Not so much the product itself, but what it represents. What it represents is a flagpole in the ground stating, "We're going to stand in the way of progress for our own selfish reasons".
While I can understand that Microsoft feels that the market is slipping from their grasp, I cannot support their methods of attempting to compete. Which is to say that they are using their power to prevent competition rather than building a superior product. As Joel pointed out in his excellent article on the Windows API being lost:
If you truly want to understand what is wrong with this browser, take some time and go through these examples:
http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/wrongWithIE/
Those only scratch the surface of what is really wrong with IE and Microsoft's stance on improving their web browser. For further reference, RC1 of IE8 gets a 20/100 on ACID3. This compares poorly to FireFox3's 56-59/100, Webkit nightly's 100/100, and Opera dev version's 100/100(!).
Developers need to band together and stop hacking our sites for IE. Users who wish to use IE should either be directed toward download links for one of the many alternatives, or forced to deal with a degraded view of the site with a polite comment to upgrade. And by degraded, I mean "it works, but looks awful". If that right there doesn't sell users on getting an alternative browser, I don't know what will.
(Yes, I am aware that many businesses can't take the hit. But we have to start somewhere. And that somewhere can easily be everything from your personal site to your new venture that's betting on early adopters of advanced web technology. IE's market share is already plummeting. If we can get enough momentum, we can near-eliminate this unsightly browser from the web. Remember Netscape 4's inability to keep up? This is the exact same situation all over again, except this time the solution is not a total mono-culture.)
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
IE shipping with a feature before FF has it ( private browsing mode).
Well that's something you don't see every day.
I have left slashdot and am now on Soylent News. FUCK YOU DICE.
There may be a number of good technical and use-oriented reasons not to bother with IE8. I don't know the details on it just yet. But it could be twice as good as the next browser and I still wouldn't use it. Not after what Microsoft did to us all with earlier versions. The standards compliance problems have been infuriating for developers. How much human effort has been wasted trying to cope with this? And the vulnerabilities have made popular computing a diseased seething mass. How many geeks have had to spend evenings or whole weekends taking care friends and family members' systems?
All of that and Microsoft let IE rot for how many years? Half a freakin' decade in the midst of humanity's glorious ascension into a networked era? It took competition forcefully wedging its way into IE's monopolistic stranglehold before Microsoft got off their asses to do anything.
Well, it's too late. Fuck off.
I'm no battered wife. I know that MS isn't "really a good husband, he just..." whatever. I'd rather other people not drag me into another round of this same neglected-until-it-matters-to-Microsoft bullshit. The fewer people who use IE, the better.
This has been a very active couple of days for MS stories. Lots of big things happening between layoffs and beta releases.
Let's look at some facts though.
Windows marketshare is 90%.
IE's marketshare is 70%
Slashdot users run somwhere between 47% and 70% MS Windows based OS.(http://slashdot.org/pollBooth.pl?qid=1516&aid=-1, http://slashdot.org/pollBooth.pl?qid=848&aid=-1)
In the last four days Slashdot has had 9 MS stories ( source: http://slashdot.org/search.pl?tid=109)
In the last four days Slashdot has has 97 stories posted ( source: http://slashdot.org/search.pl )
What percentage of stories about MS have run in the past four days?
9/97 = 0.092 * 100 = 9.2%
Facts hardly look as bad as you make them out to be.
-Malakai
A Dragon Lives in my Garage
* When you are composing your +5 Insightful masterpiece of a post that utterly eviscerates a company for an alleged GPL copyright violation you have to do so while listening to your multi-terrabyte pirated(aka copyright violation) music collection.
If his gay lover is anything like IE, I'd certainly hope so. No one should be exposed to that kind of depravity.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
You'd have had a point if, in 1998, there was any other browser, released or in beta, that had full CSS2 support. But there wasn't. In fact, the one that was closest to supporting it at that time was... IE.
as a web developer, im still having to deal with IE6 to ensure cross browser compatibility, and a little lost on the versioning now. how many shitface versions of ie out there that i have to test for x browser compatibility as of now ? 3 ? 5 ? 234,643 ? will it ever end ?
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