Microsoft Releases Internet Explorer 8 RC1 319
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."
Dear net-surfers: (Score:3, Insightful)
1) Using it out of the box just to download another browser, or
2) A web developer who needs it on a test box
Then GTFO idjit.
I just want 6 to go away (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Something to credit Microsoft for (Score:5, Insightful)
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!
Re:No plugins like Adblock and NoScript (Score:5, Insightful)
If it weren't for Chrome and IE8's privacy mode, then that probably wouldn't be the top priority it is right now for Firefox 3.1. Competition is good in the browser market. They'd still be on IE6 if it weren't for the success of Firefox.
after how you've treated me? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:No plugins like Adblock and NoScript (Score:5, Insightful)
and that my friend should be the whole point. MSFT basically stopped all browser development for 5 years. Then Firefox came along and showed people that you could have a free browser that could do more than IE(Opera wasn't free but adware). MSFT lost marketshare and then started to fight back.
MFT is and always has been reactionary to change. If their products are good enough they don't get improved upon. If MSFT only had 60% marketshare I would be happy. as MSFT would be forced to fight to keep customers by improving software.
Re:Getting verrry old (Score:5, Insightful)
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 [slashdot.org])
In the last four days Slashdot has had 9 MS stories ( source: http://slashdot.org/search.pl?tid=109 [slashdot.org])
In the last four days Slashdot has has 97 stories posted ( source: http://slashdot.org/search.pl [slashdot.org] )
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.
Re:Something to credit Microsoft for (Score:3, Insightful)
Just because something is a standard doesn't mean it is a good standard and I wonder about CSS being a good standard.
I congratulate the committee that created it on actually getting something out the door, that is an accomplishment for any committee. However, I don't think it is too much to ask that the new standard actually work better then what was already there. Tables were clunky and misused, but for formatting a web page, they still work better and are easier to understand. It's frustrating to spend days trying to get CSS to render something simple to only tear it all out and redo it in tables in a few minutes.
Was there really a huge demand for floating elements back in 1998?
Re:No plugins like Adblock and NoScript (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:No plugins like Adblock and NoScript (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesn't even have to be 60%. It has to be whatever it takes for the majority of Web developers to move from IE-only policy to cross-browser policy. Judging by the look of the Web these days, with even Microsoft itself having to support at least Firefox and Safari apart from IE (check the official browser support tables for various MS web-base products!), the present 20% Firefox market share is already enough to trigger that.
Re:Something to credit Microsoft for (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Something to credit Microsoft for (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:No plugins like Adblock and NoScript (Score:2, Insightful)
You can in fact edit the CSS on the fly with dev toolbar, but here is an advice from me: IE8 is the best browser for web DEVELOPERS (I won't argue about users although I do use it when I'm not developing)
To answer the inevitable question "Why?"
1. The new development tools are comparable with Firebug. Probably Firebug is still ahead but you will rarely need functions that the new dev tools do not have. You've got the CSS editor, DOM inspector, JavaScript debugger and Profiler.
2. You've got 3 rendering modes that you can switch through the dev tools. IE6, IE7, IE8. So you need to debug IE6 specific problem? What are you gonna do? Firebug is no gonna help you. What about IE7? The new dev tools do work with IE6 and IE7 modes. On the other hand IE8 mode is close enough to the so called "standards compliant" browsers (yes I don't believe in standards and I think W3C are full of shit). At least the differences between IE8 and Firefox are comparable with the difference between Firefox and Chrome or Firefox and Opera. So IE8 is as good as any other browser in regard to the standards. To sum it up you get 3 different rendering engines in one browser and no other browser can debug the first 2 rendering engines (IE6 and IE7) which happen to be the problem in most cases.
You'll thank me later.
Excuse me, did you say IE 4,234.5 ? (Score:5, Insightful)
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 ?
Standards? (Score:2, Insightful)
Uh... And of course that's not something that completely goes in the opposite direction of standards, right? Making YET another thingy that only works in IE and requires specific code?
I guess I'll be waiting for IE10 before remotely thinking about the possibility of eventually using it very occasionally.
Re:No plugins like Adblock and NoScript (Score:3, Insightful)
As a Microsoft shareholder I'm glad they weren't pissing my money up a tree trying to improve products in markets they already dominated. Now FF is giving them some competition, I'm also glad they are getting their shit together to preserve the IE line (in the eyes of Joe Public, rather than developers on ten bucks an hour having butthurt over standards).
Re:No plugins like Adblock and NoScript (Score:2, Insightful)
As a Microsoft shareholder I'm glad they weren't pissing my money up a tree trying to improve products in markets they already dominated. Now FF is giving them some competition, I'm also glad they are getting their shit together to preserve the IE line (in the eyes of Joe Public, rather than developers on ten bucks an hour having butthurt over standards).
If I was a Microsoft shareholder, I'd want them to plan and implement improvements to ALL their products so they DON'T have to keep reacting to lost market share and have to do the fire drill/death march dance to catch back up again.
Re:Something to credit Microsoft for (Score:3, Insightful)
I think the point is more that if I lay out a page with tables ("Oh the humanity!") then I'm done. If I try and lay out a page with CSS, I have to lay it all out so it works, then create three different versions so that it renders in all the broken versions of IE, plus Safari and whatever else I want to support.
I'm sure that if you're getting paid by the hour, all that time spent doing browser-version tweaks is great. But for a lot of folks who don't want to bother with laying a page out three or four times, tables are fine.
As an aside, I'm not sure I get your point about maintainability. If I change the page layout, of course I'll have to create a new table structure. But I'm not clear on why this is inherently more difficult that creating a new CSS layout, and then doing all the browser-specific tweaks.