IE 8.1 Supports Firefox Plugins, Rendering Engine 283
KermodeBear writes in to note that according to Smashing Magazine, the newest version of Internet Explorer, codenamed "Eagle Eyes," supports Firefox plugins, the Gecko and Webkit rendering engines, and has scored a 71 / 100 on the Acid3 test. The article is pretty gee-whiz, and I don't entirely believe the claims that IE's JavaScript performance will trounce the others. (And note that the current Firefox, 3.0.8, scores 71 on Acid3, and Safari 3.1.2 hits 75.) No definitive date from Microsoft, but "sources" say that an IE 8.1 beta will be released in the summer.
April fools... (Score:5, Informative)
Nothing to see here, move along...
From the comments ... (Score:5, Informative)
Server Side Compiler (Score:5, Informative)
Server-side code decompiler
If youâ(TM)ve ever wished to know how sites and web applications work, Eagle Eyes (the name is fitting in this context) will let you view the server-side source code of a web page. We didnâ(TM)t explore this feature much, but from basic tests, the server-side code decompiler was able to tell us how the Mixx promotional algorithm worked.
And they show this picture [88.198.60.17] ... hehe.
Re:Breaking News! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Breaking News! (Score:3, Informative)
THe problem is, there is only one thing on the list that actually didn't fool me - sure, the entire article put me into a 'whoa, MS actually got off their butt for 8.1? For real?', but the *only* feature out of that entire list that set off alarm bells was this:
Everything else was plausable.
Extensions are not plugins (Score:5, Informative)
Extensions are not plugins. Take a look in your Firefox addons menu if you don't believe me. Plugins are things like Flash, they're written to a specification (NPAPI) that originates in the Netscape days, it is supported by all major browser makers EXCEPT Microsoft. That's why on Windows there's two versions of Flash (not talking 32/64 bit issues here) one for IE and one for everyone else.
IE used to support the Netscape plugins API, but removed it around about IE5.5 if I remember, the idea was to force developers to write an IE version (ActiveX) if they wanted to support IE. They were probably hoping that plugin developers would have just developed for the more popular IE and ignore Netscape, finally killing browser competition off for good.
Fortunately the increase in popularity of alternative vouchers has kept the NPAPI alive, meaning that plugins written for one browser will work on them all.
Now the problem with plugins is they're written in compiled code and therefore a version needs to be written for each OS. Extensions on the other hand are usually written in XUL and JavaScript and so extensions will normally work on any platform, but extensions are specific to a particular browser. So plugins are OS specific, extensions are browser specific.
So when I read that IE8.1 supports Firefox plugins, my first thought was that IE was bringing back support for the NPAPI that they removed in IE5.5 making it easier for plugin developers. I knew that it was not possible that IE could support Firefox extensions. That would be almost impossible to implement for anything more than the most trivial extension.
Re:Don't forget to vote! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Note to self: (Score:3, Informative)
Do not read slashdot for the 24-36 hours. Especially if the article has anything to do with your line of work.
Most of the slashdot April fool posts are totally unbelievable anyway. As for other times I know that slashdot is more for killing time than using as a reliable news source.
Now as there's still 2 hours to go before April 1st here I almost believed the headline. As I mentioned in another post plugins (e.g. Flash) are not extensions (e.g. Flashblock). All browsers except IE support the same plugin API, so if IE wanted to be seen to make developers lives easier they'd support it (they used to back when IE was the underdog). The API is the Netscape Plugin API (NPAPI) as it was first implemented in the Netscape browsers.
Extensions on the other hand are browser specific and serve a different purpose to plugins. Plugins are for displaying content that would otherwise be unsupported, whereas extensions add extra functionality to the browser.
Re:Breaking News! (Score:5, Informative)
I'd accept the "it's-April-1-here" argument, except that:
1. The article is dated "By Jacob Gube, March 31st, 2009"
2. The URL contains the string ".../2009/03/31/..."
Re:Server Side Compiler (Score:1, Informative)
"403 - Forbidden"
I don't know about you, but looks like text to me.
Re:Extensions are not plugins (Score:3, Informative)
Extensions are often cross-browser too. But they still all depend on Gecko in the Mozilla world.
Re:Don't forget to vote! (Score:3, Informative)
Oh you think that is confusing? Throughout Canada we use all of them! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_and_time_notation_by_country#Canada [wikipedia.org]
I might feel sorry for you if I weren't from Indiana. You may not know what date it is, but unlike us [wikipedia.org], at least you can be relatively certain what time of day it is at any given moment!
Re:Don't forget to vote! (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Now... (Score:3, Informative)
A Plugin (flash/java/etc) is not the same as an extention.