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.
Awesome (Score:5, Insightful)
Wait...what? (Score:5, Insightful)
How on earth would IE 8, a browser with a UI not written in XUL, be able to "flawlessly" use a Firefox plugin like Tab Mix Plus? Unless IE 8.1 embeds all of Gecko, plus XUL, XPCom, the XPI to install the plugins, you couldn't install or run a plugin on it. And why on earth would Microsoft suddenly give in and embed other rendering engines? That's not something the dominant browser does, that's something that a low-share browser does to help with compatibility, ala Netscape 7.
I don't buy it. Furthermore, the article is light on details, has some dubious screenshots, and was published just before April Fools' Day.
P.S. If you want to use Firebug in non-Firefox browsers, then use the Lite version [getfirebug.com]. It works great in IE.
Re:April fools... (Score:2, Insightful)
Honestly, the pictures are clearly Photoshopped (look at the "Developers Tools" screenshot, they didn't even bother matching the font on the Firefox/Safari entries), the Javascript benchmarks have Chrome in second-to-last place with the IE6/7/8 beating out everyone else, and the Mixx picture is obviously a joke.
Wait a second...
"Posted by kdawson"
Ah, now I see how this ended up on the front page.
Usability still matters (Score:4, Insightful)
Usability still matters, not just raw speed or ability to supports other vendor's plugins. I have and occasionally use IE8, and while it is a huge improvement on the previous versions of IE, usability-wise it still cannot hold a candle in my book to Firefox. It insists on its own way of arranging menus and bookmarks, so that if I want to have what I have in Firefox, I need 3-4 rows of text and icons at the top instead of 2 in Firefox. That kind of inflexibility irritates me. I don't like wasting screen space. I also don't like using software that irritates me. It's strange because Microsoft was one of the pioneers of the "Customize" concept of the application's interface, where you could remove and rearrange items as you saw fit.
Re:Don't forget to vote! (Score:2, Insightful)
Look at this image from the article:
http://88.198.60.17/images/ie8-eagle-eyes/graph_js_performance.jpg
See the "Graph created with microsoft excel to showcase MS's greatness in the software market? This is a hoax.
Re:Don't forget to vote! (Score:4, Insightful)
Definitely FALSE (Score:1, Insightful)
Check out this statement from the article: ... will let you view the server-side source code of a web page. '
'Eagle Eyes
This accompanies a screenshot of this side-by-side.
You can't see the server side code when you're on the client side. Period.
Client requests page, server takes server side code and generates the client side code, server sends client side code to client, client parses client side code.
Part of the point of server side code is the fact that the clients can't see it. It's part of the security of it.
Even if the program were claiming to simulate the server side code to generate it, it isn't possible. There are so many technologies and so many methods to do things it just couldn't do it. It's not going to be able to tell you pulled user data X from the database at location Y, grabbed their forum icon from location Z, scaled it to 64x64, and then placed it there to be seen.
Re:Don't forget to vote! (Score:5, Insightful)
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/ [smashingmagazine.com] 2009/03/31/breaking-internet-explorer-81-eagle-eyes-leaked/
Best April Fools EVER (Score:5, Insightful)
If you skim the thing, it seems pretty real, but once you get into it, you find gems like:
"[Pauses to answer a call from his iPhone]"
"Internet Explorer has always been the leader of executing client-side scripts, but that didnâ(TM)t stop Microsoft from continuing its thirst for excellence by including a completely new JavaScript engine called JSE, which stands for JavaScript Speedy Engine"
This article is just great...what sucks for Microsoft is, everyone wishes this article were true!
Why isn't this headline PINK? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Don't forget to vote! (Score:4, Insightful)
I still prefer YYYYMMDD. Automatic date sorting makes some things so much easier.
Re:Don't forget to vote! (Score:5, Insightful)
DD/MM/YYYY is better than MM/DD/YYYY, but still not as good as YYYY/MM/DD
Re:Lirpa Loof (Score:4, Insightful)
If you ask most people what today's date is, they'll say March 31, 2009.
I'm not saying it's the best way, but that's how they say it.
For example, what's your birtday?
Re:Don't forget to vote! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Don't forget to vote! (Score:1, Insightful)
Why? Dealing with a lot of daily paperwork and having to reference back to some that's weeks or months old I would rank YYYY/MM/DD the most useful and DD/MM/YYYY the least in terms of efficiency. You want to start with large divisions which you can bypass or zero your search in on rather than small ones.