Today’s podcast is a continuation on the coverage of the future outlook for Web Professionals. To that end, I sat down with Pete LePage, Product Manager Developer Division at Microsoft at the WOW table top in conjnction with the Web Directions North Conference that took place in Denver last month to talk to him about the rollout of IE8.
According to Pete, Internet Explorer 8 is Microsoft most standards compliant browser shipped to date; but that presents interesting challenges for Microsoft and web developers. How does we, the entire web community make sure we don’t break existing sites, and enable future development? Are progressive enhancements really possible? How do we think about sites we haven’t built yet, and how they might take advantage of new standards features later? We’ll look at these questions and some best practices for dealing with application compatibility today, and in the future.
Check out today’s two minute podcast on the Web Professional Minute website. .
According to Wikipedia, Windows Internet Explorer 8 (abbreviated IE8) is the next version of Internet Explorer, succeeding Internet Explorer 7. Beta 1, targeted at web designers and developers, was released to the general public on March 5, 2008. Microsoft released Beta 2, targeted at all consumers, on August 27, 2008. A public RC (release candidate) was released on January 26, 2009, and the final release is scheduled to follow it later in the year.
According to Microsoft, security, ease of use, and improvements in RSS, Cascading Style Sheets, and Ajax support are its priorities for Internet Explorer 8.
IE8 has been in development since at least March 2006. In February 2008, Microsoft sent out private invitations for IE8 Beta 1, and on March 5, 2008, released Beta 1 to the general public, although with a focus on web developers. The release launched with a Windows Internet Explorer 8 Readiness Toolkit website promoting IE8 white papers, related software tools, and new features in addition to download links to the Beta. The Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) added new sections detailing new IE8 technology. Major press focused on a controversy about Version Targeting, and two new features then called WebSlice and Activities. The readiness toolkit was promoted as something “developers can exploit to make Internet Explorer 8 ‘light up’.”
On August 27, 2008, Microsoft made IE8 Beta 2 generally available. PC World noted various Beta 2 features such as InPrivate mode, tab isolation and color coding, and improved standards and compatibility compared to Internet Explorer 7. Two name changes included Activities to Accelerators, and the IE7 Phishing filter renamed Safety Filter in the first Beta to SmartScreen, both accompanied by incremental technical changes as well. By August 2008 the new feature called InPrivate had taken the spotlight.
Transcript:
Bill Cullifer, Web Pro Minute: I am here with Pete LePage, Product Manager Developer Division at Microsoft at the WOW Booth. Good afternoon Pete and thanks for agreeing to this interview.
Pete LePage: Hey. No problem. Glad to be here.
Bill Cullifer, Web Pro Minute: Thanks Pete. Are you here with the IE 8? Can you explain to the listeners and subscribers of this podcast what you are here for and exactly what’s going on and how can web professionals benefit. What message would you like to share with us?
Pete LePage: Yeah, there is three really great things that we excited about with Internet Explorer 8. Just about a week and a half ago now, we shipped RC1, so this is our last release before we ship our final product and there is three big things a developer should be excited about. One is all the new standards compliance features and the new things like web slices, accelerators, and that that make developers lives easier, more standards compliant and much more easy to deal with. The second one is a new set of developer tools. Developer tools now ship in the box in Internet Explorer 8. You can simply hit F12 and pull up a full set of very feature rich developer tools that allow you to debug your CSS, your HTML, your JavaScript, the DOM, all sort of things and finally, this is the most important one for your listeners is Internet Explorer 8, we have made the most standards compliant browser that Microsoft has ever shipped. Because it’s the most standards compliant browser that Microsoft has ever shipped, that means we have changed some behavior that may have happened in IE 7 or IE 6. For most sites that’s going to mean nothing changes, but for some sites, they may depend on the old behavior. With that old behavior, things won’t work like they did before. So, there is a couple of easy ways that they can go about fixing that. The easiest one is just to either out of[Phonetic] meta tag or an HTTP response header with X-UA-Compatible and you can tell Internet Explorer 8 to use the IE 7 rendering engine or the IE 8 rendering engine. What we really strongly suggest is for people who have legacy sites or sites that they are not actively working on today, just go add that X-UA-Compatible and set it to emulate 7. That means your site is going to work, it’s going to behave exactly like it did for IE 7. For new sites or sites that you are actively working on, we strongly recommend that people put the emulate 8 tag on there with the X-UA-Compatible and that will make sure that you are always working with the new stuff. That way when Internet Explorer ships the next major version, all your pages are still going to work exactly like they did. So, you don’t have to worry about versions changing or anything like that.
Bill Cullifer, Web Pro Minute: Good information. Good to know and all this is happening very soon, correct? Has the announcement been made in terms of a date?
Pete LePage: We haven’t announced a date yet, but keep your eyes open. There is a couple of great places. Check out the IE blog at blogs.msdn.com/ie, as well there is the IE compatibility center. If you are looking to find out what’s changed with the IE, go check out the compatibility center at msdn.com/iecompat.
Bill Cullifer, Web Pro Minute: Excellent information. Very important web professionals listen up. Thanks for your time today Pete.
Pete LePage: You are welcome. Thanks for having me.
Bill Cullifer, Web Pro Minute: Today’s minute is sponsored by the Web Master Survival Guide. When you need professional resources, be sure to check out webmastersurvivalguide.com. There is something there for all skill levels and disciplines and be sure to ask about advertising opportunities with this PR6 website from the World Organization of Webmasters.