Gregory Tarnoff » Microsoft

Internet Explorer 8 beta Released to Designers and Developers

admin — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 14:52:08 +0000

Hot on the heels of announcing that IE8 would be standards compliant by default, Microsoft has announced the first beta release of their new web browser. Lots of new features abound including web clips (similar to Mac web widgets), better jscript handling, better AJAX handling, and extensions similar to what Firefox has. It automatically detects and imports from Firefox, however i haven’t installed it yet so I don’t know how the import of extensions works or if they are com patible. I will also be curious to see if they import form Safari, Netscape and Opera.

Something to be warned about, It does appear that Microsoft hasn’t learned to allow multiple installations of its browsers. IE8 will replace whatever working copy of IE you currently have running include 7 and 6. Install with caution.

Get the beta here.

Internet Explorer 8…now with more standards compliance

admin — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 17:26:33 +0000

When I first wrote about IE8 and the new HTML 5 standard the plan was that by default IE8 was going to render in the IE7 mode unless you declared it to render in the new IE8 standards mode using a meta tag.

Today, Microsoft announced that this will not be the case. The new standards mode that render the Acid 2 Test with 100% accuracy will be the default mode. If you have an old site that breaks in the new IE8 you will have to go back and add the meta tag or adjust your server to allow for rendering under the older engine (aka quirks mode).

We’ve decided that IE8 will, by default, interpret web content in the most standards compliant way it can. This decision is a change from what we’ve posted previously.

Some speculation behind the change points to Opera’s complaint and the recent European Union fine of $1.3 billion dollars for anti-trust tactics by Microsoft, but like any good spin-meister they deny this.

We think that acting in accordance with principles is important, and IE8’s default is a demonstration of the interoperability principles in action. While we do not believe any current legal requirements would dictate which rendering mode a browser must use, this step clearly removes this question as a potential legal and regulatory issue. As stated above, we think it’s the better choice.

You can read the rest of the article discussing the various modes at the MSDN blog.

HTML 5, Microsoft IE8 and Backwards Compatability

admin — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 18:53:29 +0000

In case you haven’t heard the W3C has released the working draft of HTML 5 this week. Microsoft recently released a statement that the pre-alpha versions of Internet Explorer 8 has passed the Acid 2 test. However having achieved this, IE8 will need to break many existing sites, more than IE7 did. Or does it?

Aaron Gustafson has an article on http://www.alistapart.com/ describing a method of “preserving our digital legacy” using a new meta tag. IE8 is implementing this new meta tag to specify which browser engine to render a site with.

If your site works with IE7 and IE8 breaks it, you can implement this little meta tag and tell IE8 to render it as if it were IE7 without recoding your site. Eric Meyer equates this to the classic browser sniffing, but surprisingly agrees with the idea. I can see how Microsoft doesn’t want to break the existing web, but as John Resig points out, they may be doing more harm than good.

The old adage “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” seems to be where Microsoft and the new meta tag are coming from. What happens if it was always broke? At what point do you say, screw it and fix the whole thing regardless of consequences? I know no one wants to “throw the baby out with the bathwater” (sorry for the cliches), but the reality is that IE6 broke the web, developers designed for the broken web and now we have bad code sites and bad coders. We have standards. Every other browser follows them to a relatively satisfactory level. Why not get a beta of IE8 into the community so that those who have sites that break can fix them before the browser is fully integrated to the general consumer? We walked away from 8-tracks with the cassette, we walked away from the cassette with the CD, we walked away from VHS with the DVD. In each case we didn’t concern ourselves with backwards compatibility and I think we need to again.

Safari on Windows

admin — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 17:09:09 +0000

There seems to be a question as to why Apple would introduce Safari for Windows and why anyone on Windows would run it. I think people are missing the point that Apple is trying to acheive and what this could mean for the small developer.

By introducing Safari on Windows Apple has introduced the SDK (as they call it) for the iPhone. Developers won’t be able to make their apps run directly on the phone and must use AJAX instead(Flash is reportedly not going to be supported). Having Safari on Windows will allow the vast majority of developers to make sure their application will run on Safari’s JavaScript. Now hopefully a developer will make sure it works in all versions of JavaScript on all major browsers, but Apple doesn’t care about that.

In addition to this, Apple is showing that it is doing something Microsoft has decided to undo. Apple is opening more than iTunes to the other OS. I expect by the time Leopard launches we will see Windows versions of iWork and iLife. I don’t expect major applications like Final Cut or Apeture to show up, but remember Apple dropped “computer” from its name. Microsoft has restricted its applications to VMware and Office, but the deal on Office is only for 4 more years. Watch that go away by then.

Last but not least, this is a great opportunity for the small web designer/developer to now test their application and site on all the major browsers without having to shell out for an additional computer. Not everyone can afford a Mac, nor do they want to use a Mac. Now they don’t have to. They can install Safari and use it for testing purposes.

Now is it the best browser? I don’t think so. It has usability issues (I found another issue today in that you can’t use backspace to go back in browsing history like ALL other browsers). I personally prefer Firefox with its extensions and themes. but I would pick Safari over IE because I know the CSS I write will work.

Update: Issue number 4 and a reason to have it on Windows. WordPress’s WYSIWYG editor for writing posts doesn’t seem to work properly. I only have Code version available to me while writing this post from inside Safari. It looks like WordPress is one of those small teams that need to test their JavaScript to see that it is compatible with Safari.