The Microsoft Internet Explorer Development team has made a post on their blog about the next instalment of the Internet Explorer Saga (rumoured to be the last Redmond based browser to bear the name Internet Explorer). Unfortunately there is no alpha build available with this post for us to play with, just the usual spiel telling us about how good IE9 iswill be might be, and how it compares to the “latest” (as of 18/11/09) builds of other more popular browsers.
Full of “how are javascript engine is better than your javascript engine” talk, there isn’t much about the features it will include, or a reason why they dont just release a version 8.* will all these updates rather than just going for version 9, but it does highlight their focus on improving CSS support (including rounded corners), its defiantly worth a quick read and also a bookmark for those of you not already subscribed to the RSS feed.
Unless you use Opera, Safari (windows version), Chrome and several others… not to mention IE6 used by more ‘Office’ workers than anyone.
The Microsoft Office team working on the new web version have announced in a very ironic blog post that the new service will only be supported via the following browsers
Internet Explorer 7 and 8
Firefox 3.5 on Windows, Mac and Linux
Safari 4 on Mac
They haven’t ruled out support for other browsers in the future and just say to “Give it a try … and let us know if you see issues”.
They do make a good point tho andstatistics wise they have chosen the most popular browsers used (although I would swap Safari for Opera in my list) and focused on them for launch support and the fact they have left off IE6 could be a blessing for all of us.
Microsoft Office is used by almost all businesses around the world at some point or another, most of which are also still using IE6 as their main browser for one reason or another (that’s a different argument for another day). By not supporting IE6 and pushing businesses to use the web version of office instead, they are in a great position to quietly force businesses to upgrade and join the rest of us in standards compliant (almost in IE’s case) browser world. whether or not the big cheeses will go for rolling out a browser upgrade or just stick to using existing versions of office will be interesting to see but I for one hope they do…
You can read more on this story by reading the microsoft office blog post by clicking the link above.
Search engine giant Google has fired a cannon ball into the browser war by releasing a television advert to inform the public of their own alternative to Internet Explorer.
Google is desperate to raise the profile of Chrome as so far only converting 1.4% of internet users to its browser. The clip was originally made for YouTube by a team inside Google Japan, but due to popularity they have decided to release it via popular television networks. Initially only in the US, if trials and uptake of chrome prove positive they may roll out to other countries aswell.
This could prove very successful for Google and I think this will definitely help them push up their market share. When did you last see an advert for Firefox or Internet Explorer when not on a company owned or fanboy site? I think we are definatly going to see an Upgrade to Internet explorer 8 advert very soon.
Microsoft have today announced the release of their new version of popular web browser Internet Explorer, available for download from 4pm (GMT) today (Thursday).
Version Eight of the browser brings a host of new features and finally a welcome addition of a web standards rendering engine. A full list of features and more information on the browser can be found on Microsoft’s IE homepage or on their development blog
Hopefully this will release will mark the end of Internet Explorer 6, the bane of website developers everywhere, IE6 is almost 8 years old and now 2 versions behind the stable release, so people still running it are compromising their security with outdated software and disrupting their online experience by using a browser riddled with bugs.
I for one am taking this opportunity to draw a line in the sand and will no longer test my site designs in IE6, I will also be adding a small pop-up message to alert users visiting via IE6 that while they are welcome, they are visiting the site using outdated software and the site may not be compatible, I will also be providing a link to upgrade to IE8 (would be rude not to add a Firefox link as well )
UPDATE: (16/04/09 @ 22:04)
True to my word, if you now visit my website in Internet Explorer versions 7 or below, you will get an Information bar pop-up advsiing to update your browser.
The end is nigh….for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer that is. It has been rumoured that version eight of the popular web browser will be the last in the Internet Explorer line and the brand will be discontinued. Now this may come as good news to scores of web developers across the world, this isn’t the end for Microsoft in terms of its fight for browser dominance.
It is believed that the next browser to come out of the Redmond camp will be based on the new and exciting Project Gazelle, recently announced by Microsoft Research. Gazelle is a completely new browser and has been rebuilt from the ground up. It currently consists of 5,000 lines of C# code, runs with a sandboxed kernal to prevent unauthorised access to the users operating system and uses a multi-process approach to tabs meaning each tab has its own process so if one crashes the whole application doesnt freeze up.
It is also rumoured the new browser will run with webkit (the rendering engine used by safari, opera and google chrome) which is fast becoming the norm for none-IE / Firefox based browsers, I for one hope this doesnt happen as Im not a huge fan of webkit and its many flaws, but then I am an avid firefox fanboi.
Talking of rumours (this being a theme of this post) IE 8 is expected to be released at Microsoft’s Mix 09 conference next week, Microsoft Taiwan has even given a release date of 20th March.
Having tested Internet Explorer 8 from beta 1 I have to say this is definatly the best version yet and I hope this is pushed out via one of Redmonds Patch Tuesdays as a critical update forcing users to upgrade. I will be adding an “Upgrade to IE8″ message to my site for visitors using IE7 or god forbif IE6.
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