Microsoft’s IE development team have announced their first developer preview for the latest version of Internet Explorer.
IE9 is rumoured to include several <html5> and CSS3 elements, making it a real contender in the new range of “modern browsers”.
You can read more about the release on the IE Blog, or jump straight over to the resources and “test drive” the new release.
I will update this post with my thoughts on the preview, once I’ve had a play with it.
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 is will 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.
You can find the post on the IE Developer Blog
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
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.
Not seen the advert yet? here it is…
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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.