In case you live under a rock,
Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 is now available as a public
download. Via Internet Explorer 8, designed as the successor of IE7, released all the way back in October 2006 for Windows XP SP2 and Windows Vista, Microsoft is finally offering the first taste of the next iteration of Internet Explorer. But the Redmond company has failed at this point in time to indicate a release date for the final IE8. But what it did manage to do is point to the next step in the browser's evolution: Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2.
In all fairness, IE8 Beta 1 is a release aimed at web developers. While it
does bring to the table features such as WebSlices and Activities, end users will not see a browser evolved very far beyond IE7. But with the next development milestones of the browser, IE8 will change radically with a focus on end users. Hints from
Dean Hachamovitch indicated that the next Beta build of IE8 is planned for the summer of this year.
IE8 Beta 1 - "There's a lot more. (...) While anyone can download it, this is a developer beta. We released it at MIX for a good reason: great web experiences start with web developers, and we want to engage developers first. We believe that to build a better browser for the people who use the web, we need to build a better browser for the people who make the web. Non-developers are welcome to try it, but they'll be more interested in Beta 2," Hachamovitch stated.
Because IE8 beta 1 is focused almost entirely on developers, the key aspects of the release are without a doubt enhanced interoperability and advanced
Web standards support. Both of which the Redmond company failed to deliver with IE6 and IE7. And even as early as the first Beta of IE8, Microsoft is already committed to a certain direction of development.
"Our goal is to deliver complete, full CSS 2.1 support in the final IE8 product.
IE8 Beta 1 for developers delivers better interoperability with other major browsers, addressing major pain points (e.g. floats and margins) from previous IE releases. We're not finished - there's much more to come in Beta 2," Hachamovitch added. "We've contributed over 700 test cases to the W3C CSS working group because we think a comprehensive certification test suite for CSS is important for true interoperability and we support the W3C's effort to deliver such a suite."
Hachamovitch did not reveal what Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 will bring to the table. But of course that while Beta 1 was focused on developers, end users are next in line to get their fix. IE8 Beta 1, with Activities and WebSlices, does provide a preview of a more feature-rich IE8 Beta 2, but there's no telling what those features will be.
"We've delivered better scripting performance because we heard from developers that they needed it given how heavily the latest rich web experiences rely on script. We've started delivering support for HTML5 because we understand that developers want to start delivering richer web experiences, with great interoperability, as soon as possible," Hachamovitch said.
