14 DAY TRIAL // Just like Windows Vista, Internet Explorer 8 is in danger of becoming a transition product, instead of the browser that will win back the hearts and minds of users to a new face of IE. Microsoft, through the voices of Steven Sinofsky, Senior Vice President, Windows and Windows Live Engineering Group, Bill Gates, Microsoft Chairman and Steve Ballmer, Chief Executive Officer, does not regard Vista as a failure, but more as the foundation of Windows 7. Vista was for the Redmond company a case of trading off compatibility and functionality for the sake of security. With Internet Explorer 8, Microsoft is doing the same, just that, this time, compatibility and functionality are traded off for the sake of modern standards support.
The March 5, 2008 release of Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 focused on web content developers and designers was Microsoft's way to not only showcase the evolution of the browser, but also push the world wide web in a transition period to the next iteration of IE. Internet Explorer 8 will have the advantage of coming into a browser market dominated by its predecessors in a percentage larger than 75%, but also the potential of breaking up the web having more in common with Firefox 3.0 and Opera 9.5 in terms of standards support than with its own predecessors.
The problem here is, the fact, that the vast majority of websites and browser-based applications have been tailored specifically for IE6 and IE7, and not for a standards compliant IE playing well with CSS 2.1 and HTML 5. Web content and solutions that work fine in previous releases of IE will be broken in IE8. And if developers and designers do not put in the extra time and effort to design, and re-design content for IE8, then end users will react to the new browser much in the same way as they did to Vista. An illustrative example of this can be seen through the browser market share ballet of IE6 and IE7.
It took Internet Explorer 7 over a year to dislodge its predecessor from the no. 1 position on the browser market. By comparison, Firefox 2.0 managed to erode over half of the install base of Firefox 1.5 in just three months. At the end of April 2008, IE7 had passed the 45% milestone with IE6 down to just 28%, while Firefox 2.0 is up to almost 17%, according to statistics from Net Applications. IE7 did break the web, even if only superficially, but it fails to come even close to the impact that IE8 will deliver.
The video embedded at the bottom of this article, put together by Matt Hester - Microsoft IT Pro Evangelist, shows clearly the two sides of IE8. The next version of IE will bring IE almost on par with Firefox and Opera in terms of standards support, and if developers get updates in place to embrace Internet Explorer 8, users will not come across any issues. But if legacy content remains focused on IE6 and IE7, it will not render properly in IE8, as it will not play well with Firefox or Opera. The biggest challenge for Microsoft will be to make Internet Explorer deal with legacy content that is completely unattended. This will require a product that can adapt its rendering engine to websites and browser-based applications by default. None of the features presented in IE8 indicates such capabilities, for the time being, at least.
Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 is available for download here.
ScreenCast: Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 part 1: Interop Goodies