Internet Explorer 8 RTW, the gold build of IE7's successor, has been successfully locked out of a Mozilla Labs project designed to highlight a selection of web development tools available. The Open Web Tools Directory from Mozilla Labs aims to be a central index of tools that have been put together in order to streamline the work for web developers. Ben Galbraith, co-director of developer tools at Mozilla Labs, revealed that the purpose of the Open Web Tools Directory was not only to highlight available solutions and to simplify discoverability, but also to allow web devs to understand the universe of tools at their disposal.

This is why Mozilla Labs went for a spatial representation for the Open Web Tools Directory. “We went with a “space” theme to emphasize the sheer size of the tool ecosystem (though at the moment we only have a small fraction of the tools available listed). And, frankly, we just couldn’t do another table-based master/detail database application; we wanted a directory that would be fun to use (and perhaps a bit of fun to create as well),” Galbraith noted.

For the Open Web Tools Directory Mozilla Labs used HTML 5 canvas, essentially blocking access for users of Internet Explorer 8, since the latest version of IE doesn't feature support for canvas. At the same time, Galbraith also managed to slap a label of obsolete on IE8 stating that “a modern browser with canvas is required to view this, like Firefox 3.5, Safari 4, Chrome 2, or Opera 9.” Internet Explorer 8 was released to web in mid-March 2009, but doesn't feature support for standards that are yet to be finalized, the reason why it fails to play nice with HTML 5 canvas.

“First, we’re putting out a call for folks to tell us about their tools. We’ve prepared a data entry form for you to use to submit a tool; please, help us fill up the directory with the hundreds or thousands of items we’ve missed! Your entries won’t go live immediately, but we’ll review them on a regular basis and get them added,” Galbraith further said. “Second, let us know what features you’d most like in the directory. We’re exploring a few different concepts for how to display the entries in the directory. Here’s one of our ideas to add more detail to what we display about each entry.”

Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) RTW is available for download here (for 32-bit and 64-bit flavors of Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008).

Firefox 3.5 Final for Windows is available for download here.
Firefox 3.5 Final for Linux is available for download here.
Firefox 3.5 Final for Mac OS X is available for download here.