14 DAY TRIAL // After Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates revealed that Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 was right on track for delivery in August 2007, the IE team started opening up on the next development milestone of the browser. Jane Maliouta - IE Program Manager and James Pratt - IE Product Manager gave an excellent insight on a set of features that Microsoft plans to make available in IE8, and that will be delivered in the next beta. Of course, any of the features set up for inclusion into Beta 2 could be cut down or delayed in accordance with the evolution of the development process but, at this point in time, the Redmond company feels confident it didn't jump the gun when promising the IE8 Beta 2 items.
With IE8, Microsoft will support slipstream when it comes down to its latest Windows client, a move designed to deliver something extra, which Windows XP and IE7 did not feature. "With Internet Explorer 8 and Windows Vista you'll be able to "Slipstream" Internet Explorer 8 into a Vista image so that when you deploy Vista it already contains Internet Explorer 8. To slipstream IE8 only takes 10-15 minute per image. You'll also be able to slipstream IE8 cumulative updates so that you are shipping the most up to date and secure image," Maliouta and Pratt said.
Although, traditionally, the browser is associated with the world wide web, there are also applications that use it. In this context, the web content compatibility issue with IE8's default standards mode is also a problem for programs designed to run in the browser. However, just as Microsoft has provided the possibility for developers to control how IE8 renders websites, it will also do something similar for applications.
"For one, we're adding new events to the Application Compatibility Toolkit (ACT) that help you detect and resolve potential issues between IE8 and your internal applications and web sites. For another, we're providing Group Policy settings that help you control, with great granularity, those settings that most impact compatibility. Lastly, we're looking at how to intelligently solve this problem for intranets - providing the greatest application and web site compatibility while still maintaining our core tenets of security, performance, and reliability," Maliouta and Pratt added.
IE8 will simply offer extra security compared to Internet Explorer 7. In this regard, Microsoft is looking to bulletproof the browser against web based attacks, exploits, phishing attempts, etc. The company is offering documentation on how IE8 can be configured to provide the best security that it can with examples such as Per User and Per Site ActiveX and Cross Document Messaging.
Additionally, "the internet Explorer Administration Kit (IEAK) enables IT Pros to customize IE for their company's needs. You might be familiar with this tool since it was available for IE6 and IE7. In IE8, IEAK is getting a facelift. We have fixed a number of bugs and added some enhancements to improve the performance of IEAK. IEAK8 will support custom IE8 builds for new platforms: Vista and Windows Server 2008 and new IE8 features like Activities and Web Slices,"Maliouta and Pratt also said.
Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) Beta 1 is available for download here.