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Got Enough Of IE7 Here’s Microsoft With IE8 Beta

By admin ⋅ March 7, 2008 ⋅  Send this to a friend.. ⋅  Print this article. ⋅ Post a comment ⋅ Add to Technorati Favorites

The graphical web browser released by Microsoft in late 2006 for Windows Vista, Windows XP SP2 and Windows Server 2003 SP1 cmae to be renowned as IE7 (Internet Explorer 7).The Windows Vista and XP version of Windows Internet Explorer 7 additionally feature an update to the WinInet API. The new version has better support for IPv6, and handles hexadecimal literals in the IPv6 address. It also includes better support for Gzip and deflate compression, so that communication with a web server can be compressed and thus will require less data to be transferred.

Microsoft Corp. gave early testers their first glimpse of its next-generation Web browser Wednesday, and said Internet Explorer 8 will adhere to the same standards as competitors’ programs.Microsoft’s browsers, including the current Internet Explorer 7, gained notoriety among Web developers for handling Web page code differently than Mozilla Corp.’s Firefox, Apple Inc.’s Safari, the now-defunct Netscape Navigator and others.

For the most part, major non-Microsoft browsers and outside developers who built Web pages worked with agreed-upon technical standards, while Microsoft was accused of adding proprietary code to those standards. The result: Web pages that looked good in Internet Explorer but broke on other browsers, or vice versa.

At a Web developer conference in Las Vegas Wednesday, Dean Hachamovitch, general manager for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer division, madeMicrosoft’s past striking standards look light and promised to better things out.He elicited a laugh, but developers have sometimes had to build Web sites from scratch a second time to devise a version that worked with Microsoft’s browsers.

Microsoft said the new version of the browser, when complete, will support industry-standard versions of the code that tells browsers what Web pages should look like, including CSS 2.1, by default.Chris Swenson, a software industry analyst for the NPD Group exclaimed “That’s a big deal!!”

Meanwhile when most of the Web surfers might not have greatly impressed, Swenson exclaimed that it will bring “a sigh of relief” for developers, who will have to work less on making webpages compatible to different browsers.Microsoft’s decision might also help it fend off a new antitrust investigation in Europe.

Regulators there are looking into whether the software maker held other browsers back by not following open Internet standards. The probe was launched after Norwegian browser developer Opera Software ASA filed a complaint in late 2007.

Microsoft raised curtain from over a few features in the new browser that may attract more Web users. For one, right-clicking on a Web page will now offer more “to-do” options than what is available today.Users will be capable of “Send to Facebook,” “Map with Live Search” or “Define with Dictionary.com” with a quick click.

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