IE8 Beta

Working in Search Engine Optimisation we like to keep at the forefront of information and technologies, Last week Microsoft released the IE8 Beta for web developers. Although its not something we would yet have installed to work with on a daily basis it is something i looked at in my spare time.

First impressions are that it looks the same as IE 7. It does however have a lot more features. Keeping an eye on what the IE team have been saying about what IE8 will deliver has been a great relief. Instead of trying to force things to be their way they seem to be trying to play with everyone else instead of against them. IE8 is being developed to be a lot more standards compliant and even to their own admission this will break a lot of websites that were developed for older versions of IE, this is why they have a new button on the browser that will change the way the browser renders a web page so that it uses IE 7 standards instead of IE 8. This could be a good thing but in my opinion they need to cut ties with non standard methods. If websites break people will mend them, the longer you give people the option to have non standard websites working then the longer they will be around.

Also IE8 has adopted more CSS 3 rules which is good though that could be another blog (maybe next week). The main thing that i noticed with IE8 is the way they are trying to incorporate Firefox style Plugins to the browser. On a day to day basis we use Plugins all the time as it makes our work a lot easier. Microsoft has finally caught on with this and i think this beta release proves this. Firefox has for a long time had a whole range of tools that can really help to develop or design a website which means that designers have started to develop sites that work in Firefox primarily and IE secondly. This is shown in the shift (all be it small) to people using Firefox. There are many SEO tools that can be used as well. Microsoft have now implemented add-ons, I know they have had them in IE7 but now it seems a lot more friendly way of adding them. When i first installed IE8 i imported all my settings from Firefox and IE8 knew what Plugins i had for Firefox and it took me to page to view similar Plugins for IE. I thought this was great until i noticed that for a lot of Plugins you had to pay for them. Nobody will pay for a plug-in when they can get it for free using Firefox. With this release Microsoft seem to be trying to win back the developers, making it easier for them as at the end of the day these are the people building the site and Microsoft want them to develop for IE.
The main swinging point however is the implementation of a Firebug style tool. Firebug is a great tool for debugging problems with Css or viewing on the fly changes to the page. IE8 has a similar tool implemented but it seems to be a half hearted effort. It is similar to Firebug in its layout and functionality though it has no capabilities of editing the page on the fly which is what makes firebug so great.

All in all IE8 beta shows a lot of intention that they are trying to win back web developers to use IE as a development platform, though that?s all it seems to be, it?s like they have implemented only half of all their ideas. This is however still a Beta so maybe all the functionality isn?t there. Let?s wait and see.

Gary
NSEO Programmer

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