Posts Tagged ‘IE8’
Useful Tips for Using Internet Explorer 8
I came across this article in PC Magazine about IE8 written by Edward Mendelson. It’s always nice to find tips that can improve your browsing experience. I’ll list them out for you here, but read the article for more detail. I’ve used IE 8 since it was in beta and these are helpful.
- Select Text with Keyboard – Useful when you want to copy text within a webpage (my personal favorite of the bunch!)
- Compatibility View – Helps correctly render web pages that were designed for earlier versions of IE
- InPrivate Browsing – Browse without storing traces of your visits on your own computer in the form of cookies, history items, or cached pages
- InPrivate Filtering – This prevents display ads from following you to other sites
- Add More Accelerators – Provides useful shortcuts when you highlight items on the page
- Block Ads with InPrivate Filtering and Third-Party Filters – similar to the ad-blocking extensions in Firefox
- Suggested Sites – Microsoft will send you sights based on your browsing history
- Customize the Toolbars – Self Explanatory
- Status Bar – Clicking or double-clicking can reveal short cuts to menu selections
IE8 Architectual Web Cast – Enabling Web Slices
ARCast.TV – Enabling Web Slices on Your Web Site
Web Slices are a new IE8 feature that allows users to subscribe to some parts of a web page and receive updates automatically. In this screen cast, Zhiming Xue (Dr. “Z”), Microsoft Architect Evangelist, demonstrates through two simple examples how developers can easily create web applications that enable users to subscribe to select contents on a web page using the new IE8 feature, Web Slices. For additional resources about web slices are available at IE8 Readiness Toolkit and IE Developer Center.
Automatic Update distribution of IE8
Around the third week April, users still running IE6 or IE7 on WinXP, Vista, Win Server 2003 or 2008 will get a notification through Automatic Update about IE8. This will be a staged roll out over time to the entire user base.
- Windows XP and Win Server 2003, the update will be categorized as High Priority
- Vista and Win Server 2008, the update will be categorized as Important
- IE will not automatically install on their machines. Users must opt-in.
Reference Links:
Prepare for Automatic Update Distribution of IE8
Do You Wish IE6 Would Go Away?
This is not a Microsoft Web site – but a site created by a Norwegian. It still amazes me that there are so many users out there with IE6. I guess it shouldn’t be a surprise since most of those users are on corporate desktops. Here’s the link and share it with your friends! If you don’t believe me that he’s not a Microsoft employee check the FAQ 🙂
IE8 Compatibility View
I’ve seen a lot of interest about IE8 at the Partner Architect Briefings that we’ve been hosting that few weeks. Internet Explorer 8 displays content in its most standards compliant way and this can cause compatibility problems on websites that still expect the older versions of IE. You can override IE’s default behavior by choosing to view a site in Compatibility View – there’s an icon that appears next to the ‘Stop’ and ‘Refresh’ buttons in the address bar that controls this.
The IE8 team created a landing page on MSDN that discusses the details of the Compatibility View List.Visit the site and it will help answer the following:
- What process did the Internet Explorer team follow to create the list?
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Is my site / domain on the list?
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How do I remove my site / domain from the list?
The IE8 team created a living tracking spreadsheet including domain name, when the site was added, and the current status. The Compatibility View List is updated on a regular cadence of two months or so. The status field helps site owners determine whether the currently shipping version has satisfied the removal request or whether the removal request will happen in an upcoming version of the list.
http://tinyurl.com/dxsl4s (compatiblity view list)
Internet Explorer Resource Slide
Here’s a few links for IE8 that you might find useful.
IE8 Sessions at Mix – now online
IE8 has recently been released, and I wanted to let you know that the Internet Explorer 8 sessions from Mix09 are now available on here.
Here are few sessions to check out:
Dean Hachamovitch’s Keynote
Thursday, March 19th, 9:00am
Location: Keynote Room
Sessions Presented By The Internet Explorer Team
A Lap Around Internet Explorer 8 – MIX09-T52F
Giorgio Sardo | Thursday March 19 |10:30 AM-11:45 AM | Delfino 4103
IE is back! In this session, you’ll hear the inside story behind the development of Internet Explorer 8. We’ll show you how to develop innovative user experiences with Web Slices, Accelerators and Visual Search. You’ll discover nearly twenty new security enhancements that make browsing safer than ever, and you’ll find out about performance improvements that will help you build faster AJAX applications. Finally, we’ll show you why we think Internet Explorer 8 is one of the most standards-compliant web browsers on the market.
Securing Web Applications – MIX09-T54F
Eric Lawrence | Thursday March 19 | 1:00 PM-2:15 PM | San Polo 3501
After a quick summary of some of the web attacks in the wild today, you’ll learn how to take advantage of browser security improvements to help protect your web applications and visitors.
Creating A Great Experience On Digg With Windows Internet Explorer 8 – MIX09-C22F
Joel Neubeck | Thursday March 19 |2:30 PM-3:45 PM | San Polo 3501
Come hear how Terralever was able to use the powerful new features of Internet Explorer 8 to change how users interact with the Digg website. Learn how using Accelerators and Web Slices changed the way users are able to discover, as well as simplify submitting stories. We’ll look at how taking advantage of these exciting features can improve a users experience, while increasing the number of users visiting your site.
Internet Explorer 8 In The Real World: How Is IE8 Used – MIX09-C23F
Paul Cutsinger | Thursday March 19 | 4:15 PM-5:30 PM | San Polo 3501
Come see behind the scenes and learn about the customer data that motivated the IE8 user experience design team. We’ll discuss what people are doing in the browser and how that influenced the detailed design of new features. We’ll also talk about the methodology for choosing the subtle refinements to existing features that have a big impact on ease of use and discoverability.
Building High Performance Web Applications and Sites – MIX09-T53F
John Hrvatin | Friday March 20 | 2:00 PM-3:15 PM | San Polo 3504
Learn how to improve your web application’s performance in the browser by avoiding common pitfalls in JavaScript, CSS, and HTTP caching techniques.
IE8 RC1 “How Do I” Videos Posted
With the recent release of IE8 RC1 – Here are several “How Do I…” videos for you.
IE8 Platform Improvements
If you haven’t started using IE8 or are using Firefox, Safari, Chrome or Opera – I have attached a link to some of the platform improvements in IE8. It’s really much better than IE7.
Interoperability and Standards
- CSS 2.1. Layout interoperability with other browsers through the CSS2.1 standard has always been a top goal for IE8. Beta 2 supported all properties in the CSS 2.1 specification and passed over 3,200 test cases. We’ve made significant improvements since Beta 2 and this week’s RC1 passes well over twice as many test cases as Beta 2. For example, one of our favorite new features is IE8’s new support for High-Res layout, which we’ll blog about in more detail later. We expect very few changes between this RC and the full CSS2.1 support in the final product, which web developers and designers can use to write their pages once and have them rendered the same across browsers.
- HTML, Document Object Model (DOM) and JavaScript. Throughout Beta 1 and Beta 2 we’ve talked about how IE8 is much more interoperable with other browsers in core areas including attribute handling and element lookups like those through getElementById(). To help ensure future interoperability with other browsers and standards compliance, the Release Candidate includes the following updates, which we recently blogged about:
- Mutable DOM Prototype includes the new ECMAScript 3.1 conformant getter/setter syntax.
- ARIA supports the dash syntax “aria-checked” across all IE8 document modes. This means web developers can write code once that works across IE8 modes and with other browsers.
- Cross-Domain Requests (XDR) now checks Access-Control-Allow-Origin header for a match to the origin URL as well as wildcards. As a result, data is only shared with sites whose origin the server specifies.
- Performance. Similar to interoperability, better performance helps improve developer productivity. To this end, we investigated core performance scenarios and focused on optimizing common AJAX design patterns. Web developers and end users alike will experience performance improvements since Beta2.
Development environment
- Developer tools. Beta 2 introduced more power with the JavaScript profiler, save to file, and console.log support. RC1 has dramatically improved stability and a much more accurate view of the HTML tree and CSS tracing. It also offers more flexibility by adding a menu option for viewing source with Notepad, the built-in viewer, or any other choice of viewer.
- Documentation. We think good documentation and communication is an important part of the development environment. To this end, we have updated our Internet Explorer Readiness Toolkit and MSDN IE Development Center for web developers and designers to use as references. Stay tuned to the blog for much more detail on improvements we’ve made since Beta 2 and tips for upgrading to IE8 Standards Mode.
IE8 Highlights
I am not sure if you visit the IE Blog on MSDN, but in case you haven’t, here’s a few links that will give you a good overview of the improvements in IE8. IE8 offers significant improvements over IE7. I’ve also included a few screenshots as well:
Part I – Better Everyday Browsing
Part II – Better Everyday Browsing
Trustworthy Browsing with IE Summary
Partner Otaku 