Tag: internet explorer 8
October 07, 2008 by
Jason
The evolution of IE from Internet Explorer 7 to Internet Explorer 8 spans from the graphical user interface on the surface of the browser to the underlying rendering engine. Among the various improvements delivered to Internet Explorer, enhancing AJAX in the browser is an illustrative example of Microsoft’s efforts to take its proprietary browser to the next level. In this regard, Sunava Dutta, IE Program Manager, revealed that the Redmond giant focused on improving AJAX for IE8, on top of what was made available with the Beta 1 release in March. The AJAX updates are already available as of the release of IE8 Beta 2.
“The good news is our team has been working since Beta 1 to tweak and update our implementations based on feedback from developers and ongoing updates to the W3C standards drafts on which most of these implementations are based or have been submitted for consideration. Not content with doing just that, we also added a few new features for developers. The AJAX updates we’ve chosen for Beta 2 focus on maintaining cross-browser compatibility and the feature sets that developers have thought would be the most useful,” Dutta explained. Read More»
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October 03, 2008 by
Jason In just the first months of availability, Google Chrome Beta has made consistent inroads into the territory of Internet Explorer and Firefox. Both Microsoft’s IE and Mozilla’s Firefox started to see their audiences slip a little and ended up losing market share to the new browser from Google. In fact, so did Opera and Netscape with Safari left as the sole browser to gain market share. However, considering that Chrome is based on WebKit open source web browser engine also used by Safari, it is possible that some of Google Browser’s traffic to be in fact interpreted as Mac OS X’s native browser.
Market monitoring firm Net Applications revealed that Google Chrome’s usage share dropped after the initial surge. “Google Chrome usage share has been dropping since its launch, but has stabilized at about .7%,” the outfit stated. This in the context in which Chrome exploded to over 1% of the browser market, more than Opera. Still, at the end of September 2008, Chrome accounted for no less than 0.78% of the browser market, a performance by any standards considering that just a month before, it had 0%. Read More»
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September 28, 2008 by
Jason Just as Windows Vista moved away Windows XP by sacrificing compatibility, so will Internet Explorer 8 redefine the way Microsoft’s proprietary browser deals with legacy content. This because, by embracing modern web standards in the default configuration, IE8 will also introduce compatibility issues. However, Microsoft is providing the necessary resources designed to mitigate scenarios involving incompatible content. The Application Compatibility Toolkit (ACT), now at version 5.0 with the Internet Explorer Compatibility Test Tool (IECTT) and Internet Explorer Compatibility Evaluators (IECE) components, is set up to evaluate the level at which an application will play nice with Windows Vista, Internet Explorer 7 and even Internet Explorer 8.
“ACT allows compatibility data to be uploaded from individual machines to a central location for analysis, grouping and reporting. Once an issue has been identified, help will be available on how to resolve a particular issue or create a workaround. Furthermore, partners and customers using ACT are able to post comments to the Online Application Community, where they can share data and information about application compatibility testing,” explained Jatinder Mann, IE Program Manager. Read More»
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September 21, 2008 by
Jason
Following the release of Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 at the end of August 2008, Microsoft offered a toolset designed to permit advanced customization of the browser. Internet Explorer Administration Kit 8.0 Beta was dropped after the English, Japanese, Chinese (Simplified), and German localized versions of IE8. On September 16, the kit was updated to reflect the wave 2 of Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 releases. Earlier this week Microsoft made available 21 new fully localized flavors of IE8 Beta 2, bringing the total number of language versions to 25.
“With the release of these additional languages, the IE8 IEAK can now build an additional 20 language packages. We’re excited to enable more users to download IE8 Beta 2 and use it in their native languages,” revealed Vishwac Sena Kannan, IE international program manager.
The September 16 release of Internet Explorer Administration Kit 8 Beta is tailored to the new span of IE8 Beta 2 language versions. The kit is designed to permit the customization of Microsoft’s latest iteration of the Internet Explorer browser. IEAK 8 Beta enables customized packages of IE8 Beta 2 to be put together, and this is valid for the many flavors of the browser. Read More»
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September 17, 2008 by
Jason On September 16, the Redmond company went live with the second wave of IE8 Beta 2 releases, offering the browser in no less than 21 localized versions. The fresh IE8 Beta 2 releases covering 21 additional languages on top of the original four are supported only on the 32-bit versions of Windows Vista RTM and Service Pack 1, Windows XP SP2 and SP3 and Windows Server 2008.
“The IE team is pleased to announce the availability of Internet Explorer Beta 2 in 21 additional languages. The languages released today are fully localized versions of the IE8 English Beta 2. The Complete List of IE8 Beta 2 Languages: Arabic, Chinese (Hong Kong), Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Russian, Spanish, Swedish, and Turkish,” explained Vishwac Sena Kannan, International Program Manager.
Microsoft is currently gearing up for the availability of the gold build of Internet Explorer 8. The Redmond giant has not confirmed a deadline, except to say that it expects to deliver the final IE8 two years after the general availability of Internet Explorer 7 considered by the company to be January 30, 2007, the Windows Vista launch day. Read More»
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September 13, 2008 by
Jason Even with Internet Explorer 8 in the oven, and Beta 2 available for download since the end of August 2008, Microsoft is not losing focus of IE7. As of September 10, the Redmond company started offering a fix for a memory leak affecting Internet Explorer 7 while running on Windows XP, including Service Pack2 and SP3, and Windows Server 2003. The hotfix delivered is available exclusively for the precursors of Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 and not for the latest versions of the Windows Client and Server operating system. At the same time, Microsoft is providing the resolve only for IE7, and there is nothing yet for IE8.
“Assume that on a computer that is running Windows XP or Windows Server 2003, you have Windows Internet Explorer 7 installed. After you run Internet Explorer 7 for a long time, you notice that system performance gradually decreases. Additionally, Internet Explorer becomes unstable or crashes. If you use Performance Monitor (Perfmon.exe) to monitor Internet Explorer, you see that the Internet Explorer process consumes many virtual bytes,” the company revealed. Read More»
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September 09, 2008 by
Jason From the perspective of a platform developer, Microsoft has to maintain an equilibrium between the innovation it introduces with its software products and support for legacy applications. Both Windows Vista and Internet Explore 8 offer an ample example of the Redmond giant struggling to achieve such a balance. This is why the company is lending a helping hand to customers migrating to its latest products. In this regard, the Microsoft Application Compatibility Toolkit 5.0 is designed to sniff out and permit the mitigation of incompatibility issues. The collection of tools, as well as the adjacent documentation included in the toolkit, are tailored to Windows Vista releases via Windows Update and Internet Explorer.
“ACT helps customers lower their costs for application compatibility testing, prioritize their applications, and deploy Windows Vista more quickly. You can use the ACT features to: verify an application’s compatibility with a new version of the Windows operating system, or a Windows Update, including determining your risk assessment; become involved in the ACT Community, including sharing your risk assessment with other ACT users; and test your Web applications and Web sites for compatibility with new releases and security updates to the Windows Internet Explorer Internet browser,” reads an excerpt from the toolkit’s description. Read More»
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September 01, 2008 by
Jason While rival browser makers Mozilla and Opera have launched the latest iterations of their products, Firefox 3.0 and respectively Opera 9.5, as early as June 2008, Microsoft is still in the development phase of Internet Explorer 8, the successor of IE7. August 27 marked the delivery of IE8 Beta 2, a deadline absurdly safeguarded by Microsoft, with the company only managing to confirm a release by the end of this month, and taking its due time when it came down to making available the bits for the browser second development milestone. Internet Explorer 8 is still far from the finish line, reportedly planned for November 2008, but Beta 2 feels more like a browser version ready for wrap-up than Beta 1.
The reason for this is the fact that, in comparison with the March 2008 release of IE8, the second Beta is packed with features and functionality aimed at the home and business users, on top of what has already been available to IT professionals and web content developers and designers. In this regard, IE8 Beta 1 was more of a skeleton on which Microsoft built Beta 2. Now, although Microsoft is not touting IE8 Beta 2 as a feature-complete version, it is clear that the Redmond company will move further only with the process of fine-tuning the browser got with Release to Web (RTW). Read More»
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Internet Explorer 8 is not the fastest browser in the universe. This, according to IE Program Manager, Christian Stockwell, working on the performance of the browser. However, this is not to say that the Redmond company has not poured a consistent amount of efforts into boosting the performance of IE7’s successor. In fact, Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2, planned for release by the end of this month, will offer palpable proof of the new horsepower under the browser’s hood.
“When we took a hard look at our goals and considered what we could do to build the best browser, we were presented with a quandary. On the one hand, we could focus very narrowly on scripting performance, trusting that our investment would noticeably improve our users’ browsing experience. Alternatively, we could invest more broadly in realistic scenarios, measuring heavily-used subsystems and investing our optimization effort accordingly. We opted for the latter approach,” Stockwell noted.
Even as early as March 2008, IE GM Dean Hachamovitch indicated that JavaScript performance was up 2.5 times, the Gmail inbox was loading 34% faster, the task of opening a new conversation took 45% less time, while that of opening a thread 25% less. With IE8 Beta 2, Microsoft has tweaked the execution time for the browser, but it has also managed to speed up navigation and user interaction. Read More»
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