Microsoft has just pushed live its Release Candidate for Internet Explorer 8, the latest update to the world’s most widely used web browser. You can download it here. Unfortunately the release is only for Windows Vista, XP, and Server – if you’re trying out Windows 7 you’ll have to wait for the next OS update to try out the RC.
The new version, which comes after two public beta releases, is now considered “platform complete” – the product is “effectively complete and done” writes IE General Manager Dean Hachamovitch. Unless there are major critical issues that arise, the final version of the browser should be identical. Other changes between Beta 2 and the Release Candidate include improved reliability, performance, and compatibility, as well as ‘clickjacking‘ protection.
In his blog post detailing the release, Hachamovitch writes that IE8 is focused on “how people really use the web”, explaining that while many of the people who are interested in Release Candidates and technology blogs may be interested in details and performance issues, most people are concerned with usability and an intuitive experience.
We sat down with Hachamovitch earlier this month and he showed us a number of the new features that are being incorporated into IE8 to reflect this emphasis on usability (note that these have been known about for some time, but may not be common knowledge for those who don’t follow IE’s beta schedule). Among my favorite is the ability to see a list of your recently closed tabs whenever you open a browser window, which makes it easy to reopen pages that you may have accidentally closed without having to resort to your web history. Also new are Accelerators, which let you act on snippits of text using shortcuts found under the right-click menu (for example, you could right click on an address and look it up on Live Maps).
And of course, the browser’s new “porn mode” (dubbed InPrivate), which lets users browse the web without having to worry about leaving any history or cookies behind. Apple’s Safari offers a similar feature, though I like the execution of InPrivate better – it has strong visual indicators to let you know when you’re in the private mode, while Safari just has a check mark under a menu listing.
If Microsoft releases a browser update on the Internet and no-one is there to download it, does anyone care?
(falling tree in woods analogy)
Considering it sniffs and renders it in IE’s-closest-thing-to-standards-mode, I do. It means I can write standard HTML/CSS and require my IE-loving clients to upgrade without having to duct-tape a bunch IE-specific of crap into my apps.
The sniffing reference was to ‘!DOCTYPE html.’ Apparently WordPress sniffed it right out of my comment!
I knew what you meant before you left an additional comment…which means I’m getting way too geeky for my own good.
The poor Microsoft servers are struggling to cope with the traffic surge. Could be some time before we’re able to take this browser for a spin.
Thanks for the heads up on the analogy. I thought you were talking about making omelettes.
Please append a note to sarcastic messages labelling them as such.
(This message is sarcastic, and may also contain nuts.)
Words fail me. Links to humorous parallels of my thoughts, apparently, do not: http://www.yout...h?v=2fMLcZ2pUEQ
Any idea if this version of IE is really “Standards Compliant?” or did MSFT have to avoid “breaking the Internet?”
Great, just what we need– another version of IE to make website tuning exceptions for.
Better this than IE7.
That’s like saying it’s better to be kicked in the eyeballs than in the balls-balls. I think most of us are just plain sick and tired of being kicked, period.
So you think. Just trying coding CSS in it when it doesn’t want to play well with you. IE 7 was pure heaven compared to it’s successor in that regard.
*sigh*
Four years til we have to support IE8 then. I’m sick of spending half my time making things work in IE6. It’s obsolete. IE8 will be obsolete by the time people start using it.
Fuck you Microsoft.
Fuck you IE.
Stop making browser. Stop making our lives hell.
!wo0t
You ok there buddy? seems like you need to pay your doctor a visit.
Personnally, i stopped suporting IE6 about one year ago.
Yeah, life is hell when you attempt to hide the bugs and misses of that shitty IE6.
But you can also don’t care about it and let IE6 user see what their browser really is.
You will save plenty of time, have a modern code future-proof, be zen, and down the road, earn more money because you spent you time doing things that have sense instead of correcting bugs that will disappear one day.
Every site I have worked on has IE6 bugs.
It is a fact of life. You have to write brain damaged javascript because Microsoft insist on popularising weak technology?
Google Chrome got CSS and DOM much more right in their first release. And It is so much faster than IE. Firefox is great but its Addon library makes it bloatware. Opera is still the strongest and most bug free browser.
Just because IE is used more than any other browser, does that really make it the “world’s most popular browser”? Can we have a recount?
Good call, I like the analysis of the English used. Some people never knew they could choose.
There are more women in the world than men, does that mean that having girls is more popular than having boys?
I love how everyone complains about “exceptions” for Internet Explorer. Love it or hate it, IE is the still the most used platform. Firefox users are still the exception, unfortunately.
No, anything that deviates from the Doctype Declaration and renders quirky markup display is the “exception”. It has nothing to do with how many people use one thing or another… it’s about a monopolistic corporation thinking it’s okay to ignore standards and be the “maverick”. Well, I think we’ve spoken our peace about the “mavericks” (see: McCain/Palin 2008) and I don’t expect IE’s dominance to continue much longer. Nor should you.
Furthermore, look at version numbers and give each browser version it’s own user count… does IE still dominate the list?? Hmmmm… prepare to be surprised.
Yawn.
You’re on your own, dude. A world where a product with 70% market share is deemed the ‘exception’ is a world with lots of magc mushrooms.
What’s Firefox’s market share again?
Oh, so Microsoft can ignore modern web standards at will and that’s OK because they’re the Big Boys? So browsers that are fully compliant (or damn close) but not “used as much” (I won’t say “popular” because IE is not “popular” as much as it’s shoved down everyone’s throats with every crappy OS of theirs since the late 90’s) are *yawn*…boring? How is that arrogant, myopic attitude of yours working out for you? It’s making me laugh at just how dumb you are.
The single only reason it has such a high market share is down to the fact that it’s in (the still highly popular) Windows by default.
You’d be amazed how many ‘new/average users of pcs and the internet’ have no idea that there is an alternative to getting on the web than double-clicking the blue ‘e’ icon.
Add that to the fact that millions of people in the workplace are *forced* to use Windows and therefore IE due to various arcane corporate technical restrictions.
As a web designer and developer for over a decade I can say that a HUGE amount of time to wasted trying to tweak things to get IE to display pages in exactly the same way that the standards-compliant browsers are capable of doing.
I’m certainly no Windows hater, I use all platforms regularly, but I’m sick to death of the time wasted by have to *fix* pages for IE.
I thin kit’s time to go back to the good old days where websites would say ‘This site is optimised for ###### browser’ – meaning if you don’t have it, go away. Move along. Miss out.
/grrrr
“As a web designer and developer for over a decade I can say that a HUGE amount of time to wasted trying to tweak things to get IE to display pages in exactly the same way that the standards-compliant browsers are capable of doing.”
Couldn’t agree more. I wish I could have all the hours back that I wasted over the years “fixing” things so they would work in IE, things that already worked in every standards-complaint browser out there. That’s why I don’t do it anymore. I can’t have all those hours back, but I can stop wasting anymore of them.
I don’t think you know what you’re talking about.
IE6 and IE7 are a huge mess. Things that take minutes on Firefox, Safari, and Chrome can take a day or more on IE just to figure out WTF it is doing.
Can developers sue MS for damages considering their platform breaks our customers, costing them time and suffering and us developer resources. If only…
So how is IE8 on Vista working out for you?
Whiners, you are a troll and a discredit to the community you seem to be spewing zealotry about.
People love to hate Microsoft products. At least try it out and than complain!
That’s like saying, “Give Osama Bin Laden another chance.” Microsoft has had plenty of opportunities to prove their worth to the web development community and they have failed miserably… they got their second, third, and fourth chances… we ARE a forgiving bunch, but MS has sealed it’s fate pretty water tight.
lol wow i can’t believe you just compared osama bin laden to Microsoft. You truly must be retarded.
Have you ever spent hours trying to go around IE6 glitches? It sure terrorizes me.
That, however, is the status quo. I’ve given up hoping Microsoft will get IE right; I’m grateful as long as they don’t make it any worse.
Matt- I agree with you to an extent. But don’t forget Microsoft created some excellent products like Visual Studio.
My only request is not to thrash them without any reason.
-R
The problem is, the ‘web development community’ is alas, irrelevant. What matters is the end users, and they like IE. Case closed. Support your users, not your anti-Microsoft prejudices.
“Have you ever spent hours trying to go around IE6 glitches? It sure terrorizes me.”
Never had to spend that much time, really. Never had stuff that screwed up to begin with.
“At least try it out and then complain.”
We did.
Great, another version of IE that I won’t use…
Yep, people who sniff at IE-related news don’t have to build websites in the real world. Face it, IE still totally dominates the browser world and will for the forseeable future, no matter how good Chrome or Safari or Firefox or etc. is. Non-tech people simply want ease-of-use, period. And since the staggering majority of those people use PCs out of the box, they’ll be using IE. And those are the people us in the business of building websites count on.
If anyone who hasn’t tried it is thinking.. it’s probably a piece of crap… you are right, it is. Don’t even bother.
I’d rather use lynx.
Good maybe now it won’t crash every time I paste text, not just URLs, in the address bar. I hate it when I forget about it and it happens. 1) I loose all tabs; 2) it does not crash completely! So I have to kill it via the Task Manager.
I prefer FF, but web developers and website owners, I work with, use and for some odd reason prefer IE. So I am stuck with it.
How about some useful insight on this release? For example, can you publish notes about how MS plans to roll this out? Will there be an official EOL of IE6? Sites I work on still get a ton of traffic from ie6 clients. There’s no way that they’ll tolerate supporting 3 major MSIE versions at one time!
At this point I could care less about the IE8 feature set. I have no unmet browsing needs that this could satisfy.
I think IE6 is pretty much dead in terms of development and/or support. I suppose it’s still in use due to a) people’s reluctance to update, b) their inability to update due to using old hardware and/or pirated copies of windows and c) the vista fiasco keeping people on old xp installs. C’est la vie.
I wish! It’s still the latest version we support at the health care company I work for. Our IT dept. won’t even install IE7 on company machines.
Of course it’s dead from the development perspective. People are STILL using it though. Without a clear path to EOL it, they’ll be using it forever. I’m all-for using esoteric tools. Hell, I even support some totally zombie technology. But IE6 needs to die. I don’t want to hear anything from Microsoft about IE8 until this problem gets some action.
Thats some great news, although part of me wishes it would just go away and people would just use firefox
answeraddict.com
Half the internet will continue to use version 6 or 7 for the next few years.
Maybe MS should disable IE6 as it is an acknowledged international security risk as well as hell on earth for legacy Javascript debugging…
Microsoft keeps moving forward. I am glad to see IE8.
IE8 may be funtional, but it’s sure ugly. Uglier than IE6. What’s with the Plain Jane graphics?
Why doesn’t Microsoft realise that good esthetics are part of the total package? Have they learned mothing from Apple?
Microsoft is the “Big Boy” in the browser market (see comments above) therefore the browser can be as ugly as they want it to be and everyone will still use it – you watch. You don’t have to put any effort into a decent interface when you’re already the one on top.
That’s what AOL and Netscape said, and look where it got them!
Ahh yes – the thrill of the chase, rifling through wardrobes, the smell of camphor, the spiffy big nets… nothing beats a good mothing.
So all of their “new” features are exactly what Chrome rolled out with?
ie has been such a source of grief and aggravation with their previous browser versions, they can never make things right no matter how good their products may be now.
They have added hours and days to every project I’ve worked on because of the work arounds required to make ie work. And I’m not just talking about standards compliance, I’m talking about just flat out not working.
I’m quite excited about IE8 myself. I’ve tried it with some web work that requires hacks for IE6/7, and the stuff renders perfectly in IE8 without a single hack or exception; the accuracy is similar to Firefox. Love it.
I sure hope so.
I am definitely looking forward to IE 8, I hope it comes out with Vista SP2.
More crocodile cum on us web developers!
IE8 RC is very fastly rendering pages and also security is enhanced.They added the option to add note to evernote to Tools menu which is vey helpful.They also included reopening last browsed session which can be erased with deleting of browsing history.I really looking forward to see how IE8 RC goes forward and how geeks reacts to its usage and features.
Well now I can hurry up and wait for IE 9
I installed IE8 on my Virtual Machine a while ago but will try out this latest release on my home PC when I get a chance this evening!
posting using IE8. AWSOME!!… HAAHA
@Jim Neath
Yes. I agree.
IE8 simply rocks
downloaded and enjoying browsing with ie8
It’s still going to be horrible to code just for IE – since MS are still refusing to fully support latest CSS/HTML Versions or Standards
What is this “IE” you speak of? Sorry, it mustn’t be that popular here then, if I don’t know about it.
[On a side note, it seems that I might be living with lucky geniuses. Everyone's computers - from that of my grandfather to my second cousin - with Ubuntu Linux. Bless my techie uncle.]
Wow, I didnt think anyone still actually used MSIE! I mean really.
RT
http://www.total-privacy.us.tc
IE8 looks OK, nothing special. Firefox rules and Safari comes right after…
Internet Explorer remains the best browser. Uniquely, you are able to use it without thinking about it. Those of you who like to think about it are in minority, are here and are irrelevant.
Be very careful what you wish for. The world respected you for things like that, not for things like Firefox. Do not forget that.
So does Microsoft give admins the ability to lock out InPrivate at the server level? Not that too many of the people in the office are all that tech-savvy, but those who are clever enough to turn on pr0n mode will destroy the paper trail I need when my boss comes to me and says, “Can you show me a list of what this guy’s doing on the Net all day?”
Without assurances that I will be able to go on herding my cats, I’m in no hurry to move my office from 7 to 8.
It seems to have crept into google chrome as well.
Maybe the days of companies being expected to censor web access of employees will become as redundant as the cameras they talked about putting into lavatories to prevent workers taking excessive time in there.
i use both and both are good, firefox and IE are great
hadn’t it been for IE, I wouldn’t have known my javascript errors which other browsers ignore..
Yo IE!! Yo Bill Gates!!!
You don’t seem a user of other browsers at all. First learn before you say out load…
I’ve become an expert at detecting astroturfing, and oh boy, there is plenty in these comments.
Those who defend every complain about M$ and IE, please stand up!
Well I ran the IE8 RC1 on Vista Ultimate, tonight it did an update to state welcome to IE8. All web related applications could no longer connect to the web. Internet Options crashed everytime I tried to go to the connections tab. I see MS is doing a 5,000 job layoff. So we get a panicked release that of course fails completely. Getting rid of Outlook Express and IE6 for the stuff that followed failed miserably as well. The replacements have been terrible. I dont have to elaborate beyond crashing constantly and ruining productivity for general use.
I didn’t manage to make it work. The browser kept showing the ‘You are running the browser in Add-ons disabled mode’ or something like that. Win XP Home SP3. Deinstallation and roll-back made all things work again though.
Meanwhile… What did you do with the pretty innocent Add-on management screen, people? Is this supposed to mean ‘interface’? Or have you fired the people who were supposed to finish this particular screen already?
First – that Beta 2 that HAD MULTIPLE BUGS in add-on mechanism, now THIS.
Talking about Chrome, it doesn’t have it AT ALL, probably they are useless or even harmful for the overall strategy. FF 3 has it in a BROKEN state (probably the people who understood the Netscape code have left), it worked in FF2 somehow, now it doesn’t. The reason why I’m complaining – the autoupdater keeps reminding me to ‘upgrade to the newest and most secure version of Firefox’ even though I’ve checked the ‘Don’t remind EVER’ checkbox several times since last summer. Once in a while FF2 splashes this screen in my face again.
… I have no words.
We need a Savior because we are sinners,
and the wages of sin is death…
Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift:
Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God
is the object of our faith; the only faith that saves
is faith in Him.
The Way of Love
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels,
but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging
cymbal.
And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all
mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith,
so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.
If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body
to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast;
it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its
own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not
rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.
Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things,
endures all things. Love never ends. As for prophecies, they
will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for
knowledge, it will pass away.
For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the
perfect comes, the partial will pass away.
When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a
child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave
up childish ways.
For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face.
Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have
been fully known.
So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three;
but the greatest of these is love.
1 Corinthians 13 ESV
i bless you in yeshuas name,
sdg, tjm
Every thing has its own appropriate place, I wonder how this comment gets posted here, I hope techcrunch guys will look into this and do something, I wont be interested to come and read something like this in a techcrunch site. That is not the reason to come and visit the site.
Firefox still rules for me. i will still check out IE8
Hey, certifiable christian, can you leave the place where people discuss things already? Go believe in what you want somewhere else, fanatic.
Talk about a bunch of stupid script kiddies on this site. Sure, IE6 sucked, but IE8 is more standards compliant than Firefox, Chrome or Safari. I think I will have to change my css exceptions to IF FF now.
Every thing has its own appropriate place, I wonder how this comment gets posted here, I hope techcrunch guys will look into this and do something, I wont be interested to come and read something like this in a techcrunch site. That is not the reason to come and visit the site.
Great! Another polished turd to code for.