Microsoft announced the launch of Internet Explorer 8 yesterday; I urge everyone to download it as soon as possible, and to encourage their friends to do likewise — especially if their friends are using IE6. It’s great that we have another standards-compliant browser on the market, and I hope that adoption is swift.
What I would really like to see from Microsoft now is a series of iterative releases introducing new standards; rather than waiting three years for IE9, I would much rather wait one year for IE8.1. General manager, Dean Hachamovitch, has stated that there is a commitment on their side as long as test suites exist, so I call on all browser makers and standards bodies to work together to achieve that.
The Internet Explorer team have announced the (first?) release candidate of IE8 (download it here). I used it briefly last night and it seems perfectly stable; I doubt it will change much (if at all) before the final version.
If you know anyone who uses IE as their primary browser, encourage them to update as soon as possible; we need to get everyone onto standards-compliant browsers so we can stop wasting time pandering to IE6.
With IE8 expected to be released in the near future, now’s a good time to make sure you know all about its new features; handily, the latest issue of Code Focus magazine is an IE8 special, with articles on subjects ranging from website compatibility to AJAX performance.
Today is my penultimate day in my current job; next week I’m going on a trip to Spain, and when I get back I’m starting my new job at the award-winning Preloaded agency. My focus will be shifting away from client-side development and onto information architecture; it’s a fantastic challenge for me, and I’m very excited about working on top brands for a top agency.
I’ve been slowly introducing IA into my role over the past three years, and so this is a logical step for me to take. I’ll be sad to leave my current agency, but delighted to be moving to somewhere I’ll be able to focus on what I think are the next hot topics on the web: findability & usability.
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Last night Microsoft announced the release of the second beta of Internet Explorer 8, which is no doubt very similar to the final release version. You can download it from microsoft.com/ie8 (notes on upgrading).
Webmonkey have a nice round-up of the new features, so I won’t bother repeating that; instead, here are my first impressions after an hour or so’s use.
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One of the new features already announced for IE8 is WebSlices; essentially, the ability to subscribe to any part of a web page, even if it doesn’t have an RSS feed. It sounds somewhat similar to Firefox’s Microsummaries feature*, although it’s a) easier to implement, b) more flexible, and c) not buried in the browser where no-one could ever find it.
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