Windows Internet Explorer 8 Beta : The Blogger review

Windows Internet Explorer 8 Beta: Overview

This beta is aimed at web developers and designers to help them take advantage of new features in Internet Explorer 8 that will enhance their websites.

Download IE 8

Features

Activities
Activities are contextual services that provide quick access to external services from any webpage. Activities typically involve one of two types of actions:
* "Look up" information related to data in the current webpage
* "Send" content from the current webpage to another application
WebSlices
Web sites can expose portions of their page as a WebSlice that users can subscribe to and bring that content with them on their links bar wherever they are on the web. Users receive update notifications when the content changes.
Internet Explorer Developer Center
For everything a developer needs to know including technical documentation, white papers, tutorial videos, and sample code.

Opera's antitrust complaint with the EU

The complaint describes how Microsoft is abusing its dominant position by tying its browser, Internet Explorer, to the Windows operating system and by hindering interoperability by not following accepted Web standards. Opera has requested the Commission to take the necessary actions to compel Microsoft to give consumers a real choice and to support open Web standards in Internet Explorer.

More on the Microsoft, opera's history of problems

Modern browsers (including IE, Firefox, Safari, and Opera) sport multiple content-rendering modes – including ones supporting strict interpretation of certain web standards as well as quirks modes needed to offer compatibility with pages that pre-date modern standards.

MS is now going to use IE8 standard as default. Developers who want their pages shown using IE8’s “IE7 Standards mode” will need to request that using a meta tag. This mode switching approach has been criticised by rival developers, such as Opera.

Microsoft's legacy of not sticking to web standards as closely as, for example, Opera, in the past has left it with more problems than other developers in sticking to standards.