IE8 passes Acid2 test for first time!

The IE Dev Team at Microsoft just announced that they have reached a milestone in development by having a build of IE8 that successfully passes the Acid2 Face Test.

This is a great step for IE's standards compliance. Watch the video interview with some IE devs explaining what this all means.

Welcome, IE7

With tabs, increased security, and better standards support, Microsoft Internet Explorer version 7 makes its debut. Yes, I am aware it was released on Wednesday, the 18th, but I've only just now had the time to write about it :-)

I've been using the betas and release candidate versions for a while, and I quite like it. It took a little getting used to the location of the home button, but I'm there now.

My favorite trick is CTRL-Q. If you have multiple tabs open to various web sites, hitting CTRL-Q shows real time thumbnails (see below)

Click to enlarge

Some sites display very minor visual glitches, but I suspect that may have to do with sites that have made CSS hacks for IE6 that they don't need anymore for IE7.

So far, all sites have been fully functional, better behaved, and faster with IE7. A huge step forward!

Is it better than Firefox? Honestly, I can't say yet. It seems to render pages a lot like Firefox...at least a lot closer than IE6 ever did. Hopefully the days of CSS compromises and workarounds are nearing an end. Of course, we'll still have to support IE6 for some time to come, but with it being released through Windows Update, and Vista coming early next year, I believe IE7 will become the new dominant web browser in a matter of months.

Firefox-like search for IE!

Ever wish you could search web pages inline, like Firefox does, when using Internet Explorer? Well, with Inline Search, by Core-Services, you can! This nifty little add-on provides IE users with a much more useful search facility, and it works for IE5.5 and higher. Now I'm suddenly not so jealous of my Firefox colleagues :-)