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 :-)

IE7 fix list

IEBlog lists all the changes, bug fixes, CSS fixes/additions in Internet Explorer 7. This looks to be a new era for Microsoft when it comes to standards compliance. Well, at least a stepping stone in the right direction.

I have been using beta 3 of IE7 on my laptop, and yes, it is way better than IE6, although there are still some minor quirks and the occasional crash. But when it comes to CSS (and transparent PNG support) it is leaps ahead.

IE7 to be distributed via Windows Update!

This was announced on the Internet Explorer Blog today! So this is both good and bad. It's good because the adoption of IE7 will be much faster than if it was left to users to download proactively. It's bad because us web developers will now have to support IE7, as well as IE6, Firefox, Mozilla, Opera, etc. It's just one more browser to think about.

Of course, it SHOULD be more standards compliant, and therefore more cross browser friendly. Let's hope for a solid launch!

IE7 Beta 3 available for download!

Microsoft just announced the availability of Internet Explorer 7 Beta 3. Here's what you can expect in this release:

• Tab Reordering!


• New Icons


• Authenticated FTP


• Email button added back to toolbar


• Magnify images with a simple magnifying glass icon


• Refresh all feeds


• Mark feeds as read


• Keyboard shortcuts


• Security fixes


• Improved printing

Microsoft reccomends uninstalling any previous beta release of IE7 before installing this version.

IE7 Beta 2 released

The official IE Blog announced that IE7 Beta 2 is now released. This is a quote from their blog:

We acted on a lot of the feedback and bug reports from the previous public releases. In particular, I feel good about changes we made based on reports from web developers around some CSS behaviors, application compatibility feedback, reliability data (yes, we do analyze the information that comes when you click “Send Error Report”), and user experience feedback. People on the team will post additional details about changes over the next few days.

I think it's definitely worth a look!