This had to be the funniest thing to happen today for Microsoft. The newly released IE8 Beta 1 blocks access to Windows Update if you prefer to run it from the browser. If you visit the Windows Update site from IE8 this is what you get..

Thank you for your interest in obtaining updates from our site.

To use this site, you must be running Microsoft Internet Explorer 5 or later.

To upgrade to the latest version of the browser, go to the Internet Explorer Downloads website.

If you prefer to use a different web browser, you can obtain updates from the Microsoft Download Center or you can stay up to date with the latest critical and security updates by using Automatic Updates. To turn on Automatic Updates:

1. Click Start, click Control Panel, and then click Security.
2. Click Security Center, and then make sure Automatic updating is turned on.

To enhance the security and performance of your computer, make sure Windows automatic updating is not turned off.

I was kinda shocked to see that message, but again IE8 is in beta and errors like this are bound to happen. Well at the moment the solution is to emulate IE7 Mode and access Windows Update. Meanwhile Microsoft is updating the Windows Update Site to support IE8.

For curiosity sake I checked the HTTP User Agents of both IE7 and IE8 and here’s what I got :

IE7 : Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0; SLCC1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.04506; InfoPath.2; Zune 2.0)

IE8 : Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 6.0; SLCC1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.04506; InfoPath.2; Zune 2.0)

Pratically there’s no difference in the User Agent Strings other than the browser version. Come on Microsoft do you need so much time to just add one User Agent Check on Windows Update site. Seems silly to me…

Via Computer World

I’m pretty sure you have all heard about Internet Explorer 8 either here or elsewhere. The 1st Beta of IE8 was released to public today and I quickly downloaded and I’ve been playing with it the whole day long. Being a long time Firefox browser, it was like ages since I used Internet Explorer. I’ve been a Firefox fan since the 1.2 days. So coming back to IE8 after such a long time was an experience in itself for me. Anyway’s I’d better cut the crap and focus on the issue.

I installed it on Vista and the Installation went on without any problems. But one thing I don’t understand is the amount of time it took to Install IE8 on my PC. It hardly takes a couple of minutes for Firefox or Opera to install but it took over 15 minutes for IE8 to install complete with a system restart. Surely Microsoft you don’t need to be treating your users like this right?

Installation woes apart, the first time I started IE8 I was greeted with a pleasing welcome page, but it was hardly effective in convincing me to use IE8. Microsoft needs to work on improving its welcome page though (you can access it here). The page is pretty thin in content and there is hardly any compelling reason to make me feel like switching. But let me also add here, that IE8 while being in beta is the fastest Internet Explorer I’ve used all my life.

Well the two features that really caught my eye other than being standards compliant were :

• Activities

Activities a feature that allows users to select some text and pass it to a web service to define it (Dictionary.com, Answers.com and similar), translate it, get a map, blog it or submit it to a social bookmarking site like Reddit or digg.

For example have a look at the screenshot below

• WebSlices

Developers can mark parts of webpages as “WebSlices” and enable users to monitor information they rely on as they move about the web. With a click in the Favorites bar, users see rich “WebSlice” visuals and developers establish a valuable, persistent end-user connection.

The above mentioned features really caught me unawares, as I wasn’t expecting such kind of innovation coming out of Microsoft labs after so many years. Webslices has a lot of potential in my opinion and I would love to see it in Firefox too either in the core or as an addon.

The crash recovery features are the best I’ve seen on any browser so far. IE8 is able to close just the tab that hangs up and recover it thanks to its architecture that runs each tab in a separate thread. But there is a catch here, IE8 cannot save the data that you enter in the form fields . But I guess that feature will be added in the future when the product matures.

I am still poking around the browser to see if I can find anything interesting. Microsoft has finally added Developer Tools to IE8. This should be a helpful for developers with DOM, CSS and script inspectors and debuggers similar to one that we already have in Firefox 2.

Yes I heard you guys. Finally IE8 does pass the Acid2 test which is a good news for Web Designers everywhere. But now that IE8 has finally cleared the Acid2 hurdle the Acid3 Test awaits it. I tested IE8 on the Acid3 test page, and it fared very very poorly in comparison with the latest builds of Firefox 3 and Safari. Here are the results of my test in default settings :

• Firefox 3 Beta : 67/100
• Safari : 80/100
• IE 8 : 17/100 (Unbelievable right?)

So clearly the IE team has a lot of work to do, before releasing the final version of IE8. Hopefully IE8 will mark the beginning of a new era in the history of Internet.

If you are looking to give IE8 a try then follow the download links below and give it a try.

• IE8 Beta 1 for Windows Vista & Windows Server 2008
• IE8 Beta 1 for Windows Vista x64 & Windows Server 2008 x64
• IE8 Beta 1 for Window XP SP2
• IE8 Beta 1 for Windows Server 2003 SP2
• IE8 Beta 1 for Windows Server 2003 SP2 x64 & Windows XP SP2 Pro x64

What do you guys think about IE8? Do you think it will manage to capture the lost marketshare from Firefox?

Well the Whole Blogosphere has been talking about IE8 Clearing the Acid2 test. Lets hear to what the IE8 team has to say about the milestone :

As a team, we’ve spent the last year heads down working hard on IE8. Last week, we achieved an important milestone that should interest web developers. IE8 now renders the “Acid2 Face” correctly in IE8 standards mode.

Before I answer the question that I raised in the title of this post, let me tell you what the Acid2 test is all about :

Acid2 is designed to determine how compliant a given web browser is with published HTML. A fully compliant browser displays a smiling yellow face. However, non-compliant browsers show varying degrees of garbage.

Now coming to the announcement regarding IE8 clearing the Acid2 test. Let me tell you IE8 cleared the test when all other standards compliant browsers like Firefox 3, Opera, Safari failed to clear the test. Yes doesn’t that sound suspicious enough.. Yes it does, the Web Standards team has made some changes to Acid2 Test Page, that has made the test to fail for most Standards compliant browsers.

• What changed that broke the test?

It looks like an object element that’s pointing to a non-existent page (http://webstandards.org/404/) should be falling through, but that page is now returning a response status of 200 (success) instead of 404. Was it previously correctly returning a 404 response?

Perhaps this test should be hosted on a separate server, instead of coexisting with a live site like WebStandards.org, so that future mishaps like this don’t happen.

Well that is it, the Acid2 test page is broken at the moment, so I’m not entirely sure if the Microsoft team was a little too early with the announcement. They’d probably try out the alternate test page over at http://www.hixie.ch/tests/evil/acid/002/ and see if IE8 passes the test.

Right now, I’m not entirely convinced about the announcement from the IE8 team. While adherence to Web Standards is a good thing, it wouldn’t be nice if Microsoft announced now that IE8 clears Acid2 only to later discover that it doesn’t.

While Microsoft lovers will hate me for writing this. But I’d love IE8 to stick to Web Standards when it is released. All the best to the Microsoft team with the IE8 project, atleast I’m sticking out with Firefox so I’ve nothing to worry.

For more details see the discussion over at BugZilla.

Unfortunately Microsoft has locked the thread and deleted all the contents of it. But I somehow managed to read the contents of it and here are the features that are expected to make it into the upcoming Windows and Internet Explorer. Reading the blueprints gives you an Idea what Microsoft really is thinking about its competition. Microsoft is well aware of the challenge it faces from Linux and Firefox and they plan to incorporate features from the two families into the upcoming versions of IE8 and Windows Vienna..

Here is the leaked features list :

• For IE : Undo Close Tab (like Firefox)
• For IE : Saving and Restoring sessions (like Firefox)
• Windows Vienna : Virtual Desktops (like Linux)
• Windows Vienna : The Ability to Rearrange items on the task bar

Also included in the post at forums says that Windows Vienna’s theming will be completely customizable and will forever change the way People look at Windows. The most interesting thing about the new version of Windows would be virtualization that will be prominent for “legacy apps”, i.e. all applications not specifically written for Window Vienna or in .NET will be run in a separate virtual machine. This is comparable to how Mac OS X handled Mac OS 9. Windows Vienna will also feature “Windows Core”, the ability to separate GUI and console from each other as in Windows Server 2008.

Expect to see “Windows Vienna” on store shelves some time in 2009. The final name, however, has not been revealed in the forum post.

Here are the links to the leaked threads….

http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=323949
http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=323988