Internet Explorer 8

The next version of Internet Explorer is in development and beta copies can be downloaded. What will changes in IE8, especially when compared to Firefox 3 and Opera 9.5?

We can say in general that IE8 will be much closer to the standards and works as other browsers to facilitate the work of webmasters. However, all is not so marvelous and the absolute lack of support for HTML 5 will create a schism on the Web.

What we will find

The ARIA W3C standard

It takes into account accessibility in Ajax applications.

The XDomainRequest object

XDomainRequest was intended to be the successor to the XMLHttpRequest object, it will make possible to exchange data between different websites asynchronously. It is replaced by XHR 2 in Internet Explorer 10.

Activities

These are menus that will, on an element of a Web page, invoke services from other Web pages. These services will operate in relation to the object where it is invoked. A simple example is the possibility of inserting a part of another page into the current page. To do so, the service or text to invoke must be encoded in an XML file with a specific format.

Webslices

This is equivalent to an RSS feed. This allows the user when he visits a page, to be made aware of changes in it, provided that the page supports the format.
The webslices bookmarks will be displayed in the form of a miniature page, with updated content ... An example is illustrated in resources given below.

Zoom

A feature already added to Firefox 3: expand or shrink the page, keeping the smoothing of characters.

Addons manager

Another function of FF3 to be taken over by IE8.

Crash recovery

When the browser is closed accidentally, it will be possible to restart it and resume the session with all the same pages in tabs.

CSS and DOM

Changes in CSS selectors, DOM methods are innumerable. All this is in conformance with the standard and partially compensates the break with HTML 5.

Emulating IE 7

It will be possible to switch between Internet Explorer 7 and 8 compatibility, for websites not compatible with either version.

Finally, let's say Internet Explorer 8 passes the compatibility test Acid2.

What you will not find

There is no chance in the state of the project that we can find the following:

HTML 5

The new format is partially implemented by other browsers. It is designed for Web applications. Microsoft should conform to some parts of the standard, for offline applications for example. The lack of total support for this format could begin the declining of Microsoft's browser.

Canvas

Canvas is defined in HTML 5, it is even essential, it helps draw with commands on a Web page, thus creating a graphical user interface, a game, graphs... It is implemented in other browsers.

Conclusion

Despite its willingness to bring standards, Microsoft seeks above all to protect its monopoly by prohibiting the emergence of a standard for Web applications, the market probably the most active in the years to come. On the contrary the firm banks on Silverlight, whose portability is rather limited, and ignores HTML 5. So the question is whether users will follow this path or prefer to abandon Internet Explorer to take advantage of applications created with Canvas.