In This Issue...

• Introduction
• Microsoft Backflips on Browser Version Targeting
• Standards Support in Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1
• New Technical Articles
• Techy Forum Threads
• More Techy Blog Entries

ektron
What do you want your website to do?

Ektron CMS400.NET

• Corporate Web Site: Put authoring in the hands of your subject matter experts
  
• Intranet: support inter-departmental communication
  
• Social Networking Platform: Make your site an online destination
  
• Web 2.0 Toolbox: Make your site more interactive & engaging
  
• Ektron Starter Sites: Build your site faster and smarter.

Introduction

Hi, Tech Timers! Microsoft has made my job easy this issue—Internet Explorer 8 beta 1 is out, and there's plenty to talk about.

But before I dive into what's new in every developer's favorite browser (cough!), how about I take a second to tell you what's new at SitePoint?

On Monday, we launched our second free, online reference for web designers: the SitePoint HTML Reference (beta).

The first was the SitePoint CSS Reference, which we launched through an elaborate series of private betas over two months. This time, we're hanging it all out there: the SitePoint HTML Reference (beta) is available to anyone and everyone—warts and all.

We'd certainly appreciate any comments you may have! Ian Lloyd, the author of the reference will be working with SitePoint technical editor Toby Somerville to incorporate all your feedback as quickly as possible over the next few weeks.

By the time they're done, we'll have the most detailed, comprehensive, and up-to-date reference on HTML around.

And now, on with the show...

Microsoft Backflips on Browser Version Targeting

Last issue, I reported that Microsoft was considering community feedback regarding its controversial stance on browser version targeting. Developers the world over had spoken out against Microsoft's plans to default to IE7 rendering in IE8. Few had expected it to do any good. All that changed last week when Microsoft announced it had changed its mind.

SitePoint's Matt Magain reported in the SitePoint Web Tech blog:

I had to double-check today’s date when I loaded up the IEBlog this morning.

Once I’d confirmed that it in fact wasn’t April 1st, I continued reading, transfixed. Dean Hachamovitch, General Manager of Internet Explorer, had announced that Microsoft had changed their mind about browser version targeting.

"We’ve decided that IE8 will, by default, interpret web content in the most standards compliant way it can. This decision is a change from what we’ve posted previously. Microsoft recently published a set of Interoperability Principles. Thinking about IE8’s behavior with these principles in mind, interpreting web content in the most standards compliant way possible is a better thing to do."

In addition to referencing Microsoft’s recent public commitment to interoperability, he also cited feedback from the community as a factor in the decision. He was careful to remind developers of the reasons why Microsoft were initially convinced that defaulting to IE7’s Standards rendering mode was the only option — a decision made in consultation with the Web Standards Project and leading figures like the king of web standards himself.

The fact that Microsoft have made this decision signifies a couple of things:

• That they take this interoperability business seriously. Making such a big scene about openness and standards is one thing, but to, at the same time, require that developers add proprietary tags to their markup in order to trigger standards mode was entirely hypocritical.
• That the Web really is owned by the people—not Microsoft, not WaSP, and not A List Apart. The Web Standards Project might have decided that defaulting to IE7’s standards mode for time eternal was good enough, but thankfully enough members of the community voiced their concerns via comments, blog posts and articles like the one by Jeremy Keith for them to pay attention and reconsider all the issues at hand.

Wait—do you hear that sound?

That, my friends, is the cries of joy being uttered by web developers all over the world—web developers who still remember how painful IE6 has made their jobs, and who were reticent and insulted at being asked to add a proprietary tag to satisfy one modern browser’s demands.

Huge kudos to Microsoft for making the right decision. You can dance around like a monkey and screaming Developers, developers, developers! all you want. But it’s actions like this that make us stand up and listen.

And in this particularly relieved developer’s case, applaud.

Read the blog entry:

Web Tech Blog: Technically Speaking by Matt Magain Microsoft Backflips on Browser Version Targeting (9 comments)

Windows Server 2008 Hosting Special Offer!

Get the very latest in Microsoft's web hosting lineup From HostMySite.com!

The NEW Windows Server 2008:

• 2x80 GB SATA Drives RAID 1
• 2x80 GB SATA Drives RAID 1
• 2 GB RAM
• Core2 Duo Processor
• Bandwidth x2000 GB
• 100% Uptime Guarantee

All this and 24x7x365 expert phone support for only $199 per month.

Standards Support in Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1

Within a week of Microsoft announcing its huge backflip on IE8's default rendering mode, it released IE8 beta 1 with the promised change built in ... and a whole lot more!

When Microsoft's best and brightest took the stage at MIX08 last week, we all knew we'd be hearing about Internet Explorer 8. If we were lucky, we might even get to see Internet Explorer 8 in action. But Microsoft took us all by surprise, releasing a public beta of the new browser for is to download immediately and try for ourselves!

Though it is still a work in progress, IE8 beta 1 already represents a huge leap forward in standards support. The new layout engine makes incredible strides in the area of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), and for JavaScript developers there are significant gains in performance and compatibility with Document Object Model (DOM) standards.

For the first time since IE6's release, Microsoft has even managed to leapfrog standards support provided by the other major browsers in some areas!

There are plenty of details available for interested developers. In CSS Improvements in Internet Explorer 8, Microsoft details the new style features in the browser:

• support for data URIs, which let you embed small images directly within your style sheets for improved performance
• much less buggy CSS floats, which has enabled Microsoft to abolish the hasLayout hack previously used to work around these bugs.
• correct support for margin collapsing
• support for generated content, including automatic counters, using :before and :after pseudo-elements.
• support for the :focus pseudo-class
• support for CSS outlines (borders that don't affect layout)
• orphan, widow, and page break control in print output
• support for CSS tables, enabling much easier and more powerful page layout with CSS
• and many more smaller improvements!

The addition of CSS tables support, as I predicted last issue, will radically simplify the process of page layout using CSS. I was pleased to see that my three-column layout example using CSS tables renders perfectly in IE8 beta 1.

In addition to the improvements already in beta 1, Microsoft has announced it plans to have full support for CSS 2.1 by the time Internet Explorer 8 is released! If it succeeds in this, it will be the first browser vendor to do so.

And these CSS improvements are just the tip of the iceberg. Improvements for developers in IE8 beta 1 can be seen in almost every part of the browser:

• The IE Developer Toolbar has been greatly enhanced. Its CSS debugging and live editing features are now just about on par with the much-loved Firebug extension for Firefox. And the toolbar is now built into the browser by default!
• JavaScript has gotten a big speed boost, and Microsoft has fixed the notorious circular reference memory leak.
• The Document Object Model (DOM), the primary API used by JavaScript developers, is now much more standards compliant, bringing it up to the same level found in the other major browsers.
• IE8 supports the W3C's new Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA) standard, enabling accessibility tools like screen readers to work with slick, JavaScript-powered user interface elements.

There simply isn't room to give all the improvements in IE8 beta 1 their due in this space. If you want to get up to speed, the best place to start is the What's New In Internet Explorer 8 article at MSDN.

It's been a long time since Internet Explorer exceeded anyone's expectations, but with IE8 beta 1 it has certainly done that and more. Now it's up to all of us web developers to start playing with all these new features to discover what will be possible once Internet Explorer 8 hits the streets!

Read the blog entry:

Web Tech Blog: Technically Speaking by Kevin Yank Standards Support in Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1

As you can see, we've all got plenty of work ahead of us in order to get up to speed on everything Internet Explorer 8 will add to our tool boxes. I'm off to keep playing with it now.

If you've made any discoveries about IE8 beta, or if you've done any work on your site to get it to work in the new browser, feel free to drop me a line so I can share your thoughts with the rest of our readers next issue!

Kevin Yank
techtimes@sitepoint.com
Editor, The SitePoint Tech Times

Morae: Usability Testing for Software & Web Sites.

An all-digital tool that enables you to:

• Quickly identify website and software design problems
• Affordably conduct user testing. Quickly calculate metrics & graph results.
• Deliver professional results in a fraction of the time.

Help Your Friends Out

People you care about can benefit from the wealth of information on new and maturing technologies available on the Internet. Help them learn how to do it by forwarding them this issue of the Tech Times!