Microsoft promises IE 8 Beta 1 with a smiley face in 2008

Stan Beer
Thursday, 20 December 2007 08:51

Opinion and Analysis

While Mozilla moves forward in leaps and bounds getting rave reviews for new beta versions of Firefox 3, Microsoft has promised that beta 1 of Internet Explorer version 8 will be ready by the first half of 2008! After a less than enthusiastic reception and take-up of IE7, 14 months after its release, is there any reason to think that IE8 will succeed where its predecessor failed in halting the meteoric rise of Firefox?

In a video on the Microsoft Developers Network site , IE General Manager Dean Hachamovitch and Architect Chris Wilson boast about how they have been able to pass a compliance test for their new work in progress called ACID 2. Basically, the idea is that IE8 can successfully render web pages correctly that were created in earlier versions of IE as evidenced by the rendering of a smiley face.

Microsoft is talking about the interoperability and standards compliance of its still vaporware new browser. I'm still waiting to hear about how Microsoft intends to address the clear performance (or lack thereof) issues so clearly evident in IE7. It's no accident that about half of IE users are still using IE6, while others continue to defect to Firefox.

Mozilla released Firefox 2 around the same time as Microsoft released IE7 - October 2006. Since that time, Mozilla has released 11 major updates. How many has Microsoft released? Hmm.

Right now I'm posting this article to my blog on iTWire using Firefox 3 Beta 2. Last month, I was posting articles using Firefox 3 Beta 1 which I thought was sensational. Well Beta 2 is even better. However, I was more than happy with Firefox 2, which is still streets ahead of IE7 and keeps gaining market share.

It really should be an embarrassment to Microsoft that in the Internet Age, the company is taking almost as long to develop new Web browsers as it takes to develop new operating systems.

In fact, during the interview mentioned above on MSDN Channel 9, the Microsoft interviewer tacitly acknowledges that as far as the world is concerned it seems as though there is no longer any IE development team at the software company. The embarrassed chuckles from Messrs Hachamovitch and Wilson revealed that it was not really a comfortable subject for them and they hurriedly assured the interviewer that plenty has been going on behind the scenes. This is a Microsoft interview!

So what evidence do we get that Microsoft has been working feverishly to deliver the ultimate next generation browser? A crudely drawn smiley face!

Pardon me if I get back to work testing this excellent beta 2 version of Firefox 3 on various Linux distros and Mac OS X. I know it already works beautifully on Windows.

Finally, a word of advice for the relatively few organizations that still have websites that aren't even compatible with IE7, let alone Firefox - the world has moved on, so develop new sites.