In the recent news it was announced that IE 8 Passes the ACID 2 test and will render in standard mode by default. The folks at Neowin have managed to uncover links to Internet Explorer 8 Download page and also a list of upcoming features in IE 8.

Here is the link to download Internet explorer 8 beta 1 and a list of new features in IE 8.

Note: The download links currently don’t work try them later.

Below are the list of new features found in Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1.

Whats New For Users

Activities

Activities are contextual services to quickly access a service from any webpage. Users typically copy and paste from one webpage to another. Internet Explorer 8 Activities make this common pattern easier to do.

WebSlices

WebSlices is a new feature for websites to connect to their users by subscribing to content directly within a webpage. WebSlices behave just like feeds where clients can subscribe to get updates and notify the user of changes.

Favorites Bar

In Internet Explorer 7, the Links bar provided users with one-click access to their favorite sites. The Links bar has undergone a complete makeover for Internet Explorer 8. It has been renamed the Favorites bar to enable users to associate this bar as a place to put and easily access all their favorite web content such as links, feeds, WebSlices and even Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents.

Automatic Crash Recovery

Automatic Crash Recovery (ACR) is a feature of Windows^®Internet Explorer^® 8 that can help to prevent the loss of work and productivity in the unlikely event of the browser crashing or hanging. The ACR feature takes advantage of the Loosely-Coupled Internet Explorer feature to provide new crash recovery capabilities, such as tab recovery, which will minimize interruptions to users’ browsing sessions.

Improved Phishing Filter

Internet Explorer 7 introduced the Phishing Filter, a feature which helps warn users when they visit a Phishing site. Phishing sites spoof a trusted legitimate site, with the goal of stealing the user’s personal or financial information. For Internet Explorer 8, we are building on the success of the Phishing Filter with a more comprehensive feature called the “Safety Filter.”

Whats New For Developer

Read more here.  

Better AJAX Development

1. AJAX Navigation enables users to navigate back and forth without leaving the AJAX application and could be used navigating a page without performing a traditional full navigation. This allows websites to trigger an update to browser components like the address bar by setting the window.location.hash value, firing an event to alert components in the page and even creating an entry in the travel log.
2. DOM Storage is a simple-to-use method for storing and retrieving strings of key/value pair data. Data can be stored per tab instance for a session or persisted to the local machine. This allows pages to cache text on the machine which reduces the effect of network latencies by providing faster access to pre-cached data. Several innovative uses are possible. For example, use this in combination with the new network connectivity event to allow a page to cache data if it detects that the computer is offline.
3. Connectivity events allow websites to check when the user is connected to the network and receive notification of connectivity changes.
4. Six connections per host instead of two for broadband scenarios and a scriptable property allow for more improved performance by allowing parallelization of downloads in Internet Explorer 8. In addition, this increases functionality by ensuring a request is not blocked to a host if two connections already exist. Websites can optimize their downloads based on a scriptable property.
5. XMLHTTPRequest Enhancements include a timeout property that can be set to cancel the request if necessary, allowing developers to manage the request better.

Cross-domain communication is an integral part of AJAX development and mashup Web applications. Internet Explorer 8 includes two features to help you build cross-domain communications that are safe and easy to implement:

• With Cross-domain Request (XDR), developers can create cross-site data aggregation scenarios. Similar to the XMLHttpRequest object but with a simpler programming model, this request, called XDomainRequest, is the easiest way to make anonymous requests to third-party sites that support XDR and opt in to making their data available across domains. Three lines of code will have you making basic cross-site requests. This will ensure data aggregation for public sites (such as blogs) will be simple, secure and fast.
• Cross-document Messaging (XDM) APIs allow communication between documents from different domains through IFrames in a way that is easy, secure and standardized.

DOM Core Improvements

• Internet Explorer’s object model does not distinguish properties from attributes. This makes it impossible for a property (.href) to return a different value than an attribute (getAttribute(’href’)).
• Core attribute operations are broken: Getters and setters behave inconsistently given certain parameters. An oft-cited example is getAttribute(’style’), which returns the style object rather than a string as expected.

Internet Explorer 8 fixes many of the cross-browser inconsistencies in these two areas. Specifically, the following bugs in core areas have been fixed:

• Separate URL handing for properties and attributes such that relative URLs can be retrieved via an attribute and absolute URLs can be retrieved via a property.
• Fix element’s attribute array modifiers—getAttribute, setAttribute, and removeAttribute have cross-browser compatible implementations.
• Other attribute-related API fixes implemented.

Platform Performance Improvements

Internet Explorer 8 includes several changes that improve the performance of Web sites. These changes affect many Internet Explorer subsystems, including the HTML parser, CSS rule processing, markup-tree manipulation as well as the JScript garbage collector and runtime.

The majority of these changes will affect performance only, with little to no functional effect on most Web sites. However, they may expose aspects of Web sites that depend on the timing of operations or performance of the browser. In addition, those Web sites that unknowingly access objects after they are freed may find such access failing in Internet Explorer 8.

Internet Explorer 8’s performance improvements affect each site loaded in Internet Explorer 8 regardless of the chosen rendering mode.

Circular Memory Leak Mitigation

Internet Explorer 8 includes improvements to memory management. These improvements mitigate memory leaks that were previously created by circular references between JScript objects and DOM objects.

This feature may affect the behavior of webpages that depend on garbage memory that, only as the result of a memory leak, existed in previous versions of Internet Explorer. In Internet Explorer 8, these pages will reference unallocated memory and generate a fault.

This feature affects each website displayed in Internet Explorer 8 regardless of the site’s chosen rendering mode.

HTML Improvements and ACID2

HTML uses elements to represent both structure and meaning in a document. To help developers take full advantage of the elements that HTML 4 offers, and to better provide the semantic meaning intended by Web author, Internet Explorer 8 has upgraded support of the following presentational elements:

• The P element: Represents a logical paragraph.
• The OBJECT element: May represent any object including images.

Through improved support of these HTML elements, Web developers may build more expressive and accessible HTML markup.

Related posts:

1. Internet Explorer 9 and SilverLight 4 Announced Breaking News
2. Its Official Windows Vista SP1 To Be Out In Mid July
3. IE 8 Is Going To Kick Every Browsers Butt
4. New CSS 3.0 Features That Web Designers Would Love To Play With
5. Flock The Web 2.0 Social Browser To Be Forever In Beta?

© Arpit Jacob for Clazh, 2008. | Permalink | 11 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Catergories: Microsoft, Software, Technology Tags: Web-Design, Web-Development, Web-Standards, Windows

Acid2 is a test page for web browsers published by The Web Standards Project (WaSP). It has been written to help browser vendors make sure their products correctly support features that web designers would like to use. These features are part of existing standards but haven’t been interoperably supported by major browsers. Acid2 tries to change this by challenging browsers to render Acid2 correctly before shipping.

Acid2 is a complex web page. It uses features that are not in common use yet, because of lack of support, and it crams many tests into one page. The aim has been to make it simple for developers and users to check if a browser passes the test. If it does, the smiley face on the left will appear. If something is wrong, the face will be distorted and/or shown partly in red.

Here are a couple of things I predict about IE 8.

• A Much faster rendering engine for Both JavaScript and Web Pages.
• Cooler, Skinnable and Better User Interface.
• Better Extensibility like Firefox.
• Will use lesser memory.
• More Security Features.

This comment on DIGG says it all.

Wow, a story about Microsoft and Internet Explorrer and most all of the comments in here are positive? I Never thought I’d see that!

Related posts:

1. Opera Sucks, At Least Some People Have Sense
2. Download Internet Explorer 8 Beta, New Features In IE8
3. New CSS 3.0 Features That Web Designers Would Love To Play With
4. Wow Apple Releases Safari Browser For Windows
5. Microsoft’s Secret Run Office 2007 in any Browser And Kill Google Docs, Zoho

© Arpit Jacob for Clazh, 2007. | Permalink | 14 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Catergories: Microsoft, Software, Web-Design Tags: Web-Design, Web-Development, Web-Standards

Today we have taken a stand. Opera has filed a formal complaint with the European Commission to force Microsoft to support open Web standards in its Web browser, Internet Explorer. We believe that Microsoft has harmed Web standards by refusing to support them; Microsoft often participates in creating Web standards, promoting them, and even promising to implement them. Despite their talent, however, they refuse to support Web standards correctly. For example, Internet Explorer is the only modern Web browser that does not support Acid2.

Sure IE 7 doesn’t have the best support for Web Standards but at least Microsoft is trying. Hey I am web designer and I hate IE. But lets not forget that IE was at one time the most advanced and sophisticated Browser heck IE was the first to implement the concept of AJAX.

The XMLHttpRequest concept was originally developed by Microsoft as part of Outlook Web Access 2000, as a server side API call. At the time, it was not a standards-based web client feature; however, de facto support for it was implemented by many major web browsers. The Microsoft implementation is called XMLHTTP. It has been available since the introduction of Internet Explorer 5.0[5] and is accessible via JScript, VBScript and other scripting languages supported by IE browsers.

I like it how Peter-Paul Koch, puts it.

Nonetheless, I have to point out the potentially disastrous consequences of “asking the European Commission to require Microsoft to follow fundamental and open Web standards accepted by the Web-authoring communities.”

Opera is begging a political body to take control of web standards.

Also I find Eric Meyers Response pretty awesome.

Look, the time to file this motion and make this appeal was in 2005, when Internet Explorer had been dead in the water for years and it was genuinely holding back web design. Then there’d have been a case to make. When IE7 came out in late 2006, it wasn’t a great leap forward for web development, but it did bring IE more or less in line with where browsers were at the time—which was, frankly, a pretty large leap. After all, they were doing five years of catch-up with a pretty small team. Now we have IE8 in development, and there is a real chance that it could push standards support forward in a significant way.

Its pretty clear Opera has a clear conflict of interest.

As has been widely reported, software developer Opera, has filed an antitrust complaint with the EU to force Microsoft to support open Web standards in Internet Explorer and to carry alternative browsers pre-installed on Windows. What has not yet been discussed is the devastating and destabilizing effect that this will undoubtably have on the development of future CSS.

Following Opera’s action, today I am calling on Bert Bos, chairman of the CSS Working Group, and those higher up within the W3C including Sir Tim Berners Lee, to immediately disband the CSS Working Group in its current form. I am asking for immediate action to be taken on the formulation of a replacement CSS Working Group that will include new members who are not the representatives of browser vendors. Instead the new CSS Working Group should consist of people, including some who already serve on the group, who are committed to seeing the development of CSS3 succeed because that is central to the success of our profession. This new group need not start from scratch, but should instead build uponn the significant advances and hard work of the current CSS Working Group.

Related posts:

1. IE 8 Is Going To Kick Every Browsers Butt
2. FireFox 3.0 And Opera Have Inbuilt Support For Video, SVG Is Pretty Cool
3. Download Internet Explorer 8 Beta, New Features In IE8
4. New CSS 3.0 Features That Web Designers Would Love To Play With
5. Wow Apple Releases Safari Browser For Windows

© Arpit Jacob for Clazh, 2007. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Catergories: Internet, Software, Web-Design Tags: Web-Design, Web-Development, Web-Standards

1. All of them use a some form of Proprietary XML (A super set of HTML) to define the User Interface.
2. The emphasis on the use of existing Web technologies like DOM, JavaScript and CSS.
3. Cross Platform. (Silverlight for Linux called Moonlight is under development and Adobe AIR will run on Linux once version 1.0 is out)

Some people like to point out that XAML is a ripoff of XUL. I don’t fully agree with them, but I am sure Microsoft did borrow some ideas from XUL, but that’s technology my friend, ideas are meant to be copied if someone can do it better then they deserve to win.

One thing that differentiates Silverlight and Adobe AIR from XUL is that both of them come with a runtime engine based on their own advanced Proprietary technology and programming languages i.e. .NET and Flash which greatly enhances their capabilities. And this is where both Silverlight and AIR beat Prism /XUL hands down.

Its interesting to see that Mozilla is pushing Prism as an answer to Silverlight and Adobe AIR. I frankly feel its a rather poor attempt since I don’t see much difference between FireFox and Prism, i.e, Prism is just a stripped down version of FireFox.

XUL had a very good chance at taking a shot at Silverlight and AIR long before they had even come out. XUL, Canvas and SVG could have made a really powerful combination.

Some of the key reasons why XUL fails to compete

• Lack of proper documentation Examples.
• No marketing.
• No advanced programming capabilities.
• Inability to package as a Offline desktop Application.
• A Good IDE. (You can’t expect Web Developers to waste time programming in Notepad)

Out of the three I feel Adobe AIR holds a lot of promise, Silverlight is too tied in to Microsoft own platform and they don’t seem committed to making it work on Linux (if they were they would have developed it they selves instead of giving off the work to Miguel de Icaza and the Mono developers) also it is not possible to native develop desktop applications. Prism/XUL is too raw and unfocused to be considered a worthy competitor.

Related posts:

1. Microsoft Launches Killer RIA Say Goodbye to Flash
2. The SilverLight Poster and more on Silverlight and Microsoft
3. Internet Explorer 9 and SilverLight 4 Announced Breaking News
4. Microsoft We Screwed Up Windows Mobile, iPhone Competitor Silverlight Mobile 2010
5. FireFox 3.0 And Opera Have Inbuilt Support For Video, SVG Is Pretty Cool

© Arpit Jacob for Clazh, 2007. | Permalink | 6 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Catergories: Internet, Open Source, Technology Tags: Programming, Silverlight, Web-Design, Web-Development, Web-Standards

Multi Columns

Currently when you create a multi columned layout i.e 2 column or 3 column layout you need to specify individual and separate DIV HTML elements to achieve the desired effect. But in CSS 3.0 you can achieve this with a single CSS declaration like this

DIV {width: 400px;column-count: 4;
column-width: 100px;
column-gap: 10px;column-rule: none;
}

This is actually possible in FireFox but it is not Standard CSS 3.0 you’ll need to use FireFox Specify code in your CSS to achieve the effect. Example is given below.

-moz-column-count: 3;
-moz-column-gap: 1em;
-webkit-column-count: 3;
-webkit-column-gap: 1em;


Multi-Background

Currently it is not possible to put multiple background Images to the same HTML element but in CSS 3.0 you can easily do this.

background: url('http://www.clazh.com/images/body-top.gif')
top left no-repeat,
url('http://www.clazh.com/images/banner_fresco.jpg')
top 11px no-repeat,
url('http://www.clazh.com/images/body-bottom.gif')
bottom left no-repeat,
url('http://www.clazh.com/images/body-middle.gif')
left repeat-y;


Zebra Tables

You can easily do zebra table without the need for JavaScript or putting CSS Classes on individual Table Rows to give alternate colours.

tr:nth-child(2n+1) /* represents every odd row of a HTML table */;
tr:nth-child(odd) /* same */
tr:nth-child(2n) /* represents every even row of a HTML table */
tr:nth-child(even) /* same *//* Alternate paragraph colours in CSS */
p:nth-child(4n+1) { color: navy; }
p:nth-child(4n+2) { color: green; }
p:nth-child(4n+3) { color: maroon; }
p:nth-child(4n+4) { color: purple; }


Rounded Corners

How about the ability to render the ever popular and so called Web 2.0 rounded Corners for a box(html Element) with just a single line of CSS.

-webkit-border-radius: 5px;
-moz-border-radius: 5px;
-khtml-border-radius: 5px;
border-radius: 5px;


Opacity

Currently almost all browsers support their own version and syntax for opacity. Here is the CSS 3.0 Standard code for opacity

/* IE 8 */
-ms-filter: "progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Alpha(Opacity=50)";
/* IE 5-7 */
filter: alpha(opacity=50);
/* Netscape */
-moz-opacity: 0.5;
/* Safari 1.x */
-khtml-opacity: 0.5;
/* Good browsers */
opacity: 0.5;


Resize

Ability to resize a HTML Element automatically

div.resize {width: 100px;
height: 100px;
border: 1px solid;
resize: both;
overflow: auto;
}


Text Effects

Text effects like drop shadow and Text Overflow.

color: #fff;background-color: #fff;
text-shadow: 2px 2px 2px #000;
text-overflow: ellipsis-word;


Related posts:

1. Download Internet Explorer 8 Beta, New Features In IE8
2. Cool Hidden Features In Wordpress 2.1 Editor

© Arpit Jacob for Clazh, 2007. | Permalink | 16 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Catergories: Featured, Web-Design Tags: Web-Design, Web-Development, Web-Standards