Microsoft’s Latest Internet Explorer Shaping up to be Not Evil

MS recently released the Beta 2 of their latest iteration of Internet Explorer, and it’s looking pretty nice. It boasts substantially higher security and a wealth of new features (most of which are already available in other browsers).

The most important advance is IE8’s promised standards compatibility (enabled by default). This is huge. Why? Because the code the powers the internet is supposed to comply with certain standards in order to ensure that different web browsers are able to view the same content with comparable success. However, since IE has dominate the browser market (over 90% market share, until recently), Microsoft has somewhat ignored those standards. This means that web developers have to program for two: for IE, and for everyone else.

Several decades (and international lawsuits) later, we have IE8. And it looks good. Here is a balanced review from the folks at Ars Technica. They are generally enthusiastic, though have this interesting criticism:

More disappointing (although not IE8’s fault as such) is just how broken many of Microsoft’s own websites are when forced to use IE8[compatibility] mode…. It would be nice if Microsoft would take a lead here; it will be difficult to convince third parties to update their sites for IE8 if the company cannot itself be bothered to do the same.

Read the whole review.

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