Perhaps the most incredible news came Monday when it was announced that the default rendering mode for IE8 will NOT be the legacy engine, but the web standards engine. This is great news for those of us who want the web to move toward interoperability.
I'll be honest, I didn't believe Microsoft when they claimed that
web standards was going to be the default rendering mode. (I mean, I just watched a video
a few weeks ago about how Microsoft doesn't want to break backward compatiblity.) So I installed IE8 Beta 1 and went straight to the Acid 2 test—and to my surprise it worked.
Now the new meta tag I mentioned
has not been disgarded. Rather than rendering with the old engine by
default, and using the meta tag to force "standards mode," Microsoft
has opted to render in "standards mode" by default and using the meta
tag to force IE8 to use the old rendering engine. In other words, if
your site breaks in IE8 you'll need to add the new meta tag to it, or
upgrade your site to follow web standards.
Needless to say, I could not be happier with their decision. If IE8 launches to the public as expected, then web standards should finally be the standard within a few years of the release date.
Developer Tools
The new "Developer Tools" seem to be a fusion of Microsoft's Internet Explorer Developer
Toolbar and Firebug. One of the first things I noticed after
installing IE8 was that the Developer Toolbar no longer works because it's been replaced by Developer Tools. It's a
shame because there are many useful features of the Developer Toolbar
that are currently absent from the new Developer Tools. If you need the toolbar to do your job then I'd recommend not installing IE8 Beta 1 until the Developer Tools have matured.
Anyone who's familiar with Firebugs' CSS tracing capabilities will
probably be disappointed with the Beta 1 offering from Developer Tools.
Unlike Firebug and the Developer Toolbar, you can not manipulate CSS on
the fly. However, I liked Microsoft's new JavaScript debugger better
than Firebug's debugger. What's been missing until now is a good, free
JavaScript debugger for IE that's quick to open and easy to use. If you're
familiar with Visual Studio's debugger you'll have no trouble figuring
out the new JavaScript debugger. I was using it within seconds, whereas
Firebug had took some experimenting to get used to.
For more information on IE8 check out the new Internet Explorer 8 Readiness Toolkit.
Conclusion
If you're a web developer IE8 is definately something to be excited about. However, I uninstalled IE8 and went back to using IE7, the Web Developer Toolbar, and MultipleIEs. The lack of CSS manipulation capabilities in IE8 was disrupting the speed of a project that I am working on. Hopefully, Beta 2 will have better CSS support in the Developer Tools.
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