Microsoft has reduced a major bottleneck for web developers in
its latest Internet Explorer browser by making it compliant with
web standards, which could dramatically reduce the time users take
to test browser compatibility.
The software giant released a feature-complete beta version
yesterday on its website.
Ryan Servatius, senior product manager at the Internet Explorer
business in Microsoft, said two of the main design criteria of the
product are backwards compatibility and interoperability with web
standards. "The core web rendering engine in IE8 is compliant with
web standards, but we have also tried to maintain compatibility
with sites written specifically for older versions of IE."
He said that if IE8 web browser users access a site designed for
one of the older versions, they can press a compatibility button on
the browser toolbar, to reload the web page in "compatibility
mode."
Property search site
RightMove has been
working closely with Microsoft on IE8 compatibility. Rightmove
product director Peter Brooks-Johnson, said, "At the moment we have
to support about four previous versions of Internet Explorer,
Firefox and Safari. It always foxes me why different browsers are
incompatible." He said it required a lot of developer effort to
test the site with the different browsers. This effort could be
reduced If IE8 is able to display HTML pages that comply with web
standards accurately.
However, Microsoft has needed to balance compatibility with
support for web standards. "Sites that are specifically written for
IE will not display properly," said David Mitchell, senior
vice-president for research at Microsoft. "Many people probably
will not ever use the compatibility button that Microsoft has built
into IE8, which means some sites will not work and the user will
get a message saying the site needs Internet Explorer."
IE8 also offers
productivity improvements and security measures designed to
protect the privacy of end-users by disabling cookies that keep
track of which websites they have visited.