IE8: Doesn't Completely Suck
March 20th, 2009
If you’re a web developer, you’re going to be interested in the fact that Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 has been released.
There’s a lot of good news: it’s passed the Acid2 test & supports CSS tables, making it the last major browser to achieve both of these. Apparently it’s also more secure than previous versions, although that has yet to be fully tested in the real world. Finally, it’s also faster than previous IE versions, although according to Computerworld, IE8 is still the slowest browser based upon SunSpider benchmarks. In my (very limited) experience, IE8 is significantly faster than previous versions—not dramatically so against Safari or Firefox, however—but more importantly I’m grateful that it hasn’t munged up any of my layouts!
What a difference a few years make: when IE7 came out, it’s only real competition came from Firefox (with Opera as well, of course). It’s now a very full field, with Safari & Chrome freely distributed as well. It’s really great to see such strong competition, and it has to be said that the IE team seem to have done a good job on the browser.
It remains to be seen what the new release will mean for IE’s declining market share; I can’t speak to that. For developers, IE6 was pretty odious & IE7 a bastard step-child of a browser, as it only made half-steps towards standards compliance. IE8 has removed support for HasLayout, the code that trips up most developers, including me.
But… the insta-reviews aren’t positive, and although they’re concentrating mostly upon installation problems, the centre of my concern lies in advanced standards support. There’s still a lot of room for improvement from a developer’s point of view. Whilst the other major browsers have passed the Acid3 test, IE8 still fails, and pretty miserably.
Just as important is the lack of CSS3 support. One might argue that CSS3 isn’t a full recommendation yet, but its development was modularised so browser vendors could start implementing portions as they were completed. And on this score, Safari & Firefox roundly beat IE8. I know I’d love to have multi-column & RGBa support across the board. Yet even if IE8 did support these, it’d be years before we could use them with confidence, that is until older IE versions finally dropped off the face of the earth The fact that the IE team haven’t supported them yet means the day is that much farther away.
Maintaining Older Browsers for Testing
If you’re like me, you’ll have multiple slices of Windows so you can test sites against IE versions. To not get tripped up & accidentally overwrite an IE6 or 7 install because of an automatic update, I’d suggest you install the IE8 blocker toolkit.
5 Responses to “IE8: Doesn't Completely Suck”
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Neil Says:
March 20th, 2009 at 07:04 PM
Have you tried Multiple IE instead of running several Windows images? It lets you run older versions of IE and still use the official updater for the latest version of your ‘proper’ IE installation. I run MIE with XP on Parallels; now I’m just wondering if I can make the move to IE 7 on Multiple IE, and IE 8 as the real deal…
Ray Drainville Says:
March 20th, 2009 at 08:18 PM
Dear Neil,
I’ve no experience with Multiple IE—although I’ve heard of it before. I might be paranoid, but I cannot help thinking that when you try to trick a system in such a way, surely something isn’t going to work right; and when you’re dealing with idiosyncratic, version-dependent layout bugs, you want to represent the “real world” as much as you can. I’m disinclined to add something else to the mix that might cause further confusion.
But I could (oh, so easily) be completely wrong. In your experience with MIE, have you ever noted a difference between a site rendered in it & in a standard IE install?
Best,
Ray
Ray Drainville Says:
March 21st, 2009 at 07:37 PM
Dear Neil,
I’m not sure if this is what you meant by “Multiple IE”, but if it is, note that it’s no longer supported!
Best,
Ray
Nick Hodge Says:
March 22nd, 2009 at 10:28 PM
Thanks for the balanced post on IE8
re>ACID. ACID2/3 is a test of a browser’s capability, not a formal standards compliance check.
With ACID3, there are dependencies on CSS3 working draft standards which makes it difficult to fully support. If Microsoft did implement all the features required for ACID3; then fast forward 5-7 years. CSS3 changes in the process of going Recommended W3C standard. There would be a browser still installed on many desktops (especially in large organisations) that complied with a now non-existent standard. >> This sounds rather like the IE6 position now.
For cross-browser checking, try out SuperPreview http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=8E6AC106-525D-45D0-84DB-DCCFF3FAE677&displaylang=en
Microsoft also has VMs that have older browsers on older OS’s you can download and use (free as in beer) for testing.
Ray Drainville Says:
March 23rd, 2009 at 12:25 PM
Dear Nick,
I’m glad you liked the post. Whilst I’m not happy with much of MS’s work, I think they did a really great job on IE8 & they deserve recognition for it.
re: ACID tests. True enough, they’re not (strictly speaking) compliance checks, but they do rely upon compliance in order to render objects correctly (like the Acid2 Smiley Face).
re: CSS3 & Acid3. I agree with you, developing something based upon shifting sands isn’t a good idea, but my understanding (and it may be incredibly faulty) is that the developers concentrated upon things that have been finalised. Acid tests aren’t the be-all and end-all of browser compatibility, but they’re still a decent check. If you have a better idea about how to check for compliance, I’d love to hear about it (and I’m not being snarky, I mean it).
I’ve noted the SuperPreview release (and wish it were released years ago), but it crashes on startup for me. I’ll give it another go; but thanks for the tip regarding old browser VMs, I’m eager to try them out.
Best,
Ray