Fyrdility

Anyone who cares has heared that IE8 beta 1 has just been released, with quite a bit of documentation.

Mark "Tarquin" Wilton-Jones offers a pretty good overview of the changes. Many are good, and I'm especially happy with the Acid2 support and the decision to make the IE8 rendering mode the default. It is also important to note that there is still "much more" expected in beta 2.

For now, some of my personally biggest peeves with this beta:

• Oddly enough, IE8 does not ignore the IE5/Mac Band Pass Filter hack. I've used this in a few places on my site, so I'm not too happy about that. But not a huge issue, I suppose
  
• The "clear" style fails. I use this a lot too.
  
• Data URIs are limited to images, won't work in the address bar, and have a size limit of 32kb.
  
• Generated content is limited, not allowing images or background images, which was one of my main purposes for using it.
  
• No SVG, XHTML, or CSS3 (aside from box-sizing and vertical text).
  
• Some new proprietary features have been added.
  

It rather seems like they aimed at passing Acid2 first, supporting the absolute minimum amount of features to pass it. This seems to be the opposite of the IE team's initial view of Acid2, which basically was that it would focus on supporting features first, which would then result in Acid2 support.

I'm optimistic though, that this was done just out of laziness, but rather to quickly show the web developing community their new dedication to supporting standards. I strongly suspect the limitations will be gone by the time IE8 ships. They're definitely on the right track, and I'm delighted they decided to make this beta public, which didn't seem to be the plan initially.

For comments, please post at IE8 beta 1 first impressions on the new Fyrdility blog

As a result of Opera's antitrust complaint against Microsoft, I started thinking about how Microsoft might allow a selection of web browsers for Windows.
Then, I made this mockup image:



Note the following problems with this scenario:

1. Internet Explorer will be mostly recognized by people, and is bound to be highlighted some way or another (mainly by being the only one supported by MS)


2. Who decides which browsers make the cut to this list? Just about anyone can make a Gecko based browser or an Internet Explorer shell


3. Do, in fact, Internet Explorer shells like Maxthon and Avant Browser make the list? They use IE's engine (trident), and thus suffer many of the same shortcomings


4. Which browser(s) get to be installed for mass installations?


5. Should browser makers be allowed to add a short blurb about their browser?

If Microsoft were forced to comply with a ruling requiring this, it would be interesting to see how these issues are dealt with.

For comments, please post at Browser selection in Windows Installer on the new Fyrdility blog