Microsoft plans to release the first beta of the next version of Internet Explorer
in the first half of 2008, and said Wednesday that IE 8 has passed a key Web
standards test that ensures the browser won't "break" the Web.

IE8 has passed the "Acid2
Browser Test" from the Web
Standards Project, which shows whether a browser renders a Web site in a
certain way. If the browser renders the site correctly, it means the browser
supports certain accepted Web standards.

Microsoft posted a video
about the browser passing the test on its Channel 9 Web site.

Microsoft developed IE before some Web standards such as CSS (Cascading Style
Sheets) and RSS (Really Simple Syndication) were developed, and so older versions
don't support some current standards. Developers would write applications to
work with IE rather than to support Web standards, since the browser was the
de facto standard for surfing the Internet for so many years. Microsoft also
was lax in updating IE to meet the demands of Web standards, since there was
little competition in the browser market for years.

With the release and subsequent popularity of open-source browser Mozilla Firefox
three years ago, a browser's need to stay current with Web standards once again
moved to the forefront. When Microsoft developed IE7, released in October 2006,
the company had good intentions and decided to improved support of Web standards
with the new release.

However, Web sites that were created for older versions of IE didn't work properly
on IE7. Microsoft hopes to remedy this problem so the situation is not repeated
with IE8, according to an IE
Blog posting attributed to Dean Hachamovitch, a Microsoft general manager
on the IE team.

"With respect to standards and interoperability, our goal in developing
Internet Explorer 8 is to support the right set of standards with excellent
implementations and do so without breaking the existing Web," according
to the blog posting.

Hachamovitch said Microsoft is taking a cue in lessons learned from making
improvements to CSS in IE7 that "made IE more compliant with some standards
and less compatible with some sites on the Web as they were coded." The
key design goal for IE8, he said, is compatibility with existing Web sites and
Web standards supported in other browsers to provide a premium user experience.

"As a developer, I’d prefer to not have to write the same site multiple
times for different browsers," according to Hachamovitch's post. "Standards
are a (critical!) means to this end, and we focus on the standards that will
help actual, real-world interoperability the most. As a consumer and a developer,
I expect stuff to just work, and I also expect backwards compatibility. When
I get a new version of my current browser, I expect all the sites that worked
before will still work."

Microsoft said the final release of IE8 depends upon feedback received from
the beta process.

IDG News Service

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