Comments on: Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 and Web Standards

By: k1n6

k1n6 — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 17:58:47 +0000

I have an ajax app that is being broken by the x-xss-protection “feature” of IE.

I have tried setting the x-xss-protection header to 0 and verified its in place but it does not disable the stupid feature!

It breaks a request I make to a hidden iframe to generate page content.

anyone had any luck getting legit apps through this feature?

By: V1

V1 — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 07:48:42 +0000

it seems, that is IE8 is just an “upgrade / downgrade” of the browser interface, and not an update of the engine. They are focussing on the wrong part of web browser development.

Microsoft and its monopoly position is the only thing that stops us webdev’s from creating more powerful, advanced, and LIGHTER apps.

They say they follow w3c, i think they mean.. They have read it and implemented a Microsoft version of it.

By: Nosredna

Nosredna — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 03:01:48 +0000

>>Nosredna’s rule would have delayed firefox 3.0 considerably.

It would have changed priorities.

By: Breton

Breton — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 02:17:22 +0000

Nosredna’s rule would have delayed firefox 3.0 considerably.

By: Nosredna

Nosredna — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 17:29:50 +0000

I have a new Modern Browser rule.
.
Nosredna’s Modern Browser Rule
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If there is a feature that is implemented in at least two of the other browsers, you shall not ship a new version of your browser until you implement it.

By: AndiSkater

AndiSkater — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 16:09:21 +0000

Still no css opacity? MS is really evil… or absolutely crazy. I still think someone should create an active x or whatever plugin for IE to use the Gecko or Webkit engine. A Webpage would simply have to trigger the plugin. This should be technically possible and if the plugin download is as small and seamless as installing the Flash plugin, there would be large acceptance.
MS is still trying to slow down the open web, to propagate Silverlight. There is no other explanation why a company as big and resourceful as MS can’t create a modern feature rich web browser.
With IE8 MS perverts what the web developers wanted for years: standard compliance. They do this by following the standards from years ago, ignoring, that things like “opacity” are essential today. IE8 has no CSS 3, no Canvas, no SVG, … I don’t see the light.

By: andykant

andykant — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 16:04:19 +0000

There are some really great developer improvements in this release. Check out the updated version of IE Developer Toolbar, its awesome (not as awesome as Firebug but goes a long way in making IE debugging manageable). I usually use IE8 running in IE7 mode just so that I can use the updated toolbar, wish they would back port it to IE6.

By: moondogx

moondogx — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 14:10:59 +0000

@joeri: I wasn’t aware they changed their mind…at the beginning they (ie8 team) said they didn’t want to break the web again (as they did in ie7). I must have lost some posts in the ie8blog..! Glad they changed their minds

The bad side is that what I wrote in the previous post is nonetheless valid: either using “IE=EmulateIE7″ or “IE=7″ DOES NOT give the same results as in IE7, and that’s a problem.
On a genuine “ie7″ explorercanvas does work, in ie8 with either “IE=EmulateIE7″ or “IE=7″ does NOT.
We just got IE 7.5

By: Joeri

Joeri — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 13:47:52 +0000

@moondogx: the behavior of IE8 is to break backwards compatibility with IE7 UNLESS you send the X-UA-Compatible header or meta tag.

By: Jeria

Jeria — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 13:18:23 +0000

document.addEventListener is undefined

By: moondogx

moondogx — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 10:06:48 +0000

ops the doctype I inserted in the post has been removed….
the post should read:

That is because, at least on my pc, a page with
http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
without the x-ua/compatible header, renders differently in ie7 and 8

By: moondogx

moondogx — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 10:03:34 +0000

Ie 8 has lots of bells and whistles, which are good for end users, but for us developers it seems will add not one but two additional rendering modes: IE8 and IE7.5.
That is because, at least on my pc, a page with

without the x-ua/compatible header, renders differently in ie7 and 8.
I am heavily using canvas and explorercanvas, and while I managed to have a page working in the same way in FF2&3 and Ie7, the very same page breaks in ie8 (no canvases at all) unless switching to quirksmode which then uses the ie box model screwing all the rest of the page. What the heck…..shouldn’t ie8 behave like ie7 if you don’t use the x ua header?
Maybe it happens only to me, or maybe I have to use some more incredibly clever meta tags, but I cannot believe Ie8 can not support ie7 rendering modes without introducing new bugs thus giving a ie7.5 mode. Groan. Big deal.

By: Spocke

Spocke — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 09:40:53 +0000

I hope that they will reconsider supporting the opacity style and that they do at least a few more betas and release candidates before they go final since IE8b2 is still far from compatible with other browsers.

By: V1

V1 — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 08:39:37 +0000

Pff it’s hard to get used to… Seeing IE and web standards in one sentence, who would have dreamed about that. ;)

By: GregHouston

GregHouston — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 08:16:07 +0000

Lol. I don’t usually read Google Ads, but for some reason I did just now. Two of the “relevant” ads on this page are for how to “Fix Internet Explorer”. One was for how to “Repair Internet Explorer”, and a fourth, my favorite, help with problems uninstalling Internet Explorer. I wish fixing Internet Explorer was as easy as clicking on a Google Ad. Though Google still amazes me, maybe one day it will be that easy. They did create ExCanvas, which despite its shortcomings made it possible for me to use canvas in the first place, and I am still amazed that I can have a semi-functional conversation with people who speak entirely different languages via Google Translate.

By: ck2

ck2 — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 08:13:54 +0000

Here’s the entire effort I am willing to put into handling IE8 users:

`
if (strpos($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'],”MSIE 8″)) {header(“X-UA-Compatible: IE=7″);}
`

Fixes everything. Makes IE8 work exactly like IE7.
Standards my a**. If it renders right in Opera it’s standard.

By: GregHouston

GregHouston — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 07:58:26 +0000

Excanvas only supports a subset of the actual canvas features you get in the other browsers. On top of that it requires an extra http request, and every canvas tag has to be initialized. Then there is the fact that it is outrageously slow. You can’t really use it for anything like games, well, unless they are board games.
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There are some cool experiments here: http://glimr.rubyforge.org/cake/canvas.html#KeyboardTest
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For the most part they don’t work with Explorer Canvas and the couple that do he says become incredibly slow after a few hundred frames.
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They guy at the link above uses more advanced canvas features than I do, but for simpler things some of the missing features in ExCanvas are directional gradients, gradients with multiple stops, stop opacity, radial gradients, stroke width scaling, and toDataURL(). Then you have the usual opacity issues that is bread and butter for Internet Explorer. If you have a vml psuedo-canvas in a div, where some element in the vml psuedo-canvas has it’s opacity set, and the div container also has it’s opacity set, that element with the opacity set in the vml psuedo-canvas just becomes black. ExCanvas renders strokes underneath the fills where everyone else renders them on top. It’s just one thing after another.
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Usually someone has chimed in at this point about the SilverLight plugin, which completely kills the point of Canvas in the first place, i.e., no plugins. Not to mention SilverLight is 4 times slower than HTML and 6 times slower than Flash. http://www.craftymind.com/guimark/
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…and that is against HTML in Internet Explorer. I can’t imagine what it is like compared to modern browsers like Firefox and Safari.

By: sroussey

sroussey — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 05:18:13 +0000

How do you do opacity???

By: Brad Neuberg

Brad Neuberg — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 00:40:42 +0000

I’d love to see the canvas tag in IE 8. However, I don’t believe it is there currently. There is always ExCanvas (http://code.google.com/p/explorercanvas/). Last I heard though I think that library has trouble if you are on a Standards Compliant page for IE 8, forcing you to shift into Quirks Mode (Ah, the joys of Doctype switching…)

Best,
Brad

By: ernestdelgado

ernestdelgado — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 00:32:17 +0000

Any chance of new features for future releases after beta 2?
If so, please, the canvas tag!