IE8 and all who Snail on her
Regardless of the amount I’m behind in my workload this week, who could resist mentioning today’s release of IE8 (Internet Explorer 8). Did I hear any enthusiastic clapping? Probably not. What I do hear is a resounding ship’s bell tolling the last chance of the industry browser heavyweight to get it right or sink with all hands on board.
A while ago I would have told you that IE8 was finally on the right track with web standards support and that it was buying into the whole best practice momentum in the industry. I would have argued that it even changed it’s opt in policy after listening to the web development community. However, that would have been before their recent announcement on Blacklisting of Domains to IE7 Rendering that made it very clear where Microsoft has it’s big fat eyes.
Those big fat eyes aren’t on speed or winning back the one third of traffic that migrated away from IE6 and IE7. Those big fat eyes aren’t interested in the web standards community or Firefox or Opera or silly little browsers that fly around their King Kong head. They simply realised they couldn’t provide new features to draw any of us back to a slower browsing experience in IE8.
So, on her first real day in the real world, I tentatively salute Internet Explorer 8. God bless our new Titanic and protect all who snail on her. Because, believe it or not, Microsoft are just about out of chances with this one. Another failure might see the big blue little e go sliding right down that market share pie as more people migrate to superior browsers.
Advice to Web Managers: First thing this morning call a team meeting and ask seriously where your future support for IE6 should be headed… and do it before lunchtime.
Update: 21 March, 2009
- IE8 Browser Showdown with Safari 4 and Firefox 3
- IE8 has arrived – Web Standards Project
