Internet Explorer is Back with a Vengeance

The new incarnation of Internet Explorer, IE 8, was just released and a copy has just found a place in my system. This new version is said to be faster than the previous version and, according to Microsoft, the competition. I have yet to test the veracity of this claim but IE 8 does have a lot going for it.

As someone interested in Web development, my primary concern is standards compliance. As I mentioned in a previous post, IE 6's non-compliance discourages a lot of developers from taking advantage of newer coding techniques and new XHTML and CSS features.

These developers fear that viewers using IE 6 might not be able to access their site if it uses a lot of new features which are beyond the old browser’s comprehension. This hinders the Web's overall progress. Had IE6 been compliant or had it not existed, developers would be free to push the limits of the Web to the benefit of all users.

According to Microsoft's John Curran in his interview with TechRadar, that concern was addressed in IE 8. Based on what the guy said, it would seem that the IE team is really trying to make IE adhere to Web standards.

I don't doubt his words considering that Microsoft's Expression Web, a component of MS Expression Studio, really is more oriented toward standards compliance compared to FrontPage, the product it replaced. In fact, MS Expression Web is a serious contender in the visual page authoring category currently dominated by Adobe Dreamweaver.

The problem why IE 8 cannot be as compliant as Firefox or Opera is that the IE team have a commitment to support enterprise legacy users. Understandably, they cannot just leave these users hanging. Firefox and Opera have no such worries. They are free to innovate. For this reason, I will still be staying with Firefox. But the IE guys really did the best they can do given the restrictions they find themselves in. For that they deserve some credit.