IEBlog

Today Internet Explorer General Manager Dean Hachamovitch posted about an important milestone in the

IE Team Announces IE8 Milestones (Acid2 Tests Passed!)

...but IE8 now correctly renders the Acid2 smiley face in IE8 standards mode .

Well its about time you posted something about IE8!

Sincerly, congrats on passing the Acid Test2! This does mean a lot to us developers.

Now, with the glory, also comes the pain.  This post indicates:

"We’re listening to the feedback about IE"

For those of us following this blog for over a year, know this is complete BS. (hate to use this tone, but lets be honest)

MS Can't possibly be listening to our feedback about IE, because there is no avenue for us to SEND FEEDBACK, thus no way for you to RECEIVE FEEDBACK.

xSofties Al and Dave have been extremely vocal in how disappointing MS has been in shutting down IE Feedback at the CRITICAL moment when it was so desperately needed.

Even Chris has posted (on his blog I believe) that such a tool is needed, although it wasn't his or his direct teams responsibility).

Lets be very open about this, PUBLIC BUG TRACKING is a tool that YOU need, as much as WE need.

I have several bugs (that I have not seen reported anywhere on the Net) that I would love to file, but there is no way to do so, and track it.  When you tell me where the site is, that I can submit these bugs, then I will do so, but only if I and others can track them.

Finally, this time when you open up your public bug tracking, we want written confirmation that you are not tearing it down.  We were extremely annoyed when dozens of hours of OUR time went into filing reports, test cases, and confirming  bugs, only to see the site disappear.  We won't be fooled again on this, you've CRIED WOLF once already.

Welcome back to the dialogue!

This is great news.

@About Time, thanks for the feedback.  See, we are listening.  :)

Seriously, though, the point is that we have been out there listening to web developers and designers and what they need, at conferences and forums as well as reading the comments on our blog.

Thats great. I just made the test with Firefox and it failed.

This is awesome news, guys. Beautiful job.

I love the new "we'll disclose stuff when we have working code and know we can deliver" policy, by the way.

Let's keep it simple: congratulations!

It's great to finally see some actual news about the next version of Internet Explorer.  Hopefully, this is just the start of IE's trend towards open standards compliance.  As stated in the post, this is just a single test case, but it is surely a sign of progress and probably a significant internal milestone.

I look forward to seeing continued progress but still do not understand the unwillingness to talk more openly about anticipated features.  I feel the development community would appreciate more transparency here even if the IE team is unable to deliver 100% on their goals.  It would be more reassuring to hear about the teams expectations for the next release than to hear about improvements only once such milestones have been reached.

I look forward to your next IE8 post and what other surprises you may have in store (as seeing that yellow smiley face at the top of your post was most certainly unexpected).

Ya,just keep it up.... SVG and more... maybe even a .NET 3.5 GUI

Excellent. The hate I've felt all these years is dimming from a bright burning sun to the dull tickle of an annoyance.

A totally kewl announcement that I am sure coders everywhere will welcome!

Way to go guys on such a huge step in adopting Web Standards.

Ping back: http://blog.mpecsinc.ca/2007/12/microsoft-internet-explorer-8-passes.html

Philip Elder

MPECS Inc.

Oh, and IE NEEDs Pipelining with up to 8+ network connections at one time.

Will IE8 pass ACID2 test if we change the default Font from Times New Roman to Cambria?

I tried changing the default font to Cambria on Firefox 3 Beta and Opera browsers.

Firefox 3 renders it a bit off and incorrect.

Opera seems to be rendering it properly.

Now, add the usability functions that would make me switch from FF:

1. Inline spell check. Please please please

2. Live bookmarks toolbars. This is the best way to view your favorite few RSS feeds.

3. the inline search bar from F is very good. The ctrl-F function from IE is out-dated.

4. The interagted search bar in FF has many advatages of the one in IE.

5. When typing an address, the autofill only shows the URL. That's sometimes useles.. It would be nice to see the Page Title, URL, and favicon.

Great!

Now fix the Operation Aborted JS DOM error!

Now THIS is good news, and it's very nice of you to tell us Dean.

Even though I do sincerely think it would've been better for everyone (for you from a PR standpoint and for us developers from a "what does tomorrow hold for me" point of view) if you'd done what the Webkit team did a few months/years back when they were pushing for ACID2 themselves: regularly blog on the progress, showing the smiley face and everything, tell us what was updated, maybe why you'd focused on that particular feature that time (if there was a specific reason), etc...

And since you're speaking of milestones for standard supports and interoperability, would it be possible for us to get a glimpse of these milestones? Maybe a tentative roadmap with both a few internal goals and some external onces (planned releases of public alphas/betas maybe, stuff like that)

Anyway thanks a lot for the update, it's nice knowing you're this far.

...but IE8 now correctly renders the Acid2 smiley face in IE8 standards mode .

Sweet!  Now, please drop the alert box that pops up when I type Ctrl+L.  Just focus the address field instead.

Awesome, so you'll finally be standards complient when IE8 launches in 2012?

Great news.

Simply said: congratulations! :)

These are the web's most talked about URLs on Wed 19th Dec 2007. The current winner is ..

So, we now know we have (in IE8 standards mode at least (BTW, what switch are you using for that, or is that still undecided?)):

- data URI scheme

- display: table

- position: fixed

Guess the old layout engine really was what was holding you back a lot, but there again, I could've guessed that years ago :P

Hi, Dean-

Great to see the progress you're making, not only in your implementation, but in communicating what's going on inside the IE development team.  Keeping the community informed is really critical.

Minor correction: the "X" in AJAX is "XML", not "XmlHttpRequest".  XML has been a standard for a good long while.  But it's true that XHR is just now being standardized by W3C, and is indeed the typical method of choice for AJAX (though not the only one... Adobe introduced the similar "getURL" long ago in their SVG viewer).

Thanks-

-Schepers

That's awesome news! Congrats guys!

Microsoft is currently in the middle of the process of creating the next generation Microsoft web browser, with the fantastic name - Internet Explorer 8. A few days ago, the IE team reports, the inter...

@cwilso: re: "Seriously, though, the point is that we have been out there listening to web developers and designers and what they need, at conferences and forums as well as reading the comments on our blog"

EXACTLY... NOT NEARLY ENOUGH.

First off, I haven't been to any dev conventions in the last year or so, because I don't have $1,000 to waste on them (sure I'd love to meet and chat with certain celebs within the community, but I'm not paying $1,000 for the chance to potentially file a verbal bug.

Second, this blog.  Is a Blog, not the appropriate venue for filing bug reports. I can't verify they've been read by an IE Team Dev that would be responsible for the issue, nor can I get feedback as to when the bug was verified by MS (or others), I can't post a simple (or complex) test case, I can't post a workaround for those also suffering from the bug, I can't see when the fix is targeted for, and or for what version(s) of IE. I also can't track the bug, as it moves through to its final published fix.

Most importantly, I don't have one, single, public repository where I can go search bugs (and workarounds) when I encounter an issue.

Since the dawn of this millennium, software vendors making a web browser ABSOLUTELY NEED a  public bug tracking system.  It is vital to the health of the community, the open 2-way communication that MS promised 2.5 years ago, and the minimal effort required to be seen as at least extending an olive branch.

By not having a public bug tracking site, you are instantly seen as an inferior product (whether you are or not).  Its like a company these days without a website.

But most of all, it shows poor taste.  It shows you don't give a hoot about developers, about standards, about fixing the core exposed API's, and the future of the Web.

Be serious please.  Even IE Team members posting on this very blog publicly admitted that Public Bug tracking was not only essential, but way overdue. (Circa March 24, 2006)

http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2006/03/24/560095.aspx

"After much discussion on the team, we've decided that people are right and that we should have a public way for people to give us feedback or make product suggestions. We wanted to build a system that is searchable and can benefit from the active community that IE has here."

So, what's the hold up? If you need a few references for excellent (and mostly free) online bug tracking tools just let us know, we can recommend a few dozen for you that would fit in MS's budget)

@Chas: Why don't you use Alt+D?

passing a test case is one thing - working flawlessly in the wild is another very different thing ...

"developers have done special work to work well with IE6"

By special you mean frustrating, fruitless, and suicide-inducing, no?

Hmm. Why didn't this post show up in your RSS feed?

This one: http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/rss.xml

Passing Acid2 is an impressive feat. It sounds like IE8 and FF3 are about on par with each other then, as far as Acid is concerned. Hopefully the rest of the standards are intact as well.

First of all: congratulations. "About friggin' time" - but good to see all the same.

Second, given your comments on your particular interpretation of "not breaking the web", has it been decided yet how "IE8 standards mode" will be triggered?

If no final decision has been made on this yet (I can only begin to imagine the internal debates - and I imagine a decision might completely depend on just how compatible the final engine will be), is just a regular HTML 4.01 (and XHTML 1.0) strict doctype with system identifier on the table at all? (I've heard noises before that it wouldn't be, but if the new engine is going to be good enough, that position might be reconsidered, ...right?)

This is probably going to be _the_ most important issue for web developers; far more important than any minor details on which specific implementation quirks you'll still be suffering from. Please communicate as much as possible about this as soon as possible. Knowing "nothing has been decided yet" really is going to be valuable information for us.

@Robbo

> passing a test case is one thing - working flawlessly in the wild is another very different thing ...

That's why Dean repeatedly stated in his post that ACID2 was merely one of several milestones for IE8.

It's nevertheless an important one, and it's very cool that we got an update when it was reached.

As I said above, I'd still have wished they'd done a Dave Hyatt-style serie of postings on the progress of IE to ACID2 pass, but... oh well.

En el blog oficial de Microsoft sobre Internet Explorer, afirman que la versión 8 del navegador que están desarrollando actualmente, pasa el famoso test de compatibilidad ACID 2, creado por el Web Standards Project.

Finally.

I'm a Mac-only shop but had to purchase Parallels and copies of Windows XP and Vista to check our compliant websites in IE6 and IE7. It's pretty ridiculous and I'd love to send a bill to Microsoft, but I have a feeling they won't be paying it.

I have more costs in my business because of Microsoft, particularly because I demand all of our products are 100% div-based, compliant, and accessible. Quality is important to us and Microsoft should have a vested interest in making our lives easier, for the betterment of the greater Internet.

I'm happy IE8 is finally taking steps toward this. The browser is years behind.

Oh. My. God.

I haven't even read the post yet, but...

Oh. My. God.

I can't believe it. You guys rock my face off. THANK YOU!

Maybe it's one of those every 4 versions thing? Internet Explorer 4 also blew Netscape 4 away when it came to standards-compliance, to be followed by many more iterative versions (not to say IE5 wasn't a good inprovement, it was).

I'm afraid though what I find more annoying in modern IE (talking about 7) is the utter lack of standardized *browser interface*... it's simply a mess, and having been an IE user for a long time before I switched to Firefox, I'm not just saying that 'cause I have a natural dislike against IE. (I could probably go into great length why the IE7 interface is bad, but I guess it's one of those "if you have to ask..." things.)

Anyway, congrats on passing this test -- your first link returns a connection time out message right now, by the way.

So when is IE8 going to be released?

@Chris,

There is a program to support developers who want to test out versions of the browsers for free.

IE6 and IE7 images are available here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=21eabb90-958f-4b64-b5f1-73d0a413c8ef&DisplayLang=en

Nice, but it's called "Branch: LONGHORN_IE8", does this mean IE8 will only be released on Vista?

Now I can't wait until you release it at this time next year for Vista only.

@XP User: Don't jump to any conclusions.  IE7 built out of the "Longhorn" branch.

"I'm a Mac-only shop but had to purchase Parallels and copies of Windows XP and Vista to check our compliant websites in IE6 and IE7. It's pretty ridiculous and I'd love to send a bill to Microsoft, but I have a feeling they won't be paying it."

I had to buy a Mac a year and half ago to test in Safari. I'd like to send a bill to Apple.

Really, what's your point?

While I don't place an extreme amount of importance on the Acid tests, this is good news. I look forward to more information later down the road.

Congratulations guys, it is a great start and hopefully continues through to many other areas that people believe are missing in IE.

It probably won't keep everyone from slamming some aspect of IE, but I'd implore you to keep following this path and eventually (even after this) people will start to realise you are serious.

Me, I am just happy there is some competition again - so, about HTML5 :)

Well done guys.  It's too bad everything had to become secretive, but everyone asked for it by complaining about Vista overpromising.  IE7 Pro, by the way, has many good things including inline search (a feature which I would also like to have) as well as crash recovery (which is a necessity).  I also wish that there was feedback in the search bar as to what provider is currently selected (if you don't want to copy Firefox's showing an icon, at least add (provider) to the end of the current query, and then remove it when text is selected or a search is performed, similar to the grayed-out text that shows the provider when there is no current query).  Not knowing the currently selected search is another big annoyance (the others have been mostly solved by IE7Pro).

we have a WPF :D we are ever different :D :D :D

Cool info, but the goods are all in the video.

(info on how you trigger "better" rendering in IE, is abscent, but indicates the following is fixed)

Data URL - Now implemented

CSS Display Table type properties - fixed/implemented

CSS Relative positioning - fixed (shrink to fit)

HTML closing p tag - ??

Object fallback now co?

HTML abbr tag now fixed

CSS generated content - fixed

No info given on what is fixed in JavaScript (or what isn't)

This is good news. I've never heard of the Acid2 Face before, but just noticed (as have others) that Firefox 2 fails it

All I can say is: Thank you. Keep up the good work.

Microsoft is practically in a monopoly position and can do whatever it wants. Therefore the problems with IE6 made people hate MS. Now though, I'm already starting to gain my respect for you guys back and I'm sure if this trend continues so will everyone else.

Nice. Thanks. It sure looks like MS is starting to "adapt" and "assimilate" -  kinda like the Borg.

It was silly to count them out, they were just lumbering along.

http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2007/12/19/internet-explorer-8-and-acid2-a-milestone.aspx As a team

This is great news, but that "in IE8 standards mode" worries me. What is this "standards mode"?

If there's a special mode you have to kick IE8 into before this increased standards compliance takes effect, that's essentially meaningless, because most people won't change the default configuration. So these changes need to be in the most basic, unchanged IE configuration, the one every non-expert Windows users gets.

If this is going to be the case and "IE8 standards mode" is something different - then great, and congratulations.

Adam Williamson

Mandriva

It's good that IE is finally catching up to Opera.  Let's see if Firefox follows suit...

What exactly is "IE8 standards mode", is it yet another rendering method that we would have to do something special for to trigger? And that other browser-vendors eventually will have to support in order to be interoperable with IE? Thus hurting both the browservendors that are doing the right thing and standards-aware web-authors as well?

Okay, this will mean nothing to most people out there, but to web developers, particularly those who use standards-based design to maximize compatibility with different browsers, this is monumental.

An internal build of Internet Explorer 8 has passed

This is a great announcement.

I will be tempted to use IE much more often than I have been.

Is IE8 going to support a border-box model while in standards compliant mode like the other browsers?  IE goes from one extreme to the other using border box in quirks mode and content box in standards mode.  

Border box is the easier approach, yet compliance to standards is required for other reasons.  It's ridiculous to require breaking the page to use border box.

Awesome!!!  This is great news!

  :-/

Why do I feel like I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop, though?

OMG, Is it fools day? I can't believe, really.

To be fair to Firefox, v3 will be fully Acid2 compliant (trunk builds have been so for ages). Great to see IE catching up though! I'm intrigued - has the concept of hasLayout gone now?

Hmm, nice picture. Photoshop? ;) Give some beta nightbuild.

Yes... I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop, too, and I bet that "IE8 standards mode" is the shoe. If that mode is NOT the default, then it won't matter, because Joe Sixpack won't know to turn it on... and MS can continue to leverage its monopoly.

> Let's see if Firefox follows suit...

Firefox 3 has been rendering Acid2 correctly for ages..

ms probably should;d have delayed this till the 25th

I bet you have to check an option in Internet Options > Advanced > Enable 'Standards Mode' (may slow down overall experience on any computer)

What a great Christmas present from the I.E team. How ironic that this comes out a week after those whinny people at Opera accuse IE of not supporting web standards. I don't suppose any of the Opera fanboys will be eating their words after reading this.

Please keep us posted IE team!

Awesome news!  Keep up the great work!

@Tino Zijdel: more detail on "IE8 standards mode" in a soon-to-come post.  And I think other browser vendors already DO support the behavior of that mode.  :)

Good news. Too bad IE6 will still probably be the most used browser and we developers will STILL have to cater to it.

People, there has been a "Standards" mode and a "Quirks" mode in IE for a couple of versions now. The question is whether this takes over the existing Standards mode or if there is a new IE8 Standard mode in addition to the existing one.

Congratulations to Markus, Chris and the IE team for doing the right thing here.

Is this build specially hacked or adjusted to make sure it passes.

The long and short of it: Congratulations!

Wow, this is great news guys! Keep up the good work and I can't wait for MIX ;)

Btw, did you get the postcard I sent you? ;)

If IE 8 ships and it really does support web standards and passes the Acid Test, kudos to the IE Team and Microsoft.  

this is a nice update, thanks for sharing.  and please keep the updates and transparency flowing so you can begin to earn back the benefit of the doubt across your entire product line.  baby steps can in fact lead to big steps.

congrats

Tom, it is clearly "adjusted to make sure it passes." That's what code checkins do... :-)

Thanks guys!

Make sure you can force it on the world somehow so we can stop targeting all those fools on IE6 :-)

Quit moaning about this standards mode thing.

It will be "Standards mode" vs "Quirks mode" where if you're not using a Strict Doctype then you'll get thrown into quirks mode.

It's been like that for years.

Basically, it the HTML is written correctly, then it'll work correctly.

Good news, although we only see an image, which doesn't proof anything.

Anyways, welcome to 2005.

@Andrew: IE7 is steadily replacing IE6; as described previously on this blog, it's already surpassed IE6 in the US and UK.

You should rename a bunch of your source files. Long and case-sensitive filenames are being supported since Windows 95, you know ;-)

John,

There was discussion on the HTML Working Group's email list about doing versioning of HTML (see http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2007Apr/0612.html, linked from Chris' blog).

This makes one wonder if it is "Standards mode" or "IE8 Standards Mode," "Standards Mode," and "Quirks Mode."

!!! :) :) :)

This announcement exceeded my expectations. My opinion of IE has just improved dramatically.

This post has made me incredibly happy.

I remember the last time I read a post on this blog, 85% of the comments were angry demands for Microsoft to take web standards more seriously. This leads me to believe that someone is actually listening to the clamoring of the crowd. Combining that with Dean's proposed brag-when-it's-done philosophy makes me look at IE8 in a very optimistic light. That's something I never before dreamed that I would do.

Keep it up.

Great news. does IE8 will only be released on Vista or it will also for XP?

Well done! This is great news. Please, please, please urge for this to be available on XP — and strongly recommend updating. With a little luck, the nightmare of IE-only stylesheets might pass into legend, where it belongs.

"MicroKid" -- Basically no browser supported ACID2 in 2005.  

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid2

I'll forgive you, but first I'll need some proof that you've also worked on DOM and SVG support as well.

And what about Forms 2.0 and native video/audio tags? APNG?

i believe ie8 will come in two versions one for vista one for xp (vista having protected mode and stuff)

but ie8 will probably be the last version for windows xp

Great news!

I hope you will soon also share some good news about improved DOM/JS support in IE8!

and to other commenters complaining on this thread about IE6 - with all due respect, you're hurting the developer's cause, not helping.  we're all frustrated with IE's evolution, but if we don't encourage updates and progress reports like this, and instead rant about prior transgressions every chance we get, our collective voice and influence will be weakened.

there's a time and a place for everything.

I actually do wonder if IE8 will be Vista only but that would probably involve Microsoft cutting its own throat then.

Bill Gates: "It compiles! Ship it!"

This looks like great news, though of course it's still early days if the beta's potentially six months off.

I'd really like to know what IE8's User Interface is going to be like. Quite frankly, I think IE7's interface changes where an absolute disaster and at least partially responsible for its rela