IEBlog

The BIGGEST issues with the DOM are still BROKEN in IE8.

* Can't Prototype on ANY DOM Element Level

* document.getElementById( id ) Still Fails

* Element.hasAttribute( name ) Still Fails

I haven't tested document.getElementsByName( name ) but I'm going to pressume that hasn't been fixed either.

Glad to see you had time to ADD NEW FEATURES, before FIXING THE BROKEN / MISSING IMPLEMENTATIONS!

- Not impressed.

@Steve: You need to be using a standards/strict mode document to observe changes/fixes in DOM handling.  

@steve: Could you provide an example of how getElementById() and hasAttribute() fail?

@Steve and Element.hasAttribute().  Test cases would be much appreciated.

Will document.getElementsByClassName be supported? It seems like it should be trivial to do now that you've got the Selector API in.

When exiting IE8 B1 with multiple tabs, the IE7 feature "Open these next time I use Internet Explorer" is no longer an option...

Pardon my bluntness, but IE7 was a disaster for right-to-left pages. I've installed the IE8 beta 1, and it seems to be far, far worse. I know it's just a beta, however, so this is merely to bring it to your attention that part of standards is proper support of RTL documents.

...pleease? :-/

I agree with Michael C. that, so far, in this first beta of IE 8, right-to-left webpages/tests are not better than in IE 7.

Regards, Gérard

@Gerard, @Michael C: RTL is not yet implemented for standards mode pages.  Rest assured, we're very well aware of the importance of this feature.

Will GIF animation speed and PNG gamma support gets fixed by the final release? Also, progressive JPEGs don't display fine mid-loading...

yay for display: table support though, it's gonna make a lot of things easier. But, the only reason I'd use table display divs is because IE6/7/8 eats a lot of cpu power displaying normal tables...

What i would really like to see added is styling for select boxes, so developers can change the look of the button, drop down, and border of select elements.  Color is most important to me, but it would be nice if we could stick images into select structures as replacement for the default arrow button and as entries for the option tags.

Two things...

1.) For a first Beta of course IE8's new standards rendering engine is VERY solid. On my site when you resize the browser the pixel-perfect layout (1px of "margin" around always % width based form elements) is always maintained. I also agree with select elements set to block to be measured as block-level elements. A select element set to display: block, width: 343px; and border-width: 1px; should render as 345px;. I'm not sure about inline measurements, I presume that they adjust according to the content.

2.) There are some MAJOR if not severe performance issues on my website and I'm having difficulty creating a minimal test case. I watched the video on channel 9 where Chris Wilson says that performance isn't concentrated in the layout aspect though I'm running a static test case page without any JavaScript loaded in IE8 no-addons mode and IE8's CPU usage is about 52% and the :hover and :focus selectors are very slow to respond. My CPU is an AMD Opteron 185 and my system is very fine tuned for performance. So is there a known issue with pages that have an abundant number of selectors or certain types of layouts that could help me concentrate on figuring out the specific issue to create a good minimal test case to file a good bug report?

There seems to be a lot of broken JavaScript on my site in IE8B1. I haven't yet taken the time to look closely at the scripting though my level of scripting isn't too high so I'll be looking through it this weekend.

For a beta 1 this is pretty solid. I do have a non-layout request: spellchecker! Not so much for me but for other people please. ;-)

Good job so far and keep up the great work! :-)

text-overflow seems to be broken, or is this a general overflow issue?

Data-URI's seem to be too restricted to be of any use.

XDM looks proprietary, why not follow the W3C's Web Application Formats WG efforts?

What's up with the increase of the max connections per host of the (RFC compliant) 2 to 6? It that only for XHR or general? Is it to get a perceived performance advantage over other browsers which still default to 2?

Why didn't MS discuss or announce any of these changes (also wrt DOM storage, ARIA and changed parsing rules) to the various W3C WG's MS is also participating in? And when is MS finally going to present it's comments on the HTML5 WD (which I believe was due August of last year)?

@Tino: DataURLs are primarily useful for embedding small images into CSS for use as icons, etc; IE8 permits this use.  Unfortunately, for some content types, DataURLs can be dangerous, which is why IE8 scopes them to use where they are not a security threat.  

Note that there are many cases where using a DataURL will actually be LESS performant than using a HTTP URL with appropriate caching and compression headers.

XDM is part of the HTML5 specification.  Search for "onMessage" for more information.

The change to the per-host connection limit applies to all HTTP/HTTPS traffic, not just that from XHR.  RFC2616 suggests that user-agents "SHOULD" (not MIST) limit themselves to 2 connections per server.  The RFC2616bis working group is currently deliberating over removing that suggestion, as the characteristics of the Intranet have changed significantly since this implementation guidance was provided.  Opera defaults to 8 connections per host, and Firefox will dynamically scale up to 8 as well.

Ahem... typo "MUST" not "MIST" above. :-)

Hello,

(For bug numbers, please refer to my IE 7 bug website)

Bugs (#51, #72, #79) regarding text increase/decrease or related to EM have not been fixed.

Some testcases have border disappearing: bug #101 (which is fixed! thank you!) but now, we do not see the border... which must be another bug surfacing, appearing. bug #15 is also another example of border disappearing, reappearing.

If the last character of a block-level element is a exclamation mark, question mark, period or comma, or some other typical ponctuation character/sign, then it can not be selected/highlighted with the mouse when dragging the text.

Eg.: <h1>Hello World</h1> is entirely selectable/highlightable with a mousedown+mousedrag from left to right or from right to left.

But

<h1>Hello World!</h1> and the ! is not selectable/highlightable with mousedragging. It can be easy to provide lots of tests of this buggy behavior.

Bug #102 is now worse: hovering the mouse cursor hover the padding-left area does *not* trigger the :hover class but hovering the mouse cursor over the  padding-right area does trigger the :hover class. This must be a regression. I have other tests in which the same regression is noticed.

Bugs #49 and #67 are not fixed: when a link is styled with display: block, then its padding area should be reactive to :hover.

There is something wrong going on, definitely a regression, with list markers and with images as list-style-image. a) previous list marker is duplicated when hovering the mouse over a list item in bug #67

b) list-style-image is not visible, viewable in bug #68. Others elsewhere have also mentioned problems with list-style-image.

Best regards, Gérard

getElementById(), hasAttributes() and attributes as a NamedNodeMap are not correctly implemented. See bugs #13, #54 and #55 respectively at my IE 7 bug webpage for testcases.

Many other DOM attributes and methods are still not correctly implemented: see bugs #23, #24, #26, #30, #42, etc.

Regards, Gérard

Still Waiting for one of those elusive invites to file bugs in the public bug tracking system.

I must say that I am far from impressed about how the bug tracking system works this time around.

At least last time I could file a bug.  Now I just get to sit here and hope that someone files the bugs I've seen.

Where's Al when you need him?... oh, never mind, he works for a company that has a FULLY PUBLIC BUG TRACKING SYSTEM now.

Grumble, grumble, grumble.

My last comment doesn't seem to have gotten through: will you support document.getElementsByClassName? It should be trivial, now that the Selector API is in.

Also, whatever happened to inline find? Is that still a go?

@Gerard,

Glad to see I'm not the only one!

Once again, we would file a bug report in the bug tracker, BUT WE DON'T HAVE ACCESS!

Margin-bottom is no longer rendered in

http://www.gtalbot.org/BrowserBugsSection/Opera9Bugs/MarginBottom.html

This appears to be a regression.

Padding-right is no longer rendered in

http://www.gtalbot.org/BrowserBugsSection/Opera9Bugs/Opera9PaddingRightMisrendered.html

This appears to be a regression.

<object height="100%"> is rendered with only 75 pixels. See/just load

http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/Test/CSS1/20070302/sec44.htm

This appears to be a regression.

Regards, Gérard

@ Steve

I believe I have access to a Microsoft IE bug tracker system of some sort, somewhere ... not sure... I was invited to - if I understood this correctly - ... but anyway, I prefer my own website for all this. So, as soon as I have more time, I'll list the bugs, upload testcases at my IE 8 bug webpage.

hasAttribute() seems to be correctly implemented: at least, I see no problems or issue.

But hasAttributes() is different and it has at least one bug.

"Not yet fixed bugs" are one category of bugs; regression bugs are more important bugs, I would say, and represent a more urgent category of bugs to tackle, eradicate.

So, in that sense, I fully understand why Microsoft IE team did not implement DOM 2 Events for this beta.

When there are so many bugs to be fixed, tackled, investigated, it is understandable that you want to restrict bug fixing to delimited areas and to "advance" methodically, in a structured manner. IE 6 and IE 7 had well over 750 bugs (most likely around 1250 bugs of all sorts); so, a first beta can not aspire to fix everything... it's not a realistic goal, it would be too wild, too complex, too demanding.

Regards, Gérard

Gyrobo, John A. Bilicki III: inline search and spell checker are included in the very useful add-on IE7pro. Furthermore this adds a whole lot of other features that are probably also in the list of most downloaded FF extensions :)

And Eric Law: Could you point to where data: URIs have been a security threat in browsers that implement them? The only thing I found was an address spoofing flaw in Opera and I don't mind the fact that data: URIs don't work from the address bar, as this is probably not their primary use. But predicting that data URIs won't have any use outside of image/ MIME types might be a bit bold, I think.

Hotmail / IE 8 compatibility issues known defect?

@@Johannes-- he said -primarily- not -only-... did you bother searching for the bugs over at Bugzilla?

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=277999

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=390726

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=255107

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=371923

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=380369

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=371179

etc etc etc.

Dynamically disableing a command button does not work: the command button still receives + fires onclick event.

Dynamically defaultChecking a command button does not work: this worked in IE 7.

For a demo for both problems with/in IE 8, see bug #21 at my webpage.

Regards, Gérard

According to HTML 4 spec. (section 11.3.2), the default vertical-alignment for table header cells is middle, not top.

"middle: Cell data is centered vertically within the cell. This is the default value."

Default vertical alignment value for all table header cells was middle in IE 7. Now, in IE 8, default vertical alignment value for table header cells is top.

Regards, Gérard

@Johannes Rössel

Thanks, but I'm aware of the plug in. I remember hearing about inline find being something the IE team really wanted to include natively. Just wondering if that was on the menu.

@IE Team

And what's with the grayed-out address bar? That "feature" was backed out of Firefox a year ago because it hinders readability. Plus, it doesn't even highlight subdomains! Completely USELESS for blogs. I hope you'll reconsider this functionality.

How come max- and min-widths/heights aren't in the list of CSS fixes? They must be fixed since IE8 passes Acid2...

@David, those properties are already part of IE7 as far as I know.

Hello IE8 team,

This is probably not exactly the right place to post what I'm going to post, but at least I'm sure someone from the IE team will read it. So, let's go.

First, congratultions for the software. Great work. The tools for developers are really awesome! I'm going to try to add slices to my own site.

It's too bad that they made you back down on the issue of default rendering engine, though. IMHO, it's really too early to make IE8's rendering engine the default. Probably this has to do with Opera and its EU action.

Now I guess you mostly have to fix bugs and make the whole think work much quicker. As far as I can say, IE8 as a software is slower than IE7 as a software, and, within IE8, IE8 rendering is slower than IE7 rendering. Contrarily to what people say on the Web, IE7 in my experience was indeed quicker than FireFox. I hope IE8 will keep the edge once in the release version.

Apart from that I've noticed two things on which it's probably worthy that I give you some feedback:

1) negative text-indents are not correctly displayed by the IE8 rendering engine when viewing my site on my computer (scroll down the main column of my site to witness this). Sometimes they display, sometimes not, varies as I scroll; which makes me say it's propably not a standards-compliance issue with my site. Negative text-indents are standard aren't they? I guess they shouldn't be cut part of the time like they are.

2) Italic text is (at least sometimes) cut at the end of lines. See the links on the right column of my site for an example. I hope it does it also for you.

I guess there is some weirdness with the way inline boxes are rendered, but hey, you know your job better than I.

FYI, if ever it matters, I'm using XP sp2.

Besides, I have a two questions that someone from Microsoft or someone better skilled than I am can probably answer:

1) I don't understand the View menu of the developer tools window. Does skipping to quirks mode automatically amount to viewing my site as rendered by IE5? I would say no myself, because some incorrect or non-existing DTD is required for a navigator to skip to quiks mode, and my site has a correct DTD; but I'm far for being an expert.

2) I've read many times that IE8 enables me the viewing of my site as rendered by IE6. How do I achieve this?

What i would really like to see added is styling for select boxes, so developers can change the look of the button, drop down, and border of select elements.  Color is most important to me, but it would be nice if we could stick images into select structures as replacement for the default arrow button and as entries for the option tags.

Hey um, I registered on thet Connect site; but I can't file a report.

Also I can't start a new thread on the Maillist, the new-thread-Button doesn't work!

Hi,

In 2005, Chris Wilson said that Internet Explorer 7 wouldn't have XHTML media type support[1].  This didn't sound at all unreasonable to me, as the IE team had other priorities.

Now the IE8 beta 1 is out, I note that support hasn't been added, but work has been done to add XML-ish namespace support to regular HTML.  (This is a little unexpected, given that neither the HTML 4 Recommendation nor the current HTML 5 drafts have any such feature!)

Can you please let us know what's going on.  Is this part of a plan working to add XHTML support in a future beta?  Or does Microsoft no longer intend to support this standard?

Thanks.

[1] http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/09/15/467901.aspx

overflow:hidden and opacity isn't working in IE8

Hey Gérard, can you please contact me through my site? I can't find any way to contact you through yours. I'd like to discuss IE8 and bugs. :-)

id like to know how many ppl work on the ie team

More specifically a DIV with overflow:hidden ignores the property when the content in the DIV is a UL with position:relative.

overflow:scroll and auto works fine though.

Hi Doug Stamper,

My suggestions to the next build of IE 8 beta

when to click with shift key + left button mouse in to link:

- to open new pages new tabs instead of new windows as presented currently.

When browser is minized:

- Hide it in an icon in the task bar.

Frank: Ok, I have to admit, I resorted to a simple Google search, turns out that most things either aren't indexed or not linked enough (and the experience of digging through Bugzilla myself was ugly enough for me one time I filed a bug :))

Álisson P. F.: Especially that last feature will probably never see IE natively. The notification area is defined in the UX guidelines as reserved for ... well ... notifications. If you desperately want that functionality, there are 3rd party plug ins out there that do that. You can click links with the middle mouse button or use Ctrl-click to open them in a new tab. This is consistent with other browsers and works since IE 7.

@Gerard,

Very good points... I'm well aware that several dozen bugs were fixed, and for that I do thank MS.

However, there is 1 bug that if fixed would make us all very happy.

Element.prototype.xxxx

If we could prototype on any element type, we could fix the setAttribute, getAttribute, hasAttribute, hasAttributes, getElementsByName, add getElementsByClassName (for descendants), autoCompletionStorage, onchange for radio/checkboxes, etc.

Adding the ability to prototype won't break any existing content yet it would enable end developers to fix what IE won't, or has decided not to yet.

@EricLaw:

"DataURLs are primarily useful for embedding small images into CSS for use as icons, etc; IE8 permits this use.  Unfortunately, for some content types, DataURLs can be dangerous, which is why IE8 scopes them to use where they are not a security threat."

I was more talking about the 32KB limit which doesn't really make it a viable option to compensate for the lack of <canvas> and native SVG. 32KB won't let you generate things like complex graphs and such, even when you use a compressed imageformat like PNG or GIF (I actually do have a GIF implementation in javascript that uses data-url's to show the image :P) instead of a simple format like BMP. I haven't really compared IE8's implementation to those in other browsers yet so I don't really know what restrictions they impose, but at least they offer alternatives.

"Note that there are many cases where using a DataURL will actually be LESS performant than using a HTTP URL with appropriate caching and compression headers."

I know that, but I had other usecases in mind ;)

"XDM is part of the HTML5 specification.  Search for "onMessage" for more information."

But then why isn't IE8's implementation following the HTML5 specification? I noticed several differences and Anne van Kesteren confirms my initial findings ( http://annevankesteren.nl/2008/03/ie8-bad ). MS is acting again like the big gorilla in the room doing as they please without consulting the WG. Effectively they are again forcing their interpretation upon the world leaving the WG no choice but to alter the specification to IE's implementation on several points. That is bypassing the WG to get what you want without having to reach concensus on possible issues and is actually hurting the standards process and interoperability (again).

The same goes for MS' decision to increase the per-host connection limit. You've effectively already decided over RFC2616bis WG deliberations, probably without having participated in that debat. Although I understand the reasoning behind this change it's more the way that MS is again making this decision on it's own as if they own the web. Afaik Firefox still ships with the default set to 2 (although that can be changed in the configuration or by using some extensions), I don't know about Opera.

the emulate IE7 seen it dos not want to work

i down lode the new IE8  and i did re start it when i got done down lodeing it  like it ask me to but it seen lie it dos not want to work

do i need to down  lode any thing???

Use of RGB values is broken in the IE8 beta.

http://blog.websitestyle.com/index.php/2008/03/08/ie8-beta-broken-rgb-color/

@Nicole,

I too can verify that there are issues with RGB color values in IE8.

I also noted that asking for an attribute via getAttribute() won't necs. return the same thing you set.

in the case of style, if you pass in "border: 1px solid #ff0000;" it will return MSIE's broken UPPERCASE PROPERTY names exploded for each top, bottom, left, right. e.g. "BORDER-TOP: 1px solid #ff0000; BORDER-RIGHT: 1px solid #ff0000; BORDER-BOTTOM: 1px solid #ff0000; BORDER-LEFT: 1px solid #ff0000;"

Its a minor thing, but something to keep in mind since IE already does strange stuff with form element's value attributes, if the user has typed something in.

@Tino: The 2-connection per host suggestion in RFC2616 is a SHOULD, not a MUST requirement.

I've already noted that both Firefox and Opera have surpassed the 2 connection limit, so implying that IE is somehow unique in this regard is incorrect.

There's no real dissent in the HTTP WG related to removing the connection limit.  See http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/ietf-http-wg/2008JanMar/0423.html for the discussion.  

In http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/ietf-http-wg/2008JanMar/0429.html, Roy Fielding (whose name you'll find atop RFC2616) says: "in regards to the topic, I see no reason for the connection limits."

Please note, Anne's post does not make ANY mention of IE8's support for HTML5 Cross-Document-Messaging.  For any of you who might not be aware (and because it is not mentioned on his post), Anne is an employee of Opera Software ASA.

@EricLaw: I'm not discussing whether or not it would be good to increase (or even abandon) the per-host connection limit but the more general issue of making implementations interoperable. That doesn't mean cherry-picking and interpret the existing standards in a broader or strict manner where you see fit for your /own/ need but it means reaching some sort of consensus on certain issues in the field and then act in a simular way. I'll see if I can find some more information on other browsers behaviour in that respect. Do you have any pointers?

As for Cross-Document-Messaging, that's my bad; I mistook XDM for XDomainRequest. And yes I'm well aware that Anne works for Opera, but he is also deeply involved in standards work so I have no reason to doubt his opinion.

Is there any chance the IEBlog could introduce some new blog categories (tags)? For instance I might want to see all the posts relating to IE7, or newly supported CSS properties, or user interface changes, Add-ons, etc...

Some of the existing tags are quite vague as well, what can one expect to find in "IE on the Web"? Everything except Intranet-related posts?

Thanks

Nice beta.

I have had a few pages not display properly,  but I was able to track those down to non-standard coding.

The only pages that REFUSE to work properly are live.com and hotmail, LOL.

Ok, I'm getting real impatient about this now.

What is the deal with the invites to submit bugs?  (no offense to Gerald) but how come the people that want to submit bugs can't submit bugs?  This seems totally counter intuitive!

My invite status in Connect just sits there, with no activity, just status=active, while I wait for approval.

I'm flabbergasted that you shut this thing down for over a year, and when you open it up, you don't even make it public!?!?!?

Did none of the ranting on this blog by just about everyone not indicate that they would like to participate in this process?

For the record, I'm fine if you reject my request to enter tickets... but at least provide the professional courtesy to let us know that you are blocking us from entering them, and give an explanation as to why!

Steve C.

@Gérard Talbot

http://www.gtalbot.org/BrowserBugsSection/Opera9Bugs/MarginBottom.html

http://www.gtalbot.org/BrowserBugsSection/Opera9Bugs/Opera9PaddingRightMisrendered.html

"This appears to be a regression."

That's not a regression, that IE8 following the CSS standards for an overflow box (I like IE7 behavior better anyway). The extra space that Opera 9.26 and earlier showa in the second test case is actually an old Opera bug.

http://css-class.com/test/css/overflow/float-container-margin-overflow.htm

But your first case give me a good example of a bug with frozen backgrounds when scrolling. My test cases are worse since I have non scrollable overflow boxes.

http://css-class.com/test/css/overflow/floated-overflow-length-with-inner-box-float.htm

Go on try to scroll those boxes in IE8. I have many more new bugs to demonstrate and my test pages show existing bugs in IE7 still happening in IE8.

http://css-class.com/test/bugs/ie/renderingbands.htm

The fun begin. :-)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but in IE8's version of Standards mode, the following are still messed up.

.setAttribute() for "cellpadding", "cellspacing" (on tables), as well as "style"... which sometimes get confused as an object, esp. when calling object.getAttribute('style') which should return a string, not IE's deprecated quick access to the style object that you might expect when using object.style

Where is the full list of what is fixed, and what is still broken in IE8?

Where can I file these bugs with test cases so others can verify these bugs, and IE developers can verify that the fixes in Beta 2 address these?

Manuel

@Steve C

I would venture a guess that if any invites are being given out, it's to participants on here with an established, consistent, "Identity" with contact information of some type that's contributed to this blog in a constructive way with given examples.

Confirmed.

You can't set the style attribute on a TABLE tag in IE8's version of Standards mode.

You still need to use the IE6 hack,

TableObject.style.setAttribute('cssText', 'Your CSS Property String Here');

You can use the DOM tool in IE8 to verify.

Man I was really hoping bug 245 was going to be fixed in this release!

http://webbugtrack.blogspot.com/2007/10/bug-245-setattribute-style-does-not.html

IE8 does fix it for DIV, FORM, and TD tags from my testing, but TABLE is definitely broken still.

@AC

You would have figured that their top submitters of verified bugs in the IE7 Feedback Connect Site would have been given the first invites... but that didn't happen.  (I was 1 or 2)

I get the feeling they don't want a lot of volume in the queue because they think it will look bad.

What about finally making IE ICM-aware?

Try and go to http://www.color.org/version4html.xalter

What HTML5 tags and attributes do you support? I'd like to use them on my website.

@Tino

[QUOTE1] MS is acting again like the big gorilla in the room doing as they please without consulting the WG. Effectively they are again forcing their interpretation upon the world leaving the WG no choice but to alter the specification to IE's implementation on several points. That is bypassing the WG to get what you want without having to reach concensus on possible issues and is actually hurting the standards process and interoperability (again).

[QUOTE2]EricLaw: I'm not discussing whether or not it would be good to increase (or even abandon) the per-host connection limit but the more general issue of making implementations interoperable. That doesn't mean cherry-picking and interpret the existing standards in a broader or strict manner where you see fit for your /own/ need but it means reaching some sort of consensus on certain issues in the field and then act in a simular way. I'll see if I can find some more information on other browsers behaviour in that respect. Do you have any pointers

Most browsers already use more than 2 connections. The related RFC allows this. Where is the problem!?

[QUOTE3]The same goes for MS' decision to increase the per-host connection limit. You've effectively already decided over RFC2616bis WG deliberations, probably without having participated in that debat. Although I understand the reasoning behind this change it's more the way that MS is again making this decision on it's own as if they own the web. Afaik Firefox still ships with the default set to 2 (although that can be changed in the configuration or by using some extensions), I don't know about Opera

IE8 is not alone and the RFC doesn't even prohibit this, at all!

You've been wrong about several points you've made. Stop trolling/fan-boying and research first.

It sounds like you're Neelie Kroes' advisor...

@Steve C

[QUOTE]but how come the people that want to submit bugs can't submit bugs?

They should definitely reconsider this.

As someone else said, you have to wait and hope someone else posts the issue you want to report and then vote on it ;-)

IE8b1 has many problems and they won't even be known unless (all) volunteers can freely report these issues on the Connect website.

If they actively moderate/clean the issue reports then the volume increase would be manageable. Right now I can't do anything but ... "report a website problem" :D

Nice to see the IE8 beta.. I'm using it now.. seems nice and smooth..

BUT can you please implement that "page title" functionality where the title of the page appears right to the URL when you pull the drop down menu of the address bar.

This is implemented in some other browsers (FFox) and its really helpful when going through a long list of unfriendly URLs in the address bar's drop down to have the title of the page. It simply fetches the <title> tag of that particular page and shows it.

Hope I made enough sense :)

@MacDaddy: I thought I was quite civilized in my posts and already admitted that I wasn't aware of the fact(?) that other browsers already went beyond the 2 per-host limit, that's exactly why I asked for some references.

Fwiw, I still think that 'SHOULD' is quite a strong directive and that's why I think that on points where the specifications 'allows' (as in: doesn't prohibit by using 'MUST') you to be more loose implementations should be more equal. I can pinpoint several items in several RFC's where IE's implementation is either more slack or more strict than those in other browsers and that seems to me to be a bad thing.

I know that there is more and more colobaration  between browservendors to resolve those kind of interoperability issues, but Microsoft just doesn't seem willing to participate in such efforts, which to me is disappointing at least.

And on a sidenote: I'm already doing quite some investigation on several items regarding IE8 in my spare time. It's very time-consuming and I'm sorry that I haven't really focussed on the good things. I'm just trying to get as much information I can before I can really make judgements on detailed points.

At this point the only judgement I made is that MS is not really into colobaration with the other browservendors and the several W3C WG's they're participating in. We've seen what that leads to in the past, and even recently wrt the X-UA-Compatible flag were they had to revise that behaviour for several reasons. I hate to see MS making those same mistakes when implementing other new features or changing existing behaviour.

when will Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 be out ???

Now that's something good to hear.

Now just make sure you fixed the damage you've already done and get everyone to update (when the public version is done).

When there is a MASS posting like the past 2-3 days, you really need a TOC (Table Of Contents) for this blog, as major info gets lost in the blur of posts.

If you had a recent posts section on the right, listing say the past 8-10 posts, readers would be able to see at a glance the last post they read, and what they've missed.

Thus as of Sunday March 9th, the list would look like:

---------------------

* Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 for Developers – Standards Highlights

* Improved Productivity Through Internet Explorer 8 Developer Tools

* The Default Layout Mode

* IE8 and CSS 2.1 Testing

* IE8 and JScript

* Activities and WebSlices in Internet Explorer 8

* IE8 and IP Licensing

* Why Isn't IE8 Passing Acid2?

* IE8 Beta Feedback

* Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 for Developers Now Available

I was reading the feedback on the "IE8 Beta Feedback" post... by the time I was done (read over a few days)... 7 or 8 more posts had sailed through!

Thanks, ivan

@Steve

You said "there is 1 bug that if fixed would make us all very happy.

Element.prototype.xxxx

If we could prototype on any element type, *_we could fix_* the setAttribute, getAttribute, hasAttribute, hasAttributes, getElementsByName, add getElementsByClassName (for descendants), autoCompletionStorage, onchange for radio/checkboxes, etc."

prototype is just another bug. It should not be fixed so that *we* could work around lots of other bugs in IE. This hacking and workaround-IE-bugs mentality must die with IE 8. The correct, adequate, appropriate, responsible and proactive mentality (starting with IE 8) should be, must be:

1- I find/discover a bug in IE

2- I create a reduced testcase of it

3- I report the bug to Microsoft so that **Microsoft IE Team** fixes it for everyone and forever, period.

That mentality should have been dominating, prevailing in 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, etc...

Just one example coming from Eric Meyer himself. The incorrect CSS 1 box model was known to Microsoft as soon as IE 3 was shipped and RTM.

"The classic example of this was the original implementation of height and width in Internet Explorer, which was wrong per the CSS specifications. The IE team at the time became aware of this *_fairly soon after they shipped it in IE3_* ... and yet the problem wasn't fixed until IE6, a delay that slowed the adoption of CSS and gave rise to a whole family of JavaScript sniffers and CSS hacks."

In fact, it never was fixed everywhere and for everyone: it was just pushed into a new created rendering mode and then fix in that newly created rendering mode.

So today, the web is full of hacks of all sorts, ugly fixes, non-forward-compatible workarounds, junk code, etc... which are working around IE bugs. Again, if Microsoft fixes bugs soon and fast after they are discovered, then the web developers will not have sufficient time to create and to publish non-webstandards-sensical hacks about them.

Regards, Gérard

Once again the Connect site has proven to be the worst public bug tracking system ever!

Not only can we not log in to submit bugs, but even viewing them is messed up.

Just how am I supposed to view a screenshot or a test case if there is no link to the file?

What gives?!

Are you seriously telling us that in the time since IE7 was announced as being "On the roadmap", that no one has spent *ANY* time putting something together to manage this whole process?

I can't believe it is 2008 and IE is the only major browser without a realistic public bug tracking system.

Talk about your prime candidate for a feature on the dailywtf!

Great.  Now work on the new acid 3 test

http://acid3.acidtests.org/

IE7 scores 14/100

IE8 scores 17/100

ffox 3.0bpre5 scores 69/100

and let the live.com team know their site is completely broken.

... I sent the live.com team a note yesterday to talk to Dean, Chris, Alex & Markus.  If Microsoft wants to hire me for being an inside man let me know:)  I just like learning about how you all do business.

@Manuel

"You can't set the style attribute on a TABLE tag in IE8's version of Standards mode."

"the following are still messed up.

.setAttribute() for "cellpadding", "cellspacing" (on tables), as well as "style"."

Manuel, that is not what I see, notice at these webpages:

http://www.gtalbot.org/DHTMLSection/CreatingTable.html

http://www.gtalbot.org/DHTMLSection/DynamicTableFormatting.html

Of course, some functions do not work perfectly but overall, I can set the style of a table object and table cell objects.

Regards, Gérard

It would be great, if the IE8 team should be working on XHTML support, but please don't add HTML namespace support in IE8 final.

If you honestly intend to have namespaces in HTML, then please coordinate this with the HTML5 WG.

Personally, I even think that xml-like namespaces would be great to have in plain html, because this would hopefully keep the use of microformats at a tolerable level and instead add a reasonable to use html extensions, But such changes should be introduced in the proper way and it would be dangerous to introduce an unspecified xhtml/html hybrid mode of parsing.

@Steve, Still Waiting and all those who want to file bugs in the public bug tracking system.

Create a reduced testcase of the bug you see: shorter is usually better. Make sure there is a clear PASS and clear FAIL in such minimized testcase: the test should be easy to figure out for anyone. Make sure your markup code and CSS code are perfectly valid. Your reduced testcase should be using a doctype declaration (preferably) referring to a strict DTD. Upload it on your website.

I'm sure now Microsoft is looking for such testcases. Again, the best ones are the ones that are short preferably minimalist, clear, easy to figure out, using valid code, identifying only 1 bug per testcase. Be as factual and as formal as you can in such testcases. In longer testcases, clearly identify steps to reproduce and expected results.

CSS2.1 Test Case Authoring Guidelines

http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/Test/guidelines.html

If you do that, I'm absolutely sure Microsoft will appreciate such testcases and fix the bugs because such testcases help not only figuring out bugs but to fix them and to verify that they are fixed.

2 examples (from Nicole's report):

http://www.gtalbot.org/BrowserBugsSection/MSIE8Bugs/ShorthandBackgroundAndRGB-1.html

411 bytes

http://www.gtalbot.org/BrowserBugsSection/MSIE8Bugs/ShorthandBackgroundAndRGB-2.html

328 bytes

--------

Other idea. You can still report your good, clear testcases with the

Report a webpage problem (in IE add-on)

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/ie/ie8/readiness/ResourcesAndLinks.htm

Regards, Gérard

@Thompson

I agree with you that the Connect IE Bug database reporting/feedback website is not an ideal or even just a good bug database reporting website.

But complaining at this point is not going to be useful, helpful to anyone. At the very least, identify what is wrong/incorrect with that Connect bug tracking system and what you would improve in it and how you would improve it (hints: make useful, constructive criticisms, be suggestive, preferably with concrete proposals, concrete proposals, examples, screenshots, etc) and do so preferably at the best place, at the opportune moment. A good place to do all this would be on your own website.

If you want to report bugs, you still can do it in many ways (read the other IE blog messages pointing to IE8 documentation webpages).

Download and install the Report a webpage problem (with IE add-on).

File your bugs with that "Report a webpage problem" IE add-on.

Create your own webpage/testcases on your site.

Regards, Gérard

I am trying to use the Emulate IE7 as some of the pages I was trying to visit were broken.

Identified 3 important issues.

1. When I use the vertical scroll bar it comes down but again it goes on to the top. It happens randomly

2. When I use favorites it crashes my IE

3. I think still it has some issues displaying CSS based sites. The width and the height are a bit abnormal to what I see with Ie7. The Emulate IE7 doesnt work exactly as its expected to work.

Hope this feedback helps.

A question... if the developer toolbar can switch between IE7 and IE8 rendering at will, why can't the IE7 emulation button do this, only after restarting the browser?

@html namespaces are dangerous -- IE has supported namespaces in HTML documents since IE 5 (1999).  The only thing that they are doing in IE8 is allowing these custom elements to function without IE-specific goo (an Object tag to pull in the behavior, and an Import directive to associate the behavior with the namespace).

I've heard some HTML5 folk complaining about supporting namespaces in HTML but still haven't heard a good argument against it.  Frankly, it would be better if HTML5 would focus on the basics (interoperable error handling, clarification to undefined behaviors, etc) and include an extensibility mechanism (namespaces) so that the remaining "goodies" (video tag, etc) could be implemented separately from the main spec.

Incidentally, IE has supported a video tag (the SMIL video tag) via HTML+TIME since 1999.  Why this video tag isn't "good enough" for the HTML5 folk, and why they feel the need to re-invent the wheel, is beyond me.

How can i hide the horizontal... scroll bar... it shows up... even if not needed... thx...

Standards? Where is your support for SVG?

How are you going to pass Acid 3 without it?

How can I hide the horizontal scroll bar?...

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/09/2136242

looks like some bad press

@gabe

Bad press? About Microsoft? On Slashdot?

Inconceivable!

Yea, this horizontal scroll thing is killing me. how did that make it to a beta?

So after watching several of the MIX 08 videos on IE 8, I took the plunge and installed IE 8 on my Vista (64-bit) laptop. After restarting the laptop, IE 8 had completed its installtion.

Everything seemed to be working fine until I visited a page containing a Silverlight control. IE 8 just stopped, dead in its tracks. No CPU utilization, no mouse response, etc.

I tried uninstalling Silverlight Beta 2 and installing Silverlight 1.0. The result was the same.

Ended up uninstalling IE 8, which worked. Upon rebooting IE7 was back. When I visited a silverlight page everything worked.

Disapointed.

Roger Wilson

Well, for a B1 I personally thought it was fine.

My only real issue is that a page designed in Expression Web (XHTML/CSS2.1) looks different in IE7 and IE8. So I'm hoping its not soon going to be a case of having to design for IE7, IE8 and FX (what's Opera?).

Comformance with standards is great, but who decides on the standards? Surely it should be the first team to fully develop a procedure, not a bunch of over-educated tie-wearing monkeys with nothing better to do than agree with each other about nothing.

I like the new features. Not something I would use as a user very much, but certainly one more item for the toolbox.

If this was an alpha I could imagine all of the above bitching being warranted, but as it is just a beta maybe some people need to rein in their attitude. If you got asked to testdrive the new Lambi (still in development) you wouldn't come back and bitch about it.

Constructed criticism is a great developer tool...stressed and bitching developers are just tools. ;)

Great work IE team.

"My only real issue is that a page designed in Expression Web (XHTML/CSS2.1) looks different in IE7 and IE8. So I'm hoping its not soon going to be a case of having to design for IE7, IE8 and FX (what's Opera?)."

One word: meta

"Comformance with standards is great, but who decides on the standards? Surely it should be the first team to fully develop a procedure, not a bunch of over-educated tie-wearing monkeys with nothing better to do than agree with each other about nothing."

That's brilliant! Congratulationz, you win a cookie!

RE > Gérard Talbot

Very constructive work - a job well done.

@nonA

-----------------

"My only real issue is that a page designed in Expression Web (XHTML/CSS2.1) looks different in IE7 and IE8. So I'm hoping its not soon going to be a case of having to design for IE7, IE8 and FX (what's Opera?)."

One word: meta

"Comformance with standards is great, but who decides on the standards? Surely it should be the first team to fully develop a procedure, not a bunch of over-educated tie-wearing monkeys with nothing better to do than agree with each other about nothing."

That's brilliant! Congratulationz, you win a cookie!

-----------------

Hello anonymousN. Do you have a name? You really think the solution is a meta tag. Ok, I have one test case to show you dealing with display table.

http://css-class.com/test/css/table/table-property1.htm

Indeed no meta, no hack, no nothing is going to correct this. All boxes should be 100px high. IE8 support of display table properties is badly broken. This will result in a large number of sites breaking if an author has used display table properties for the better browsers. This I see as the most critical CSS bug to be fixed.

So instead of presenting cookies to anyone, considerer the real issues. Try navigating IE8 to this page.

WARNING!

http://www.ruzee.com/blog/2007/05/align-list-items-horizontally-with-css/

WARNING: This page will cause IE8 to freeze for about 5 minutes before you can stop it. The blog entry is able using display table properties. Test for yourself anonymousN.

@PAul Allsopp: "what's Opera?"

Its the browser that renders much faster than IE, had Tabs before Firefox and Safari and IE and the one you should be making sure your pages/sites work in.

Currently when designing a site, you want to make sure it will work in:

Firefox 2.x-3.x, Safari 3.x, Opera 9.x (not the Alpha's), IE 7 (possibly IE6 if you still support it) (IE8, when the RTM is out), Konqueror 3.5-4.x.

There are other browsers that you'll likely want to check in too, but this is the core set.

"Comformance with standards is great, but who decides on the standards" - Easy, the W3C

http://www.w3c.org/

This is your "Bible" to web development.

"If this was an alpha I could imagine all of the above bitching being warranted, but as it is just a beta maybe some people need to rein in their attitude"

Well, if you had been around for the IE7 beta fiasco, then you'd know that RANTING early