If you did not know Microsoft is currently working on Internet Explorer 8 (IE8), you may ask why a new web browser? If you are not a flower of the “browser wars” you may not realize that over the years all browser have made compromises in how they parse HTML and associated style sheets. This was done for appropriate reasons by all for the time they were created, this helped the browsers render existing content on the web but over the years as web developers have adopted new standers browsers needed to adapt and while Internet Explorer 7 did a lot it was not completely standards compliant so the goal for IE8 is to make the “Standards mode” much better than IE7 but also keep the IE7 standards available in IE8 so we are left with three layout modes – Quirks, IE7 Standards, and IE8 Standards. You can tell IE8 to use the IE7 Standards mode by adding a meta tag ‘<META http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=7">’ but you should start to update your sites content to comply with the CSS 2.1 standard to the IE8 Standards will render your site well.

For more information about layout modes, standards in IE8 go to the blog posts from the IE8 team The Default Layout Mode, Microsoft's Interoperability Principles and IE8 and HTML and DOM Standards Compliance in IE8 Beta 1. If you are interested in one of the milestones the team reached before the release of beta 1 check out the blog post Internet Explorer 8 and Acid2: A Milestone.

Security

The largest issue for customers is around security, I don’t know about you but as the family tech support I want my mother-in-laws web experience to be as secure as possible so I keep turning off her Linksys router :). That has only frustrated her so I look forward to all the security enhancements IE8 will bring to her (no I have not installed beta 1 for her but I will most likely install beta 2) my personal favorite observable feature is Domain Highlighting in the address bar. Now when you get send that email asking you to change your online banks account password you will see the domain name of the site you are accessing in black text while the rest of the site address will appear in gray like:

  vs.

The hope would be that my mother-in-law will see on the real site the domain name looks like it should where the other page dose not look like it is part of the wellsfargo domain. It gets better when you go to a site that has been reported to Microsoft as a phishing website you will the address bar look like this:

  for more on the Microsoft Safety Filter go to the faq on it.

If domains use Extended Validation SSL certificates IE8 will show a green background and the company name the SSL cert. is registered to.

There are a lot of other security features in IE8, the team has a (so far) 5 part series about all security in IE8:

IE8 Security Part I: DEP/NX Memory Protection
IE8 Security Part II: ActiveX Improvements
IE8 Security Part III: SmartScreen® Filter
IE8 Security Part IV: The XSS Filter
IE8 Security Part V: Comprehensive Protection

While the security features are great there is still only so much any single software application can do to stop people from doing things that can hurt there system so still remember surf intelligently!

New Ways to experience the web

Part IE8 is extending the web user experience to do this IE8 includes two new ways to interact with the web beyond the page with Activities and WebSlices

I have written about Activities in the post IE8 Activity: "Define with Wikipedia" but basics are (from IE8 Features page) “Activities are contextual services that provide quick access to external services from any webpage” I think this a great way to let users with information on any web page regardless how site designers expect.

WebSlices are equally interesting for designers to anticipate what information users will want to be aware of. again from the IE8 Features page:

“Web sites can expose portions of their page as a WebSlice, which users can subscribe to. And users can bring that content with them on their links bar wherever they are on the web. Users receive update notifications when the content changes.”

I will do a future post about how to implement WebSlices.

Status and Future

The current release of IE8 is Beta 1 witch is targeted for web developers and designers to so they can prepare for the release of IE8. I have been running the current beta for months now and I have had little problems, I run it in IE7 Emulation mode most of the time.

Bill Gates at TechEd this last June announced that Beta 2 will be (read should be) released in August of this year. I have not been keeping up with the internal builds so I don’t know how on track the team is with that date.

I just found out that Microsoft is now offering this! Cool now I can tell people where they can get help…

From the support page:

Free unlimited installation and compatibility support is available for Windows Vista, but only for Service Pack 1 (SP1). This support for SP1 is valid until March 18, 2009.

Here is the link: http://support.microsoft.com/oas/default.aspx?LN=en-us&prid=11274&gprid=500921&x=15&y=14

I just got the exciting new that Central Coast Code Camp will be returning! This will be the second time for the Central Coast Code Camp and if it is anything like last year it will be a blast. Robert Hope did a great job putting it on and I am sure he will do another great job! I hope if you can find an excuse to make it that you do.

Check out the web site for more information www.centralcoastcodecamp.com.

I know I am slow but I did not know we had a great set of resources for learning SharePoint but if you are looking to get in to doing any level of development on SharePoint check out www.MSSharePointDeveloper.com. There are Virtual Labs, Quick Start guides, Webcasts and more of a wide range of topics around SharePoint development.

Check out this post Silverlight Mobile with John L Scott Real Estate at on10.net about a Windows mobile Silverlight prototype application for the real estate market… I can’t wait for Silverlight mobile!

The US Public Sector DPE group has started a cool set of videos myth busting issues that people have about Visual Studio, check it out!

www.mythweek.com

Mark Brown in is blog post CNET article on Google Capturing 3D Data talks about Microsoft's UltraCam that I heard about for the first time at ETech in 2007. At the time they had plans for the next version but even at the time it was the coolest image collection device I had ever seen (and I saw some cool stuff on airplanes when I was in the Navy) if you search on ETech ultracam you will see a lot about that session. With the imagery this camera can produce the Live team built algorithms that allow them to build the 3 dimensional data needed to build the maps that you can see on maps.live.com.

I have a great story about how I discovered that we were producing this type of map\imagery while I was I Devconnections a few years back but you have to buy me a beer or 6 to get it out of me ;).

I know I am just a lowly developer but I due use some administrative tools and I have loved for a long time and continue to use the Sysinternals set of tools. They have just opened up a new way to access there tools from there blog entry (with way too long of a title so I shortened it) Introducing Sysinternals Live Beta:

Sysinternals Live: We're excited to announce the beta of Sysinternals Live, a service that enables you to execute Sysinternals tools directly from the Web without hunting for and manually downloading them. Simply enter a tool's Sysinternals Live path into Windows Explorer or a command prompt as \\live.sysinternals.com\tools\<toolname> or view the entire Sysinternals Live tools directory in a browser at http://live.sysinternals.com.

I love it now I can download or just run the apps in a batch file!

@shanselman pointed out an interesting blog post titled "Building a web app the Microsoft way" where the author Jeremy Baines dose a good job of giving the facts that he and his team found while developing ‘Meet with Approval’. I could not find the case study that was mentioned but that is because the case study site sucks, I will try to find it internally and find the external link.

I know that I have tainted opinion but I don't see why more people\companies\startups don't evaluate the MS stack. From all of the comments only one that I saw was accurate and that is that Windows hosting is quite abit more expensive than LAMP hosting but I think that price will be coming down with the new support we have in Windows Server 2008 for hosters. I also think that a company looking at long term success and would want to look at the cost of self hosting, there are a lot of reasons that Windows for self hosting can be more cost effective but the big one for me is support.

To clam this blog with Technorati I have to do this post with this (Technorati Profile) link in it. Now you can see my Technorati profile and see just how little impact my blog has on the world ;).

If you are going to TechEd this year you should also check out ]inbetween[ my counterpart in Florida Joe Healy AKA devfish and the local Florida community is putting on a great event the weekend between the two weeks of TechEd. I had not wanted to go to TechEd until now but my team is out of budget for T&E for the year so I will have to miss this.

From all that I have seen Brad Abrams as the best wrap up of what is in SP1 at hi blog post Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 "SP1" Beta. It did not hurt that I stopped looking after I found it ;).

OK I know everyone in the .NET community reads Scott Hanselman's ComputerZen.com but just incase you missed this you need to checkout this cool new tool RockScroll in him post titled Introducing RockScroll. It is a way cool to visualize where you are in your code page!

This is an update to my last years list of SoCal user groups, like last year I wanted to have a resource that people can go to get an idea of what Microsoft Developer focused user groups are in Southern California so I have updated the list with the best information I can find. Again I do not clam this is the holistic but I hope that others will comment about other groups.

And again this list is not in any type of order! If I have any of this incorrect or you have a group you think that should be listed please comment on this post.

San Luis Obispo .NET User Group
http://www.slodotnet.org/

Central California .Net User Group
http://www.centralcaldotnet.com/

Inland Empire .NET User's Group
http://www.iedotnetug.org/

LA C# Developers Group
http://www.lacsharp.org/

LA Fox
http://www.lafox.org/

Los Angeles SQL Server Professionals Group
http://www.sql.la/

Los Angeles .NET Developers Group
http://www.ladotnet.org/

Los Angeles Connected Systems User Group - CS-UG.org
http://cs-ug.org/

South Bay .NET
http://www.southbaynet.org

Orange County .NET Server Users Group
http://www.ocnsug.org/

Southern California .Net Architecture Users Group
http://www.SoCalDotNetArchitecture.org/

Orange County C# Developers Group
http://www.occsharp.org/

Southern California .NET Developers Group
http://www.socaldotnet.org/

Orange County Visual Basic .Net Usergroup
http://www.ocvbug.org/

SoCal DotNetNuke Users Group
http://www.socaldug.org/

Orange County FoxPro Developers Group
http://www.ocfox.org/

Orange County Internet User Group
http://www.ociug.org/

Orange County Connected Systems SIG
http://www.ocdotnet.org/

San Diego .NET User Group
http://www.sandiegodotnet.com/

San Diego .NET Developers Group
http://www.sddotnetdg.org/

San Diego SQL Server Users Group
http://www.sdsqlug.org/

San Diego .NET User Group ASP.NET SIG
http://asp.sig.webpublishing.com/

San Diego Connected Systems SIG
http://www.sandiegodotnet.com/ConnectedSystemsSIG/

XP San Diego
http://www.xpsd.org/

Hawaii .Net
http://hawaiidotnet.org/

Community TJ.NET
http://www.tjnet.org