IE 8: Features Update

Posted by James | Filed under Future, Web

ie8readiness

Microsoft has put out the IE 8 Readiness Report that discusses the new features in the upcoming release of the Internet Explorer browser.

Ajax Improvements

  • Ajax Navigation enables users to navigate back and forth without leaving the Ajax application and could be used navigating a page without performing a traditional full navigation. This allows websites to trigger an update to browser components like the address bar by setting the window.location.hash value, firing an event to alert components in the page and even creating an entry in the travel log.
  • DOM Storage is a simple-to-use method for storing and retrieving strings of key/value pair data. Data can be stored per tab instance for a session or persisted to the local machine. This allows pages to cache text on the machine which reduces the effect of network latencies by providing faster access to pre-cached data. Several innovative uses are possible. For example, use this in combination with the new network connectivity event to allow a page to cache data if it detects the computer is offline.
  • Connectivity Events allow websites to check when the user is connected to the network and receive notification of connectivity changes.
  • 6 Connections per Host instead of two for broadband scenarios and a scriptable property allow for more improved performance by allowing parallelisation of downloads in IE8. In addition, this increases functionality by ensuring a request is not blocked by a host if two connections already exist. Websites can optimise their downloads based on a scriptable property.
  • XMLHttpRequest Enhancements include a timeout property that can be set to cancel the request if necessary, allowing developers to manage the request better.
  • Cross-Domain Request (XDR) allows developers to create cross-site data aggregation scenarios. Similar to the XMLHttpRequest object but with a simpler programming model, this request called XDomainRequest, is the easiest way to make anonymous requests to third-party sites that support XDR and opt in to making their data available across domains. Three lines of code will have you making basic cross-site requests. This will ensure data aggregation for public sites (such as blogs) will be simple, secure and fast.
  • Cross-Document Messaging (XDM) APIs allow communication between documents from different domains through IFrames in a way that is easy, secure and standardised.

HTML & CSS

New Features

  • Activities are contextual menu options which quickly access a service from any web page. Users typically copy and paste from one web page to another. IE 8 Activities make this common pattern easier to do.
  • WebSlices is a new feature for websites to connect to their users by subscribing to content directly within a webpage. WebSlices behave just like feeds where clients can subscribe to get updates and notify the user of changes.

And we also have other feature such as less memory leaks!

What do you think?

Tags: , , , ,

Read more | Comments (0) | March 5th, 2008

Get IE 8 Beta 1 from Microsoft Now!

Posted by James | Filed under Future, Geek, Web

Microsoft has released the first public beta of Internet Explorer 8 for Windows Vista and Windows XP SP2.

download-internet-explorer-8

Here are the download links for IE8 mentioned on the Microsoft IE8  Readiness website:

  1. Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 for Windows XP SP2
  2. Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 for Windows Vista

This release is essentially for people who want to make sure their websites or web applications do not  break with the upcoming release of IE 8 that contains some key changes.

Update: The links for IE8 downloads are giving a 404 error at the moment, hopefully just a temporary glitch.

Tags: , , ,

Read more | Comments (0) | March 5th, 2008

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 UK: England & Wales
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 UK: England & Wales