Ok guys internet explorer 8 has been released in beta version, so how does it match up against IE7 and firefox. Well firstly it does not look that different but it has some interesting new features as shown on the official Microsoft site
You can download IE8 Beta Here
Activities
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. Internet Explorer 8 Activities make this common pattern easier to do.
Activities typically involve two types of scenarios: “look up” of information within a Web page, and “send” of Web content to a Web application. Consider the example of a user who is interested in a restaurant and wants to see its location. This is the form of a “look up” Activity, where the user selects the address and views an in-place view of the map using a favorite map service.
In an example of a “send” Activity, a user reads an interesting article and wants to blog about it. The user can select a portion of the article and use the blog Activity. This navigates to the user’s blog site with the selection already available in the edit field.
Users can access an Activity on selection simply by selecting content and opening the context menu. For example, users can select an address on a webpage and the Activity button appears. Alternatively, you can access selection Activities from the context menu. Activities are also available for the current webpage in the Page menu on the Command bar and for links within a page in the context menu for the link.
Activities are services that the user can install and manage. Users can install them from the Internet Explorer 8 Service Guide or through any website that advertises Activities.
Activities are described using an XML file that provides the interface of how the browser should communicate with the service through URL templates. Web-based services should take advantage of the XML-based Activities since they are easier to create, test, and deploy to users.
This is a simple sample that shows the map Activity that you can host on a website:
Activity XML file – copy the sample code below to a text editor and save it as “GetMap.xml”. This code below describes the functionality of the Activity.
<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″?>
<openServiceDescription xmlns=”http://www.microsoft.com/schemas/openservicedescription/1.0”>
<homepageUrl>http://maps.live.com</homepageUrl>
<display>
<name>Map with Windows Live</name>
<icon>http://www.live.com/favicon.ico</icon>
</display>
<activity category=”map”>
<activityAction context=”selection”>
<preview action= ”http://maps.live.com/geotager.aspx”>
<parameter name=”b” value=”{selection}”/>
<parameter name=”clean” value=”true”/>
<parameter name=”w” value=”320″/>
<parameter name=”h” value=”240″/>
</preview>
<execute action=”http://maps.live.com/default.aspx“>
<parameter name=”where1″ value=”{selection}” type=”text” />
</execute>
</activityAction>
</activity>
</openServiceDescription>
Hosting the install button – add this code snippet to the website that you want to advertise the Activity.
<button onclick=”javascript:window.external.addService(’GetMap.xml’)”>Add Map Activity</button>
To test:
Install the Activity by clicking on the “Install” button on your website. This launches the installation dialog.
Check the “Make this my default provider” check box. This sets the Activity to appear in the top listing for Activities.
Go to a site that contains a street address.
Select the address and click on the button that appears next the mouse cursor.(Alternatively, you can right-click to get the context menu.)
Hover over the “Map with Live Maps” Activity. This displays the preview of the map Activity.
Click on the “Map with Live Maps” Activity. This navigates to the map Web site in a new tab.
WebSlices
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.
A WebSlice is a portion within a webpage that is treated like a subscribe-able item, just like a feed. To enable a WebSlice on your website, annotate your webpage with class names for the title, description, and other subscribe-able properties.
Internet Explorer 8 Users can discover WebSlices within a webpage and add them to the Favorites bar, a dedicated row below the Address bar for easy access to links. Internet Explorer 8 subscribes to the webpage, detects changes in the WebSlice, and notifies the user of updates. Users can preview these updates directly from the Favorites bar and click-through to the website to get more information.
WebSlice Authoring
WebSlices are enabled by adding HTML annotations directly to the webpage. WebSlices use a combination of the hAtom Microformat and the WebSlice format to describe a subscribe-able portion of a webpage.
The Basics
The basic properties of a WebSlice are the WebSlice container, Entry Title, and Entry Content.
WebSlice
Required.
Uses class name hslice.
The WebSlice element must include an ID.
Represents the entire region of a WebSlice that contains the title, description, and other WebSlice properties.
Entry Title
Required
Uses class name entry-title as defined in the hAtom Microformat.
There can be multiple instances of Entry Title.
Entry Content
Optional
Uses class name entry-content as defined in the hAtom Microformat.
If the Entry Content is missing, assume it is the empty string.
There can be multiple instances of Entry Content.
This is an example of how to mark up an auction item with the link, title, and description properties.
http://www.auction.microsoft.com/item
<div class=”hslice” id=”1”>
<p class=”entry-title”>item - $66.00</p>
<div class=”entry-content”>high bidder:buyer1
…
</div>
</div>
CSS 2.1 Compliance
Style Sheets
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a simple mechanism for adding style (e.g. fonts, colors, spacing, positioning) to Web documents. Before the introduction of CSS, stylistic properties were set directly within HTML through different attributes. With CSS, authors may separate a page’s data specified via HTML from the display logic, thus improving markup organization and facilitating easier site maintenance.
The W3C CSS working group has made great strides towards converging on a final specification for CSS 2.1. At the time of this writing, the specification is in ‘Candidate Recommendation’. The main goal of this effort is to enable web developers and designers to write their pages once and have them render properly in many browsers. The new Web Developer Toolbar included with Internet Explorer 8 will also help in this endeavor. Internet Explorer 8 supports the latest feature set as defined in the specification.
While one of Internet Explorer 8’s main goals is CSS 2.1 compliance, it is also forward looking towards CSS3. CSS3 is the next step in the evolution of Cascading Style Sheets, and unlike CSS 2.1 which consists of one single document, the CSS3 specification is broken down into different modules in order to increase the speed of converging on clear specifications and implementations of different features. Additionally, CSS3 hopes to further clarify some of the ambiguities in the CSS2.1 Specification while providing new features to web authors. Internet Explorer 8 hopes to implement some of the most requested CSS3 features by web developers and designers.
How does it Compare?
Well with all these new features we still will be using firefox for along time to come as it is more suitable for SEO purposes. Although IE8 is in beta version we have had to Emulate it to version 7 as it keeps on crashing there are still alot of problems to be fixed.
With Microsoft being the huge company they are we dont know why they are finding it so hard to make a perfect browser, if they continue like this they will surely lose out on the browser market as firefox is surely catching them up slowly slowly. To finalize things to date IE6 is still the best browser Microsoft have ever created. The question I bicker to ask is “why did they try to fix something when it wasn’t broken