Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 Released
Posted on März 20, 2009, under General.
A few weeks ago I wrote about not supporting the IE6 any more. Now Microssoft has finally released the IE8.The 8th release of the Internet Explorer is said to support CSS 2.1 which is shown by the ACID2-test. Unfortunately the ACID3-test shows how far the IE8 is still behind standards.
Certainly the IE8 is a step in the right direction and will save developers a lot of work, but time will show if the adoption of the new Microsoft Browser will take as long as it did for the IE7.
You can download the new Intenet Explorer 8 here
Microsoft praises the IE8 as the fastest available Browser, which seems a bit unbelievable as the earlier Microsoft browsers are all rather at the end of any benchmark lists. But i believe it will not take long before up-to-date benchmark tests will show the true speed or lag of the IE8.
The question remains if the new Microsoft Browser will be able to regain any of the dwindling market shares, which are -as the graphic shows- in firm hands of Firefox, Opera, Safari and Chrome.
Market shares of the 5 most common browsers
(Source: Webmasterpro Webanalyse)
No more Support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 6
Yesterday was one of those days, where I had to put up with the odds of the IE6 again. It wrecked my head, even having found different handy solutions for e.g. using PNG, it is still a major act to get it right. It used to be a challenge, but it has become a nuisance, so with effect of tomorrow, the 1st of March 2009, we will no longer be supporting the IE6 in web design.
The Internet Explorer 6 was developed in 2001, but since, the Internet has completely move beyond the IE6. The Internet Explorer 6 is in fact probably the worst browser ever. Just to list the two most important of its oddities:
- Barely supports the current standards in XHTML and CSS
- No native support for PNG Graphics
If we, the web developers and designer do not stop the support of IE6, nobody will. A lot of companies still use this old piece of software junk, because we still provide nice looking sites for it. Mostly at our or our clients costs. Why should they bother with the expensive roll-out of some proper Browser?
So what are the consequences?
Sites we design by standard will not be tweeked anymore to look exactly the same in IE6 and if they break completely, we will provide a text-only version by unsing a special CSS-Stylesheet. I addition, of course, we will offer the possibility of downloading a state-of-the-art browser of your choice.
It’s the clients choice
Some clients will insist to still have support for the IE6 and if our strong recommendations do not suffice, we will inplement IE6 support at additional costs.
