Can Internet Explorer 8 Keep Its Promise?

Internet Explorer 8 is coming! Yay! And it will be standards compliant! Woo hoo! I can't wait to get my hands on it!

But just when will that be? Looks like there will be an initial beta sometime in the first half of 2008 (which probably means May or June).

Okay, so I guess I won't get to play around with it anytime soon. But did you see that IE 8 passed the Web Standards Project's Acid2, a key test for determining the standards compliance of a Web browser? That's something that Firefox hasn't been able to do yet, so take that Mozilla!

Well, an internal build of IE 8 passed the Acid2 test. I'm not sure if we can even call it an alpha. But this must mean that IE 8 will be standards compliant, right?

Hmm...I'm not too sure about that. Now that I think about it, I think I'll wait until I see a final shipping version of Internet Explorer 8 before I get too excited about its proposed features and standards compliance.

Because when it comes to Microsoft and the promises of early alphas and prototypes, cautious skepticism isn't a bad thing.

Remember those heady conferences and demonstrations in 2003 on Microsoft's new and exciting operating system, code-named Longhorn? Remember all the excitement about the revolutionary and groundbreaking features that were going to be delivered? Some were even demoed in early presentations. Many pundits of the time said that Longhorn would completely change the face of operating systems.

And then Longhorn became Vista, and promise after promise about its capabilities either fell by the wayside or the result was a hollow shell of the initial promise. Hey Vista user, how's that WinFS file system working for you?

Now this isn't to say that it's a guarantee that IE 8 will fail to deliver on these early promises. Microsoft has already shown that IE8 can pass the Acid2 test and it will be hard for it to step backwards.

But there will be plenty of pressure on the IE 8 team that may work against full standards compliance. A large number of developers (and especially Microsoft-centric developers) have become used to building non-standard sites and they won't like it if IE 8 breaks their sites.

It isn't totally impossible that Microsoft may decide that it has to step back from standards compliance just a little bit in order to make these people happy. It may even happen that a switchable mode occurs in IE where users will need to click a button in order to see standards and non-standards-compliant sites.

Of course this could all just be too much skepticism on my part and Microsoft will continue on the work of this early internal build and release an Internet Explorer 8 with fantastic standards support. I hope that is the case.

But I'm not sure if even this will make a huge difference in the browser wars because the biggest problem with IE 7 is that it only runs on Vista and Windows XP SP2. If IE 8 has similar—or even more restrictive—platform support, then its ability to stay on top in the browser wars will continue to fade.

IE 8会不会再一次忽悠我们的感情？

       Internet Explorer 8就要到来了！而且是符合国际标准的，我等不及了。但是最早是什么时候呢？微软说好像最初的beta版要等到2008年上半年（可能是五六月）。

       所以短时间内是体验不到IE 8了。但是IE 8已经通过了Web Standards Project的 Acid2（Acid2是浏览器与现行网络标准相互兼容的开发标准），一个Web浏览器的关键性测试？ 就算内部的IE8浏览器通过了Acid2测试，就意味着IE 8是符合标准的了？

       至少我不确定。在最终Internet Explorer 8正式发布前，关于预告的性能和标准等承诺我不敢期许太多，因为涉及到微软和其alpha、模型的承诺，谨慎地怀疑不是坏事。

       还记得2003年那些鲁莽的会议和演示么，微软新的、令人兴奋的操作系统code-named Longhorn？还记得当时那些传说中的革命和颠覆性的特性带给我们的兴奋吗？甚至其中一些已经出现在了demo中。当时的许多专家也都表示Longhorn将彻底改变操作系统的样子。

       然后Longhorn变成了Vista，早期关于其性能的一个接一个的承诺要么已无关紧要要么不着边际。Vista的使用者们，你们觉得这个操作系统怎样？

       当然现在不是说Internet Explorer 8最终不会实现早期的承诺，毕竟微软表示IE 8通过了Acid2，已经没有回头路了。

       但是对于IE 8的开发团队来说，实现完全标准化是个非常大的压力。许多开发者尤其是微软技术的开发者已经习惯了构建没有标准的网址，如果IE 8因此破坏了他们的网站他们肯定不高兴。

       微软在标准方面退步一点点来取悦这些开发者也不是完全没有可能，甚至可能出现一个切换键在IE中，从而用户可以点击它来在标准和非标准网址之间切换。

       当然这只是我个人的怀疑，而微软仍在致力于IE 8的内部开发和标准支持。但是我同时也不确定IE 8是否会给浏览器大战带来什么，因为IE 7最大的问题是只能运行在Vista和Windows XP SP2上，如果IE 8仍然如此甚至对运行平台有更苛刻的要求，那么在浏览器竞争的战场上，微软将更加不利。