Web Browsers And Packages

IE Browser Availability

Development of the Unix Edition of IE ended at version 5.01 many years ago and the Mac Editions (Tasman) have also ended at 5.1.7 for Classic Mac and 5.2.3 for Mac OS X and are no longer available. IE for Windows 95 ended at version 5.5 Service Pack 2 and for Windows 98, NT4, 2000 and Millennium Edition (ME) ended at version 6 Service Pack (SP) 1.

Version 6 Service Pack 2 was available in Windows XP SP 2 and Windows Server 2003 SP 1. IE 7 was available in Windows Vista and Server 2008.

 IE 8 is freely available to download and install for Windows XP Service Pack (SP) 2 & 3, Windows Server 2003 SP 2, Windows Vista & Server 2008.

 IE 8 is in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.

Trident and IE Features

 Trident features are heavily used by the Windows Operating System since Windows 98. The security and bug fix improvements have been the main focus of the latest browser developments. Now Web Standards and continued security are the focus of Internet Explorer 8.

 Even though IE uses the Web Standards Mode by default, unfortunately Trident 6 itself seems to use the Compatibility View Mode by default which means that other browsers and utilities by default will use the non-standards processing.

 For other browsers to be using Trident 6 you need IE 8 installed too or be using Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2.

 The World Browser, disappointingly, seems to no longer use the Web Standards Mode by default. But you can switch to 'Use IE8 Render Mode' in the 'Tools' menu. There is an add-on or plugin available for Avant Browser and Maxthon to switch them into Web Standards Mode and back. No one knows if AOL and BT have the ability to provide access to the Web Standards support. WebbIE does not.

 If companies like AOL and BT are to keep using Trident, then they have a duty to use the Web Standards Mode in Trident 6 by default and rewrite their websites properly as keeping to ancient messy coding is harmful to the progress of the Human Race.

Internet Explorer supports the all, screen and print CSS Media Types. Web Designers and Web Developers have been screaming for Microsoft to improve standards in their web browser so they can offer a more up-to-date online experience that users of other web browsers already have.

 Internet Explorer has finally stepped up to the Web Standards starting post.

As with the previous version, IE8 has a simpler user interface and improved security features such as phishing filters and anti-malware. Other features include tabbed-browsing, RSS and Atom Feed discovery and displaying in the browser.

 IE8 has a Compatibility View menu item in 'Tools' and 'Pages' and a toolbar button (icon is a torn webpage to represent IE7 broken standards) between the address bar and the Refresh button. This reloads the webpage and renders it as if it was IE7. Plus in a webpage an X-UA-Compatible switch (meta element or http header) with the value IE=7 will enable this mode too (in this case the menu items will be disabled and the toolbar button will not be shown) (also the version will still be MSIE 8 unless you used the toolbar or menu to switch into Compatibility View Mode then the version will be MSIE 7).

Unfortunately some people haven't been able to remember or read about the Compatibility View and so Microsoft has now had to create a Web Site Compatibility View List that IE8 can use to automatically load any of the selected websites on the list in Compatibility View.

In the Compatibility View Settings you can add extra web address' of websites that IE8 should automatically render in Compatibility View. A tick box is available to enable IE8 to load all pages in Compatibility View Mode.

 A pre-ticked option is available to use the Microsoft lists of known websites that need to automatically go into Compatibility View (un-tick the option to test them in Web Standards Mode).

Plus a tick box which is ticked by default to load any local intranet sites automatically in Compatibility View because most corporate intranets have been primitively built for the 1740's with Microsoft Technologies and require old IE rather than built properly.

Standards Compatible webpages by default will display using IE8's enhanced Standards Mode (in IE8) and supports CSS2.1 features including the content property, counters, outlines, full Paged CSS and CSS Tables. The proprietary hasLayout, the source of many CSS bugs in IE, has been removed. IE finally respects the CSS Vendor-Specific Mechanism with the prefix -ms- for Microsoft CSS Extensions. The CSS3 box-sizing property has been added to handle if padding and border sizes are included or excluded in width and height sizes.

HTML updates include the ability to bring in images through the object element properly and several fixes to its existing DOM support such as for attribute handling. Plus HTML 5 additions including window.location.hash to improve navigation of Web Applications. HTML 5's DOM Storage: sessionStorage and localStorage allows local, low-level storage performance and capacity to store information beyond the abilities of cookies for webpages and web applications.

Also some WAI-ARIA adds support for Accessible Rich Internet Applications. JSON and Cross-Domain Messaging are also supported. Selectors API will allow scripters to use the power of CSS Selectors to obtain an element or an array of elements to script on.

New usability features include Accelerators which provide tasks to any selected text such as 'Search', 'Translate with Live', 'Blog with Live' or 'View a Live Map' if the text is a location.

Web Slices are cross between mini RSS & Atom Feeds, Apple & Opera Widgets and Google & Windows Gadgets providing such up-to-the-minute info on weather, stocks, the latest updates from Wikipedia articles that you are monitoring or possibly items from eBay, etc. Plus address suggestions and search suggestions are available.

Security features are enhanced with the InPrivate Browsing and improved InPrivate Filtering.

So those website or corporate web application developers can now get cracking on rebuilding their sites and applications to come into the 21^st century.

IE 9

Work on IE9 has started. IE9 will use hardware and DirectX graphics and text rendering to enhance the quality and clarity of images, transitions, CSS and text in web pages and web applications. They will be adding support for more HTML 5 and CSS 3 features including more CSS 3 Selectors and CSS 3 border-radius.

Features need adding for IE 9

• From CSS3:
  • Some form of border-radius (will in IE9);
  • opacity property (Filter's opacity is flawed as it requires layout);
  • hsl(), rgba(), hsla() functions;
  • text-shadow property (Filter's shadow is too buggy for use);
  • Some form of box-shadow property (Filter's shadow is too buggy for use);
  • Some form of ::selection pseudo-element selector (maybe in IE9);
  • Structural pseudo-class selectors (like :nth-child, :not, :empty, :first-of-type, etc) (maybe in IE9);
  • :enabled, :disabled and :checked UI state pseudo-class selectors (maybe in IE9);
  • :target selector (maybe in IE9);
  • Most of Media Queries;
  • Multiple Background Images;
  • Support for multiple src values, local() and format() functions with @font-face;
  • Support for Web Open Font Format (.woff);
• From HTML 5:
  • Support for the ' named character reference for HTML;
  • Native Media (video, audio, source, media API);
  • section, article, aside, nav, hgroup, header, footer, mark, time, progress, meter, figure, figcaption, details and summary elements;
• Some inline Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) support (embeddable in HTML), including: stroke and fill colours, basic shapes, paths, opacity, Filters, text, SVG Fonts, linear and radial gradients, bring in pixel images, CSS in SVG, declarative animations, translate, rotate and scale;
• Formats for HTML 5 Native Media:
  • MPEG4 Video,
  • H.264 Video,
  • OGG Video (Theora),
  • AAC / M4A Audio,
  • OGG Vorbis Audio;