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 R1.

 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 R1.

 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 latest Web Standards Mode by default, unfortunately Trident 4 itself seems to use the IE7 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 4 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 latest Web Standards Mode in Trident 4 and higher 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. Web 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 4 used Trident 1, IE5 used Trident 1.1, IE5.5 used Trident 1.1.5. IE 6 used Trident 2. IE 7 used Trident 3. IE 8 uses Trident 4.

IE Mobile

 The recent Internet Explorer Mobile 7 available on Windows Phone 7 is a Core Level Web Browser and is like a mobile version of IE7.

It uses an adapted version of Trident 3.1 that cannot seem to handle XML-StyleSheet Processing Instructions or news feeds.

IE Mobile 7 does support the ' named character reference for HTML and even supports native XHTML with application/xhtml+xml as all WAP2 based SmartPhone Web Browsers do.

You can test IE Mobile 7 on your desktop via the Windows Phone Development Tools for Windows Vista SP 2 and Windows 7.

IE 9

 Work on IE9 continues at Privew 3. IE9 will use Trident 5 which will have quirks mode (like IE5), IE7 'broken standards', IE8 'Basic Web Standards' and the IE9 'Interoperable Web Standards' modes.

Trident 5 / IE9 will use hardware acceleration and new Direct2D graphics and DirectWrite text rendering to enhance the quality and clarity of images, transitions, CSS and text in web pages and web applications.

Trident 5 / IE9 Standards mode adds support for more CSS 3 features including:

• Namespaces Module,
• all CSS 3 Selectors,
• most of CSS 3 Media Queries,
• border-radius, opacity, box-shadow,
• CSS3 Multiple Background Images,
• and the rgba(), hsl(), hsla() functions.

Plus it finally has the ' named character entity reference in HTML and support for native XHTML 1.0, 1.1, Basic 1.0, Basic 1.1 and XHTML 5. Also HTML 5 Native Media with H.264 video, AAC and MP3 audio. You can use the keyboard to control the audio and video. IE9 will also be able to support WebM (OGG Vorbis audio and VP8 video) if a WebM codec is installed by the user.

IE9 has native, partial SVG support with basic shapes, paths (not open paths yet and opacity problems), text, opacity, scripting, 2D Transforms for scaling, moving, rotation and stretching. Also gradients, hyperlinks and CSS support.

There is no SVG animation, text on paths, foriegnObject, XHTML inline in SVG yet (remember it is at a 3^rd platform preview stage).

But it is the first implementation that has SVG working inline in text/html documents.

Improved support for W3C DOM 2 Style, Traversal, Range, Events, DOM 3 Core and Events. Which means IE9 has the addEventListener(), removeEventListener() methods and the target event property. Plus the Element Traversal API and most of Canvas is now supported.

An improved scripting engine will use an extra core, if available, to provide snappier scripts. So far it clocks 83 out of 100 on the Acid 3 Test.

IE9 will install and be able to run on Windows Vista SP2, Windows Server 2008 r1 SP2, Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 r2.

Features need adding for IE 9

• From CSS3:
  • Some form of border-radius (will in IE9);
  • opacity property (will in IE9);
  • rgba(), hsl(), hsla() functions (will in IE9);
  • text-shadow property (Filter's shadow is too buggy for use);
  • Some form of box-shadow property (will in IE9);
  • Some form of CSS Multiple Column Layout;
  • Structural pseudo-class selectors (like :nth-child, :not, :empty, :first-of-type, etc) (will in IE9);
  • :enabled, :disabled and :checked UI state pseudo-class selectors (will in IE9);
  • :target selector (will in IE9);
  • Most of Media Queries (will in IE9);
  • Multiple Background Images (will in IE9);
  • Support for multiple src values, local() and format() functions with @font-face (will in IE9);
  • Support for Web Open Font Format (.woff) (will in IE9);
• From HTML 5:
  • Support for the ' named character reference for HTML (will in IE9);
  • Native Media (video, audio, source, media API) (will in IE9);
  • HTML 5 Forms extra input types and form validation support;
  • HTML 5 Offline Web Applications support (AppCache, applicationCahe API and Events, manifest attribute, manifest format);
  • section, article, aside, nav, hgroup, header, footer, mark, time, progress, meter, figure, figcaption, details and summary elements;
  • Sandboxed iframes, seamless iframes;
• Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) referred to and inline in HTML and XHTML and other XML. Features including: groups, titles, descriptions, metadata, defs, use, stroke and fill, basic shapes, paths (partial), text, bring in pixel images, CSS support, translate, stretches, rotate, scale, hyperlinks, Clipping, Masks, Markers, Patterns, linear and radial gradients and SVG Views (will in IE9);
• Needs improvements for paths and support for SVG Filters, Conditional switch, text on a path, SVG Fonts, declarative animations, foreignObject, XHTML in SVG;
• From Scripting APIs
  • Element Traversal (will in IE9);
• From DOM 3 Core
  • textContent property (will in IE9);
• Formats for HTML 5 Native Media:
  • H.264 Video (will in IE9),
  • AAC / M4A Audio (will in IE9);