IE8 RC1? Not Too Shabby!

Posted January 28, 2009 in Blog by Tieson

Color me surprised. I just updated to Internet Explorer 8, Release Candidate 1 from the Beta 2 version. While I had liked some of the CSS upgrades in the Beta, my overall impression could have been summed up with one word: Meh. The Release Candidate version? Now that is another story altogether!

The first thing I've noticed is that the browser is at least two orders of magnitude faster. Pages that took a bit to load in IE7 and the Beta 2 of IE8 are now fairly snappy. I suspect Microsoft is taking a cue from Apple and loading the page first, then filling in the images. Can't beat 'em, join 'em, eh?

The speed increase pales in comparison to my favorite upgrade: CSS!

I use some fancy CSS tricks for my navigation bar you see above, and it relies on the browser correctly supporting web standards. Previously, IE has been fairly haphazard in following the W3C recommendations, but with IE8 Microsoft seems to be moving a big step towards compliance. How can I tell? Well, my CSS works, silly! Before I updated, the drop-down effects on my navigation bar were barely usable in IE, but in IE8, they work just as well as if I were using Firefox.

WHAT?! No more quirks-mode?! Woo-hoo!

When I have a chance, I will try to post an updated CSS compatibility chart. Helps to know the enemy, you know...

;)

Updated: February 3, 2009 Back to top