Thank You IE8 Beta Testers
As we've now entered the last major phase of our product cycle, we’d like to thank everyone for their dedication to making Internet Explorer 8 a better product. As mentioned in IE8 Beta Feedback our Technical Beta Program provides a way for an invited set of beta testers around the world to test and file bugs against IE8. Since the release of beta 1, the technical beta community has continuously provided excellent feedback and we have fixed a significant amount of bugs because of it. By rating your most important bugs through the Connect site, you helped us identify the most impactful bugs to fix for IE8.
Below are some of our favorite fixed bugs submitted through the Technical Beta Program:
Connect Feedback ID 331738: Emulate IE7 without restart
When we introduced the IE8 Compatibility View button (which at the time was called the Emulate IE7 button) the user was prompted to restart the browser before the page could be viewed in Compatibility View (Emulate IE7 view). We received 34 votes on this issue! Your feedback guided changes we made to this functionality for Beta 2.
Connect Feedback ID 387668: Disappearing text (6001.18343)
This issue was about missing text on some webpages while using the IE8 Partner Build. Once the user clicked on the missing text, the correct information was displayed. Thanks to your help, this issue received 34 votes on Connect and was fixed for the release of IE8 RC 1.
This bug was a great example of a good bug report. It was very detailed, contained links to recommended behavior, and an easy to understand example of the issue. This bug was fixed for Beta 2.
Please feel free to continue providing us with excellent feedback through our various feedback mechanisms (Technical Beta Program (invitational), Public Beta Program on Connect, Report a Bad Webpage Problem, IE Beta Newsgroup and the IE Developer Forum). For those who have downloaded the Windows 7 Beta, please file Internet Explorer 8 issues through the “Send Feedback” link on the top right corner of the browser.
Please, however, be aware that the Internet Explorer 8 version on Windows 7 Beta is older than Internet Explorer 8 RC 1. So if you have an issue that reproduces on IE8 on Windows 7 and not on IE8 RC 1 then the issue has been fixed, unless it is an issue in an IE feature specific to Windows 7.
We want to send a special thanks to our IE MVP’s who have been helping us monitor our newsgroups. You guys are awesome!
Allison Burnett
Program Manager
Comments
Anonymous
February 12, 2009
The comment has been removedAnonymous
February 12, 2009
One of the things that has puzzled me a tad was why the submission of bugs on the Connect website is by invitation only. Having found one or two bugs myself (that haven't even been fixed, let alone acknowledged [such as crash/memory corruption issues], mind you) to find out that the only place to post about them is a newsgroup/forum thats often overlooked is dismaying. But I digress. Congratulations to the testers/IE team... I think.Anonymous
February 12, 2009
Does anyone know any information about the final release, when it will take place? Furthermore, I'm interested in all information about the X-XSS-Protection security filter, because, now I can add a response header X-XSS-Protection: 0 but I assume this functionality will be disabled in the final version, so if anyone can point me such information, I'll be glad to hear / read about it (dirkpennings at hotmail dot com)Anonymous
February 12, 2009
I found that the feedback from Microsoft on the submitted bugs was sometimes below par and almost always very slow. The connect site is better than nothing but still leaves a lot of room for improvement on this area.Anonymous
February 12, 2009
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February 13, 2009
It's very sad that https://connect.microsoft.com/IE/ shows me "Page not found" after I am logged in (and, surely, it's such not only for me), making this completely unusable and completely preventing people from participating in Public Beta Program for IE8 so that some IE bugs found are still unfixed. May be Microsoft will use more reliable bug tracking system like Bugzilla (as well as usable login mechanism unlike current one) for the next release of IE, and feedback will really possible from all those web developers who want and can make IE better but didn't can do it for IE8.Anonymous
February 13, 2009
1.) The IE MVP's link is broken. 2.) I'm fairly concerned when all this talk is about being at the "last stages"... I have 3 private web applications that ALL have significant issues in IE8 RC1 in Standards Mode due to bugs still in IE8 RC1. By "significant issues" I mean that if IE8 RC1 shipped as is for the IE8 RTM, I would have to set the FORCE-IE7 Header and forgo IE8's improvements. I realize that there will likely always be fixes after "the last RC" before a final product is shipped, however I'm concerned that if there is no IE8 RC2, that significant bugs/issues will make it into the final version - that developers will have to workaround for the next 10-12 years. Is there any chance that a few select active Bug submitters (e.g. myself, Gérard Talbot, ppkppk, the_dees, James Hopkins, snookca, etc.) might be able to get access to one of the "almost-final" internal builds so that we can run some tests on it? I can't speak for all the above, but I'm fine with signing any NDA's, and accept/understand all risks with installing un-officially released software. I'm most concerned with (X)HTML, CSS, & JavaScript Regression issues... which often only "show themselves" when tested on a variety of sites - off the public domain. I'd love to post access to some of these sites but often can not, and isolating an exact test case is quite difficult and extremely time consuming. Please give this some serious thought. steve_webAnonymous
February 13, 2009
Personally, I thank Gérard Talbot for being so obstinate and caring, and for having filled half of all the reports or something. :p Take that img alt attribute bug, for example... It's been there for so long, every web developer knows about it, and the IE team obviously knew about it too, but if Gérard hadn't taken the time and efforts to try and bring it to their attention, it'd be probably still broken right now. Actually, I didn't know it was fixed until today, and I'm pleasantly surprised.Anonymous
February 13, 2009
am i the only one who had some problems with this version? sometimes it gave me the connection error window, and when i refresh the tab, the problem is gone.Anonymous
February 13, 2009
@Dirk: In the final release, pages may continue to opt-themselves out of XSS protection using the X-XSS-Protection header. @Philip Rhodes: The problem you're describing is almost certainly a hardware problem. @alamfour: Does the crashing problem exist when you run without add-ons? www.enhanceie.com/ie/troubleshoot.asp#crashAnonymous
February 13, 2009
However you never fixed the most voted for issue: Proper support for css-opacity.Anonymous
February 13, 2009
Thank goodness the disappearing text bug was fixed. Happened to me a lot, was a real pain.Anonymous
February 13, 2009
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February 13, 2009
Some problem I encountered as an end user. Sometimes small letters like an 'e' in sub are displayed a filled cirkel. i.e. http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Nieuwe_Uri_Geller (in the infobox) This worked fine in IE7 and i don't think it has anything to do with the markup on the page.Anonymous
February 13, 2009
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February 13, 2009
@will Your story would be more believable if you would provide information on the things still being broken.Anonymous
February 14, 2009
I think it is time to start the "SVG in IE9!" campaign. We'll need to get a website running, have developers add electronic signatures, and start referencing said site anywhere that SVG comes up in conversation or talk of "IE & Web Standards" in the same sentence. The IE Team knows that we want native SVG support, but I think it is time that they HEARD it LOUD and CLEAR! While there is still time on the roadmap for them to add it without slapping a: "Sorry, we don't care^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H maybe in a future release" Signed, Tired of waitingAnonymous
February 14, 2009
Plese reconsider and give us RC 2. Even if the time its public is less than RC 1 give us a chance to see whats getting fixed. Will the Connect bug database remain opened after RTM? at minium wipe the public side and reopen it so bugs can be reported.Anonymous
February 14, 2009
Hey, MS. What about this one: http://channel9.msdn.com/forums/Coffeehouse/446292-Why-does-IE-crash-suddenly-on-some-websites/Anonymous
February 14, 2009
@Tom Stack - on behalf of all of those developers and testers that have entered bugs in the IE7 connect database... only to have them wiped clean, and entered bugs in the IE8 connect database... with 90% still open/active... Please DO NOT WIPE the public bugs and start over! This would be a massive waste of everyone's time to re-enter all the same bugs. Similar to others that have raised their voice on this, this is a case of "The boy that cried wolf" ============= 1 =============== For IE7, MSFT said "Hey, we want your feedback!, come submit bugs in connect!" - and we did... and then after all our hard work, they destroyed it. ============= 2 =============== For IE8, MSFT said "Hey, we want your feedback!, come submit bugs in connect!" - and we did... and then after all our hard work, they [kept|improved|destroyed] it. ============= 3 =============== For IE9, if the selection in the above options is "destroyed", we won't be coming back to submit bugs. steveAnonymous
February 14, 2009
I have been using beta 1, beta 2 and RC 1 of IE8. Frankly speaking, RC 1 is a HUGE improvement compared to beta 2 and 1. It's way more stable and a little faster. I was wondering why IE will release beta 2 to the public when it is so unstable, it crashes many times. RC 1 is more useable. I believe there are still tiny bugs here and there to become a solid product. Speed wise, the IE team could have done more as the other browsers like Firefox and Chrome are more than 2-4 times faster than IE8. I think speed is a important factor in browsers lately. It's wise to speed it up even more quickly or you will lose even more market share soon. http://marketshare.hitslink.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=1Anonymous
February 14, 2009
@jacob, forget svg. Better jscript and DOM support should be the priority for IE 9.Anonymous
February 14, 2009
Is it a true statement that IE8's compatibility mode will render and function differently than the stand alone IE7? If that is the case, then IE8 is essentially adding 2 additional browsers to the testing matrix for web developers. That seems quite unfortunate.Anonymous
February 14, 2009
Ok, so surely the beta feedback wasn't what really drove these three issues to be fixed...
- I'm sure the emulate button experience was always on track to be refined post beta1.
- There's no way that the disappearing text issue wasn't known inside MS before shipping... there's no way you wouldn't have fixed that even if there was no beta program.
- The alt-as-tooltip issue has been compalined about numerous times over the years on this blog, other blogs, etc, and there's no way that the beta votes made any difference to whether you fixed it. (Of course my personal opinion as a strict constructionist is that there is nothing stopping a UA from choosing to show a tooltip for alt -- as long as it prefers title.) I'm sure there have been a few good unique bugs that have come out of beta testing, but most of them are things that your own developers and testers surely already found. It seems a bit patronizing to give the beta testers the impression that they've helped more than they have.
Anonymous
February 15, 2009
Sorry but without SVG or canvas ie 8 is just old technology that does nothing to improve the web. This in my view should not be called a modern browser.Anonymous
February 15, 2009
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February 15, 2009
Giving feedback is key element for the designing more perfect system. Thanks a lotAnonymous
February 15, 2009
desing is really perfect. Thank you..Anonymous
February 15, 2009
I would actually consider "Connect Feedback ID 334225: alt attribute for image should not and must not be displayed in a tooltip" to be a very, VERY poor bug report. In it, he states an opinion, links to a few articles that also state the same opinion AS opinionated fact (which does not make it fact). The only link to an authoritive source on the standards doesn't actually discuss the issue of what to do with the alt attribute, but rather how to choose what text you want in said alt attribute. So, basically all opinion presented as fact with no clear factual basis provided. While I hate to praise Wikipedia for anything, their policy of cite reference is a good idea, and here, he has not actually cited a real reference. A good version of the bug report would report the violation and point at the standard itself. I've noticed that the standards have a habit of being poorly written and rather than a standard, we have majority consensus on how to interpret them - not agreeing with majority consensus does not constitute violation of the standard. In the W3C link provided, there is no clear violation of this use of the ALT atribute. Perhaps the standards needs "fixed".Anonymous
February 15, 2009
Local intranet issue exists in RC1. When automatic proxy detection is on and there's no proxy configuration script given the majority of internet sites is placed on local intranet zone due the rule put all the sites that bypass proxy server into intranet zone.Anonymous
February 15, 2009
Xepol: feel free to make better bug reports. Personally, I don't care whether the reports are good or not as long as the bugs are fixed.Anonymous
February 18, 2009
Hey Now Allison Burnett, Nice post, those are some nice fixes. Thx 4 the info, CattoAnonymous
February 21, 2009
Not the place to report a bug, but this one is BAD: IE8 on Windows 7 --> opening my Gmail account after I changed the compatibility mode and put Gmail on the trusted sites list --> tabs start opening one after other with pop-up window warning for both secure and unsecured content on the page. Of course after a minute the computer freezes.Anonymous
February 22, 2009
@Janusz: We're not able to reproduce this problem. Please send me mail (ericlaw at microsoft) so we can debug this. Thanks!