Internet Explorer 8
The evolution of the Internet has introduced new sources of rich information and more ways to access it. This growth has created new opportunities, experiences, online services, and standards to the web. With this intensity and reliance, web developers face an evolving set of needs, which Windows Internet Explorer 8 addresses in three key ways.
First, Internet Explorer 8 provides real-world interoperability with other browsers and compatibility for existing sites. It includes enhancements to the core platform and architecture, offering improved performance, safety, reliability, and compatibility. With previous versions of Windows Internet Explorer, developers and designers have sometimes noted that Internet Explorer has had its own interpretation of web standards and the way the browser handles HTML, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), scripting, and so on. In some cases, interpretations were decided upon because Internet Explorer supported certain features before corresponding standards were finalized. If those standards change as they are finalized, Internet Explorer's implementation can vary from what the standard specifies. With Internet Explorer 8, the decision to support legacy behaviors versus strict standards will be put in the hands of developers by enabling you to select the rendering mode on a page-by-page basis.
Second, Internet Explorer 8 makes web development faster and easier with built-in developer tools. With advancements in support for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX) applications, as well as improvements that simplify the process of building cross-browser applications, Internet Explorer 8 enables developers to be more productive when building the most robust web applications possible.
Finally, Internet Explorer 8 enables experiences that reach beyond the page through new browser features that effortlessly connect users to innovative web services. Internet Explorer 8 features a set of integrated developer tools that are a component of the browser. As a result, performance is improved and no memory is used when the tools are not running. The integrated developer tools make it faster and easier for developers to develop and troubleshoot rich content sites. Internet Explorer 8's standards mode layout engine was also built with the Cascading Style Sheets, Level 2 Revision 1 (CSS2.1) spec in hand and full compliance in mind, helping developers to easily support the latest standards while having the option to fall back to Windows Internet Explorer 7- compatible (or earlier) behavior if necessary. To assist developers in taking full advantage of the elements offered by HTML 4, Internet Explorer 8 provides upgraded support for several presentational elements. For example, the Q element represents an inline quoted string, and the object element may now represent any "object," including images. Through improved support for these and other HTML elements, web developers can deliver more expressive and accessible HTML markup.
In addition to the improvements made to the underlying platform and developer experience, Internet Explorer 8 introduces new features that deliver new opportunities for web developers to extend their experience beyond the web page. These new features are enabled through community standards rather than building custom client code that is not interoperable across browsers.
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