How to make your site Internet Explorer 8 Compatible – Part 1 – Activities

Now that we have installed the new Internet Explorer 8 beta 1, developers need to make their site IE8 compatible.

There are several designer aspects to be taken care of in this new version. Let us take the points one by one to discuss this further.

First we will look into Activities.

Activities

Activities are contextual menu options which quickly access a service from any Web page. Users typically copy and paste from one Web page to another. Internet Explorer 8 Activities make this common pattern easier to do.

Activities are services that the user can install and manage. Users can install them from the Internet Explorer 8 Service Guide or through any website that advertises Activities.

Activities typically involve two types of scenarios: “look up” of information within a Web page, and “send” of Web content to a Web application. e.g. look up – You are in a blog where the users address is mentioned. Right click and View on Live maps and it will show a small window containing the map of the loacation. send – An user reads an interesting article and wants to digg it or add to his blog.

Activities are described using an XML file providing an interface to the browser to communicate with the service through URL templates.

More discussion on this and an example can be found at the Microsoft Website mentioned below.

Detailed Information & Example

First Look of Internet Explorer 8

Now that Internet Explorer 8 has come for almost a day, let us take a look at the First Look at it.
Before the video, few points to mention:

1. Installation time is almost the same as IE7 in Windows XP.
2. After Installation IE8 also prompts to restart the computer.
3. After you restart and open IE, it prompts to import Mozilla and Opera browser settings to Internet Explorer.
4. Lookwise it is somehow similar to IE7, however a bit slicker than the previous one.
5. There is an option to get back to IE7 look and feel.
6. One issue faced is: when I try to open browser homepage, it goes to MS site in the current tab and opens it in a different tab. Also the control remains in the current tab showing the Microsoft IE8 page.

Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 launched today

Today Microsoft has launched the new Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 version for the public. They mention it as Developer Preview version and for Web developers and Designers only.

According to Microsoft, some of the new features designed for developers include a developer toolbar and improved interoperability and compatibility.

One good thing about this release is they have finally made IE standards compliant by default.

This topic is explained in the Internet Explorer Blog. Quoting from the blog, the reason behind this:

Microsoft recently published a set of Interoperability Principles. Thinking about IE8’s behavior with these principles in mind, interpreting web content in the most standards compliant way possible is a better thing to do.

We think that acting in accordance with principles is important, and IE8’s default is a demonstration of the interoperability principles in action. While we do not believe any current legal requirements would dictate which rendering mode a browser must use, this step clearly removes this question as a potential legal and regulatory issue. As stated above, we think it’s the better choice.

The rest of this blog post provides context around the different modes, the technical challenge, and what it means going forward.

More information about IE8 Beta 1 is available at MS site.

IE8 Beta 1 can be downloaded from the MS site:

Download Now

According to eWeek.com,

“With the release this week of the first beta of Internet Explorer 8, we are finally getting a good look at the next step in Microsoft’s Web strategy. And we also can finally start to put the next generation of the Browser Wars into focus with a new version of IE to compare with the recent betas of Mozilla’s forthcoming Firefox 3?. Click here for details.