IE 8 final ready for download on March 19

[djbaxter]

IE 8 final bits ready for download on March 19
by Mary Jo Foley
March 18th, 2009

Microsoft is proclaiming Internet Explorer 8 (IE 8) finished and will be releasing the final bits for download on March 19.

Microsoft plans to make the bits available as of 9 a.m. PT on Thursday. Interested parties will be able to grab them from the Internet Explorer 8 Web site, officials said.

...more

 

[Linda Buquet]

I just read IE8 could break thousands of sites that won't display right. So probably a good idea to test your sites and landing pages to be sure they are OK.

 

[djbaxter]

I just read IE8 could break thousands of sites that won't display right. So probably a good idea to test your sites and landing pages to be sure they are OK.

There is a Quick Fix for this issue until you have time to make your site more standards compliant. IE8 will respect an "IE7 compatibility mode" tag in the web page's head section, anywhere before the body tag; I believe the web surfer can also enable this from the IE8 browser itself if s/he is encountering many favorite sites that don't display correctly.

Insert the following meta tag anywhere in the head section of your pages:

<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=EmulateIE7" />

This will ensure that if your pages are displaying fine in IE7 they will continue to display fine in IE8. This will not affect how your pages display in any other browser.

I would note that the main reason IE8 may "break pages" is due to coding faults in those pages - IE7 and earlier versions of IE were more forgiving of such errors; IE8, like other browsers, adheres to stricter standards.

Also, forum software like vBulletin, which is the fiundation for the 5 Star Affiliate Marketing Forums, contains an option to enable the IE7 emulator (it is already enabled here). If you are a forum owner and find that it displays strangely in IE8:

1. If you are using one of the more recent versions of vBulletin, go to Options | Cookies and HTTP Header Options from your control panel and scroll down to

Send Internet Explorer 7 Compatibility Header
Sends an HTTP header that instructs Internet Explorer 8 to render pages as Internet Explorer 7 would do so, rather than enabling full standards-compliance mode, which may result in rendering problems for templates that have not been updated for IE8.

and set this option to "Yes".

2. If you are using an older version of vBulletin or other forum software that does not have this option, you can insert the tag posted above in the header section of your templates (in vBulletin, edit the headinclude template).

This should also work for blogs, etc., that have difficuly with IE8.

Most relatively new web page software will probably work without issue, though. Software developers have had a good long time to get ready for IE8 and the issues have been quite well publicized.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Wow David you are just a wealth of information. Thanks much for all that info.