March 5, 2008
Microsoft rolls the dice with IE8
A week ago Adobe plunged deeper into Microsoft territory as it formally launched AIR, software which is meant to let applications run seamlessly outside the browser on both the Web and on disconnected PCs. This is a direct pitch to Microsoft’s core constituency: developers who have traditionally written for desktop machines but now want to tap into a hybrid Web/PC platform.
Here in Las Vegas today, Microsoft hit back. Its annual MIX conference has become an important venue for a group of people who have traditionally sat firmly in the Adobe camp: designers and creators of light-weight Web applications who do not fit the traditional Microsoft developer mold.
Leaving aside the always-awkward experience of watching Microsoft executives trying to look and sound hip in front of an audience like this, the technology on display looks pretty slick. The centrepieces are a new version of Silverlight, the Flash-type plug-in whose debut last year won Microsoft unexepected kudos among Web developers, and the first public demonstration of the IE8 browser.
The new browser (a beta version of which was released today to developers) shows that Microsoft, having fallen behind Mozilla’s Firefox in the innovation stakes, is trying to raise its game. New features should eventually make the Web easier to use. One, called “Activities,” will let users copy and paste parts of Web pages into each other, making it possible to access other Web services from inside a Web page. Another, “Webslices”, brings RSS feeds into the browser so that they can be combined more easily with other Web content (there’s a good description of how it all works here.)
IE8 also marks an important watershed for Microsoft. For the first time, the most widely-used browser on the Web will implement all the most common browser standards. Announcing this earlier in the week, Microsoft put it down to its new committment to interoperability, announced with great fanfare late last month. But as Mary Jo Foley and other bloggers have argued, this looks a bit disingenuous: in fact, unhappiness on the part of developers probably pushed Microsoft in this direction. Still, it represents something new, as even adversaries like Opera (whose complaint to the EC about Microsoft’s refusal to support standards in its browser is now under official investigation) have been forced to concede.
