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IE 8 Readiness
MIX has started, and we have the news we have been waiting for, for some time. What is IE 8 going to do?
Microsoft has put out an IE 8 Readiness Report that discusses everything.
There is a TON of amazing stuff here. It also looks like they will be using the standards for most of this stuff, but we need to see more. E.g. is cross domain messaging using postMessage?
But, having 6 connections per host and the like is huge:
Ajax Improvements
A white paper is here:
1. AJAX Navigation enables users to navigate back
and forth without leaving the AJAX application and could be used
navigating a page without performing a traditional full navigation.
This allows websites to trigger an update to browser components like
the address bar by setting the window.location.hash value, firing an
event to alert components in the page and even creating an entry in
the travel log.
2. DOM Storage is a simple-to-use method for
storing and retrieving strings of key/value pair data. Data can be
stored per tab instance for a session or persisted to the local
machine. This allows pages to cache text on the machine which
reduces the effect of network latencies by providing faster access
to pre-cached data. Several innovative uses are possible. For
example, use this in combination with the new network connectivity
event to allow a page to cache data if it detects that the computer
is offline.
3. Connectivity events allow websites to check
when the user is connected to the network and receive notification
of connectivity changes.
4. Six connections per host instead of two for
broadband scenarios and a scriptable property allow for more
improved performance by allowing parallelization of downloads in
Internet Explorer 8. In addition, this increases functionality by
ensuring a request is not blocked to a host if two connections
already exist. Websites can optimize their downloads based on a
scriptable property.
5. XMLHTTPRequest Enhancements include a timeout
property that can be set to cancel the request if necessary,
allowing developers to manage the request better.
Cross domain is here:
* With Cross-domain Request (XDR), developers can
create cross-site data aggregation scenarios. Similar to the
XMLHttpRequest object but with a simpler programming model, this
request, called XDomainRequest, is the easiest way to make anonymous
requests to third-party sites that support XDR and opt in to making
their data available across domains. Three lines of code will have
you making basic cross-site requests. This will ensure data
aggregation for public sites (such as blogs) will be simple, secure
and fast.
* Cross-document Messaging (XDM) APIs allow
communication between documents from different domains through
IFrames in a way that is easy, secure and standardized.
HTML and CSS
* CSS 2.1 Compliance
* Data URI Support
* Better CSS printing
* CSS Selector API support
* Acid2 support
* Better DOM Core support
New Features
* 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.
* WebSlices is a new feature for websites to connect to their users by subscribing to content directly within a webpage. WebSlices behave just like feeds where clients can subscribe to get updates and notify the user of changes.
And we also have other features such as less memory leaks!
What do you think?
IE 8: Better Ajax, CSS, DOM, and new features
