Comments on: Drugs, Bugs, and IE8

By: gt

gt — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 11:00:50 +0000

IE8 internal links (same page) are acting very strange. Has anyone else had this issue?

By: A possibly overzealous comment by Eric? :: Coding and Dreaming

A possibly overzealous comment by Eric? :: Coding and Dreaming — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 21:40:47 +0000

[...] thus far to be very, very promising…”. He does actually mention that he’s “never had any inside track” from the IE guys, and granted, his comments did come before MS released a document outlining [...]

By: Alan Gresley

Alan Gresley — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 16:33:04 +0000

@Chris Hector You write: "I too am wondering if the new engine is still partly Trident (IE7). My wondering depends on the fact there is a “switch to IE7 rendering mode” in there." You may have already seen this page on trident rendering bands but viewing this page in IE8 reveals the trident of old. Scary...

By: Alan Gresley

Alan Gresley — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 13:09:33 +0000

@Eric you wrote: "Damn those companies and their evil controlling ways!" I hope that was in humor. :-) BTW, Safari 3.1 [1] and Opera 9.5 are the most advance browsers in CSS support. They are battling it out to take the 100 out of 100 success in Acidtest3 [2]. I see that an new AcidTest4 involving a greater share of CSS3 is needed for these browsers. An Opera lab alpha now supports hsla color. If this is implement soon then there will be Safari 3.1 and Opera battling for the lead. Gecko 1.9 which is getting left behind greatly and IE8 which is struggling with CSS2.1 compliance. An interesting year it will be! [1] Safari 3.1 pushes CSS3 support forward [2] Opera overtakes Safari in Acid3 race, reaches 100%

By: Eric Meyer

Eric Meyer — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 12:43:16 +0000

...why would they wreak havoc by trying to program yet another new engine? Surely WebKit or Gecko would have been easier to use. Oh wait, they want total control. Sorry, I forgot.

Yeah, I said the same thing about Opera. And for that matter, why would the KHTML and WebKit guys bother with their own engine when Gecko would have been easier? Total control, of course. Damn those companies and their evil controlling ways!

By: Chris Hester

Chris Hester — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 12:26:44 +0000

I too am wondering if the new engine is still partly Trident (IE7). My wondering depends on the fact there is a "switch to IE7 rendering mode" in there. But why would they wreak havoc by trying to program yet another new engine? Surely WebKit or Gecko would have been easier to use. Oh wait, they want total control. Sorry, I forgot. Now Microsoft have just published an interesting document showing what CSS will work in IE8 Final, what currently works or doesn't in IE8 Beta 1 and so on for previous versions back to IE5. Also what they aren't planning to implement. The document is here: CSS Compatibility and Internet Explorer I mention it because your post here Eric says that first:letter and first:line haven't been implemented in IE8 Beta 1. But according to Microsoft, they have - in all versions since IE5.5, including IE8 Beta 1! So who's right?

By: Michael C.

Michael C. — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 16:37:15 +0000

I've encountered similar bugs with IE7 (note that that's seven, not eight!) in RTL documents. I had a site I was building in Hebrew, that had links with both English and Hebrew text mixed together. Under certain circumstances (no, I never did narrow it down), the majority of any given bi-directional link was unclickable - same exact issue you encountered in IE8. There were a ton of other bugs I encountered with IE7's RTL / bidi implementation - so many, in fact, that I'm convinced that the RTL / bidi aspect wasn't tested past the equivalent of an early alpha stage. Makes me wonder how much different the IE8 engine really is; it almost seems like they took portions of code from IE7 that they thought worked fine and dropped them into the "new" IE8 engine.

By: thacker

thacker — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 14:50:31 +0000

If this Beta release of IE8 is considered to be more of an Alpha release, it may be the result that the release, in my view, occurred a couple weeks to a month, prematurely. It is obvious, that its release was to coincide with the MIX conference.

I hope that the IE team can and will successfully resist any internal pressure that may result in a premature release of its final version.

Too much is at stake and rests on the successful adoption of IE8.

By: bruce

bruce — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 22:27:36 +0000

@brian

no that’s not quite the same bug; I’m talking about arbitrary elements identified with an id rather than the old-skool method of named anchors.

By: Alan Gresley

Alan Gresley — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 21:18:54 +0000

To right Eric, IE8 is definitely an alpha. I will find it interesting to see what bugs are fixed and in which order when they do release the various beta versions. The parsing or non-parsing of commented selectors is worst than how IE5 treats them. It's like some Pandora's Box has been open. MS now has the challenge of fixing their broken alpha. I want to see no more hacks. I wish I had IE5?mac to test with. :-)

By: Brian

Brian — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 21:14:13 +0000

@bruce,
Is this related to the “Named anchor does not work in Standards mode links” issue listed on the IE8 release notes? http://support.microsoft.com/kb/949787

By: Ian Clifton

Ian Clifton — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 18:53:31 +0000

I gave up trying to help beta test IE versions when I submitted a bug that they ignored. It wasn't anything complex and should have been fixed in IE6. When they came out with IE7, it created as many problems as it fixed. If IE8 doesn't do things at least as well as older versions of decent browsers (e.g., Safari 2, FF 2, etc.), then the web is going to become a very frustrating place...

By: Webdesign Aalsmeer

Webdesign Aalsmeer — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 18:46:08 +0000

I’m not going to submit bugs to microsoft; the IE team can also google on “IE7 bugs”.

By: mwhenry.com » Blog Archive » What I’m Reading: 3/24

mwhenry.com » Blog Archive » What I’m Reading: 3/24 — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 17:22:53 +0000

[...] Drugs, Bugs, and IE8: A predictably good read from Eric Meyer, but I link to it mainly to have an excuse to echo the following point: There are a lot of beta browsers out there right now (one less, now that Safari 3 has shipped). If you’re testing your sites in them and something renders in any way other than what you were expecting, submit a bug report. Don’t change your code. [...]

By: bruce

bruce — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 16:30:14 +0000

About the new rendering engine - it appears there is some as-yet unremoved remnants of hasLayout. I'm told that my IE in-page navigation test fails in the IE8 beta, and the previous work-arounds were always to force hasLayout.