Welcome!

[ibrahim]

how about making IE8 open source?

[Iva83]

- Force upgrade and not make the mistake they made with IE7 and genuine notification.

- A campaign for those whose firewalls could block upgrades because IE6 has to go and it has to go fast.

[mstrelan]

How about an IE8 download day? Try and beat FF3 download day record. Of course FF fans are more passionate about their browser but I think every web developer throughout the world will be happy to leap in to the 21st century and upgrade to IE8 (but never actually use it).

[Jbcarey]

upgrade to IE8 (but never actually use it).

Unless they give it the ability to take my firebug/fire.fm and all other NECESSARY plugins

[.V1]

Also as you are talking with the IE8 Strategist maybe have him explain when on earth he didn't include a compatibility view for IE6. They support IE7, and IE8 views. If they where to support IE6, it would allow system administrators to massive grade IE6 to IE8, and set IE6 render mode on the websites that still require IE6. Not only will this help kill IE6, but also give IE8 a better and higher market penetration as there will be no more reasons to not update to IE8. And you would actually please web developers instead of annoy them..

small update.
According to Microsoft IE8 will also include the entire IE6 rendering engine! So i still see no reason why this can't be implemented or should not be implemented.

[jameson]

I can't wait to hear how the meeting went! I wonder if we'll see an article about it soon...

[skunkbad]

I absolutely second this... it's pointless releasing a browser if you don't force people to UPGRADE.... it's crazy to think that 30-ish% haven't even upgraded to IE7!! they'll completely skip the entire browser!

The kind of people that haven't upgraded are the kind of people that won't upgrade to IE8 either.

[jmattrandall]

Hey guys, I'm currently at the Microsoft Mix Web Design & Development 2009 conference in Las Vegas at the Venetian Hotel & Casino and at this morning's keynote they just announced that IE8 is now out for download. Final version, no more beta.

[Monime]

Will there be addons like on Mozila? (meaning developer addons)

[Monime]

I absolutely second this... it's pointless releasing a browser if you don't force people to UPGRADE.... it's crazy to think that 30-ish% haven't even upgraded to IE7!! they'll completely skip the entire browser!

The kind of people that haven't upgraded are the kind of people that won't upgrade to IE8 either.

It's just part true. We know about all this because we are in the business, but how about someone that doesn't know about all this stuff. There are many people like this and in order they change from IE6 to IE8 they should be informed about the advantages and benefits of this change. I still have IE6 on one of my computers for testing.

Microsoft has a problem with IE6, a BIG ONE, but I guess we have also a problem, we should be aware that our job is to deliver nice usable websites and most of times regular people and clients don't blame Microsoft, but us.

[jmattrandall]

Will there be addons like on Mozila? (meaning developer addons)

Yeah actually, they have some add-ons that are pretty cool. They also talked about listening to feedback and how people wanted more support for developers so they have a new feature called "accelerators" which allow you to create your own code for people to sort of create shortcuts when you right click to give them additional features and options to interact with things that you create.

Microsoft showed a demo where, by right clicking on some non-linked text that said "The Killers" within a paragraph, they selected an accelerator from one of their international partners (Chinese I think) and hit "listen" which was written in Chinese characters, that pulled up all of their albums in an audio streaming window.

In order to save people from copying and pasting, etc. which was one of the most common tasks gathered from the data that Microsoft had been researching, you can select text from a website, right click, and hit "blog this" and it will auto-add an entry to any blog you have configured. There were a number of other features, but these are two that I remember off the top of my head.

Then there are also "web slices" for people that often check back to a website to look at a particular zone or area that might be updated for example, so you would be able to, basically bookmark a websnap of like... the top 10 chart from a music website which would update live.

So yeah, I'm a Mac user myself but when I get home and have access to my girlfriend's desktop, I'm going to download and install IE8 and take it for a test drive. You should too.