IE8 Released!

On March 19th, the latest version of Microsoft Internet Exploder was released!

Why am I excited about this? Because, this is the first browser that Microsoft has released that will conform to the internet standards set forth last century. And, it means their browsers will work seamlessly with new web technologies we employ on web sites we design.

So, do I expect the new browser to be better than Firefox or Safari? I don't care really, I hope they've made some improvements though. They'd have a hard time releasing anything worse than Internet Explorer 6 (IE6), it was flakey at best and, a security nightmare at worse. Released in 2001, there are still many companies that use this antique as their everyday browser and wonder why theirs and many other sites don't work properly.

What this means to web site design firms everywhere, like Francomedia, is that we no longer have to design sites to work on IE6. We can build web sites, the way they are supposed to work and only have to do it once, not waste countless hours trying to rig it to work in IE6 as well as current browsers.

Going forward, if you want a site to work in IE6, you will have to specify this in the scope of work and this work will be quoted separately. I hope nobody really asks for this. The alternative work-around is of course having browser detection on the site that informs site visitors that they are welcome to step out of the stone age and download the new browser at no cost - this work-around takes very little time and we will offer it for free to any client that is building their site with us until the end of the year.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not bitter - we made a hell of a lot of money by having to ensure that web sites work on IE6... but it was neither fun nor easy. And, something I'm glad we're done with, in fact, everyone involved in web has got to be happy about this.

If you are reading this blog using IE6, go and get IE8 NOW! Or, seeing as you do have a choice, download Firefox, Safari and IE8 - try them out and see which you like best.