Mike Seidle ...notes from the road

Yesterday, Microsoft released Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2. There are several important changes in the browser, the most significant being that pages designed for older versions of Internet Explorer may break in IE8. That is because IE8 defaults to a more standards compliant rendering mode:

IEBlog : Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 Now Available

After deciding to default IE8 to the most standards-compliant mode available, we wanted to be sure to address compatibility concerns for organizations and individuals. Would websites that expect IE8 to behave the way IE7 does create a problem for end-users? Since March, we’ve been telling developers about a small change they can make to their sites to tell IE8 to show their sites as IE7 does. Many have – but there are a lot of sites that may have not yet addressed this. The Compatibility View button (new to IE8 Beta 2) is a good solution to provide end-users a good experience as the web transitions.

Overall, the browser looks to be very good, but only time will tell if it can stop the rapid market share erosion to Firefox, Safari and Opera that has been the story in browsers over the past two years.Technorati Tags: Browsers, Internet Explorer, Browser Wars