12.Version 8 of Internet Explorer is in development. A beta version will
be made available in the first half of 2008. From the blog and based
on the conferences of MIX 2007; RSS, CSS, Ajax, microformats, more options
for user interface customization and improved web development tools are
possibilities for inclusion into the forthcoming version of Internet
Explorer, with security still being the top priority. Microsoft is
investing in support for more of the CSS 2.1 specification as well as
changes to the DOM for interoperability with other web browsers.
HasLayout functionality will also be done away with in IE8. IE8
includes a new rendering mode known as "IE8 standards mode".[ IE8
standards mode breaks compatibility with previous versions of Internet
Explorer by more strictly adhering to web standards.[ IE8 standards
mode is not enabled by default, but can be triggered by inserting a special
flag into a web page.[13] IE8 supports Data: URIs, HTML object fallback, abbr
tag, CSS generated content and display: table display type, in addition
to
fixing a lot of CSS and HTML parsing bugs.[15] As a result, according to
Microsoft, an internal debug build of IE8 passes the Acid2 test in IE8
standards mode.
[10][15] However, the version of IE8 that will be released will not pass
Acid2 as it will require pages to specifically request to be rendered in
IE8 standards mode, and Acid2 does not request this.
