Internet Explorer version 8 is now available for download. Another iteration of Microsoft's web browser which for a long time has been dogged by complaints that it does not follow web standards correctly. The latest version is supposed to follow standards much better and to be safer browsing experience.

Geoffrey on the Gite Brittany blog has given the latest release a spin and has his on views on it. After some initial worries things seemed to be ok. From his posting Testing Internet Explorer 8 using Virtual PC...

After trying out XP with IE8 on both the Gite website and this Blog I was really pleased to find out that everything displayed properly without having to revert to compatibility mode.

The only problem I discovered was that the 'Photo Gallery' feature (using Pictobrowser) didn't work with IE8. After a bit of head scratching I realised that the XP IE8 VPC image only had Flash v6 installed. Downloading and upgrading to Flash v10 cured the problem.

In his posting, Geoffrey states that...

I have to admit to being a bit worried about this new version as Microsoft have made strides to make IE8 more standards compatible (something they were ludicrously poor at in the past), but of course in doing so many legacy websites will "break" and not render properly.

The problem with older sites is that they are created with a certain web browser in mind. In fact it turns out to be a certain versions of a browser. As HTML evolves over time, they way in which a browser interprets the web page code will change, some of the coding will no longer work as newer code and different methods are preferred.

However if you follow standards you will lessen the chances of the page being displayed incorrectly or not working as the designer intended.