Interesting Highlights from IE8 Launch at MIX

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MIX is one of my favorite events of the year. And there are so many things that I want to call out, but I just don’t have the time. While I’m waiting for my body to adjust back to the Central Time Zone (everyone’s asleep in the house but me), I thought I’d go through the Day 2 Keynote and point out a few interesting comments. Here is the full transcript.

 

  • Bill Buxton introduces Dean Hachamovitch, IE General Manager
  • IE8 Video (comedy), 1:50-6:45
    • Jeffrey Rayport, Harvard Professor Emeritus
    • Dave Hill, comedian
    • Janeane Garafalo, Actress/Radio host
    • Beth Dover, actress
    • Jordan Carlos, comedian
    • Christian Finnegan, comedian
    • Baron Vaughn, comedian
  • Dean Hachamovitch comes on stage
  • 7:31, “The browser is important to three large groups: The people who build the Web, the people who use the Web, and the people who attack the people who build and use the Web.”
  • 10:24, several stat’s indicating the mounds of info and analysis
  • “We saw that 70 percent of users had more than one search provider installed, and we wanted to make it easier for users to use them.”
  • 12:56, as Dean showed how tabs are color coded, I noticed that he was clicking on links and creating new tabs without right-clicking. Turns out that CTRL-LeftClick does this. Thanks Dean for this little tip, as I use this all the time (except I was right-clicking).
  • 13:20, Dean shows how Firefox does not handle error recovery as well as IE8. Would be very interesting to know what URL he clicked on to make FireFox fail. As well, he crashes IE8 on a different page, but no idea how he did it. The magic behind this failure recovery is that each browser container and tab gets a Windows process.
  • 15:00, Looking at performance. Dean shows a series of tests, where the big 3 browsers are shown loading certain pages (google.com, blogger.com, yahoo.com, msn.com) and IE8 is either fastest or very close every time. Dean also points out that script performance is just one part of browser performance.
  • 16:00 IE8 built to be safer.
    • IE7 already blocks over a million phishing attempts a month…
    • Since we released beta 2.0, IE8 has protected one in 40 users every week from downloading malware…
    • Shows a fake PayPal page in FireFox. Points out how our domain display capability is one protection, which is not evident in FireFox.
    • 17:06, shows a real site that IE8 blocks due to it being reported as a scam site
    • 17:43, shows a Malware Catch Rate slide from NSS Labs study. The difference in #1 (IE8) and #2 (FireFox) is 40%. Recommend seeing this slide.
    • 18:14, another good slide showing a summary of features around Faster, Easier, Safer. The safer column is impressive.
    • 18:30, IE is the only browser today that out of the box enables sites to protect your users from click jacking attacks…
  • Focus turns to developers, first with standards
    • 19:16, a review of the last year’s IE8 announcements.
      • most complete implementation of CSS 2.1 in any browser
      • 7K+ test cases sent to W3C
        • 19:30, We want to move standards compliance and interoperability from opinions and anecdotes to objective tests at the W3C site…
      • Beginning of HTML5 support
    • 20:00, shows a tests of CSS compliance between the big 3 browsers. First test, FireFox fails badly. Second test Chrome fails.”These examples are real-world interoperability problems just waiting to happen to you... ” Then shows a demo Contoso page where Chrome renders incorrectly.
    • 22:20, “We are committed to standards. IE8 passes more CSS 2.1 tests than other browsers… ”
  • Creating new opportunities for developers, 23:00
    • It's no longer just about a great Web site. We want to make it easier for your site to be part of how people use their browser and the entire Web all the time. Think about what information your site has that your customers want one-click access to, no matter where they are on the Web. That's a great Web slice.
    • Think about what services your site offers that people want access to when they're on other sites? That's a great accelerator.
    • Think about how visual search can help pull users back to your site.
  • Web Slice examples, 23:45
    • New York Times
    • ESPN Headlines
    • Mail
    • Traffic
    • One Riot
      • “they found that users who run their Web slices come back to their site 18 percent more per day than average users…”
  • Accelerators, 26:00
    • Twitter
    • Facebook
    • Share-a-holic
    • Yahoo maps
    • Music lookup from an international partner
  • Visual Search, 27:30
    • Live Search
    • Wikipedia
    • eBay
    • Amazon
    • New York Times
  • Other partners, 28:15
    • Digg accelerator
    • ESPN web slices
    • Yahoo, eBay, OneRiot, Digg, Amazon, ESPN, Sina & TaoBao
    • “over 1200 add-on’s available today…”
  • What's Next
    • continued support to this version, and standards
    • A review of what happened around IE5 launch 10 years ago
    • “There were no headlines the day IE5 shipped about the revolution about to happen. Now, that was 10 years ago. We can do better, faster, together with IE8. The next step is up to you. Microsoft loves developers. What developers do with IE8 makes all the difference. We're excited to work with you, thank you. ”
  • Dean departs, 30:39

 

The rest of the keynote is by Deborah Adler, a designer with a remarkable story. Transcript is here.

“In a sense, she's somebody who's in her design – this is sort of like a Cinderella story – the design grew out of her master's project at design school, but it's design and technology not to die for, but to keep you from dying from. And she revolutionized the packaging and labeling of pharmaceutical drugs…”

This runs for another 20 minutes, and the story is fantastic. This shows what a designer can do. It might make you want to spend some money at Target, but it surely will make you question your current pharmacy. A worthwhile video to watch…