MIX 2009: Day 2 Summary

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The keynote on Day# 2 was all about Internet Explorer 8 and passion for design by Deborah Adler about the prescription drug containers that finally adopted by national pharmacy chain (Target).

Dean Hachamovitch, General Manager for the Internet Explorer team, released the final build of IE8.0 (Theme: Faster, Easier and Safer).

  • We used real-world data to build IE8 – hundreds of millions of users, 200+ data points with the products, millions of user sessions, hundreds of hours of usability labs, and dozens of in-home studies.
  • Available in 25 languages for Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, and Windows Server 2008 within x86 and x64 editions.
  • Performance has been a major area of investment in Internet Explorer 8, as this performance testing video demonstrates. IE8 is faster than other browsers on many real-world sites. Even the JavaScript engine itself is 70% faster than the one shipped in IE7.
  • In IE8, we now have tab crash isolation – when one tab of the browser fails, it doesn’t bring down the entire browser.
  • New features includes Full CSS 2.1 Support, accelerators, web slices and provider model for Visual Search.
    • Great opportunities for developers for interoperability, extensibility and integrating their sites/tools.
    • There are over 1,200 accelerators, web slices and visual search providers out there already today, including Digg, ESPN, OneRiot, Amazon, Sina, TaoBao, and Yahoo.
    • Get some at https://ieaddons.com
  • IE blocks over a million phishing and malware attacks a month. (Check more at: https://www.nsslabs.com/anti-malware/browser-security)
  • Visit the IE8.0 MSDN Developer Center and the IE8 Team Blog. Watch the great video on internet history for yourself!

Deborah Alder (*Designer’s  inspirational story- start video around the middle)  - a successful design experience begins by

  1. Having a love affair with your customer and really digging into your customer's needs.
  2. Bringing your design skills to bear in solving those needs humanly and humanely.

More about Deborah at https://content.visitmix.com/2009/speakers/default.aspx#DeanHachamovitch

Regards,

Rajan Dwivedi
Premier Services, Microsoft