The big news with IE right now is it’s upcoming release, IE8. Slated to come out “4th quater 2008″ (so… any day now, right?), IE8 is supposed to have a lot going for it from a web developer standpoint. In fact, on paper it almost looks dreamy – the IE team has decided to include a full Firebug-esque debugger console, IE7 emulation, and more. When I was at the Ajax experience last week, the IE team showed off these features briefly in their presentation. From that, I was actually pretty excited about it all, and I couldn’t wait to get back to Zenbe to install it on our PC system and try it out. Even if there were bugs, I thought, it would be okay, because of this IE7 compatibility mode.

Right? Not a chance. It’s IE, after all.

I’ve been playing around with the browser for the better half of the day and I have some interesting results to report, and not really anything good. I made a series of mini-tests, which you can view for yourselves by checking out the simple sandbox site I set up at http://rauenzahner.com/ie8.html. Flipping back and forth from compatibility mode shows the differences, which I’ll detail now.

Test A: *+html is an IE7 thing
This is actually a good thing. Although I haven’t found an IE8-specific css filter yet (if anyone knows one, a comment on it would make you a hero), it’s a bit of a relief knowing we won’t have to rework our IE7 filter fixes into the new release. Or… this could be a bad thing. It depends on your code.

Test B: hover implementation is quite buggy
You know, this is somewhat worrysome. The test is the most simplistic use of the :hover pseudo-class on earth, yet it seems to be quite finicky in IE8. The element seems to require a click before the hover effect will ‘kick in’. It frustrates me when something that previously worked is well.. bunk. Especially when it’s something as simple as :hover.

Test C: transparency support died (much like my hopes and dreams for ie8)
It appears all forms of css transparency support are gone. Correct me if I’m missing something, but I couldn’t figure out how to make it work in IE8 (side note: I wasn’t aware IE7 had limitations where only divs could be rendered transparent… how odd and limiting).

That’s it for now, but there will most likely be additions to this IE8 testing page – I covered the main issues that I encountered today in testing out Zenbe. Also, keep in mind that this is just the html/css rendering… we’re encountering some javascript problems that I haven’t done much exploring into yet, and while there’s IE7 mode for html/css rendering, there doesn’t seem to be an “IE7″ mode for the JavaScript parsing. Oops.

All of this leaves me a bit worried about the upcoming release of this browser, and how it will affect the interweb. I hope the IE team is on top of these issues and can tighten up the release for the launch at the end of this year.

So, for now, I have to go back to using FF2…. which is a bigger letdown than one would think.

The only light we have at the end of the tunnel was the recent announcement by John Resig that he would be devoting half his time to get Firebug back to where it needs to be.

This can’t happen soon enough.

So, I’ll mention them all. First up is a site called Mint, which is just brilliant. You sync up your bank account info with them and they put your finances together in a spectacular array of animated bar graphs and pie charts. It also helps you manage your budget and find ways to save expenses. It’s also full of cute little statistics like the Starbucks data to the left (which apparently helps you realize you went a little crazy with the lattes). I’m a total nerd for this stuff, and the app, which is built in Flex, is smooth and responsive in ways which almost make me feel like a fool for sticking with this javascript stuff.

Besides Mint, there’s also a lot of other applications of all types that have been coming around. First, Versions is finally out, and it’s quickly found it’s way into my ‘most used apps’ list. There’s also 280 slides, which does amazing things with web-based presentation tools; Fluid, which turns any website into a self-running webkit-based application; a youtube/last.fm mashup, and more. Much more.

Firefox 3 is settling in, and every day I find something new I like about it. Today, I read an article that confirmed my beliefs that the new Firefox has fixed the memory leak problem which would often cause me headache. I also read about some of Firefox’s new css features and was stoked to see support for inline-block elements, in particular. It really makes me wish Firefox 2 just go off and die already… as bad as that sounds.

There’s some new things personally as well. I’ve decided to rejoin the twitter community. We have an awesomely made new feature on zenbe for twitter, and it makes twittering really convenient, so we’ll see how it all turns out. I’ve hooked it up to the sidebar, along with my tumblr accout, which I just love. Their pre-sets for media types are really clever, and it’s just fun and totally random.

I’ve also been working on some old ideas and some new ones – including a new method for analyzing your iTunes data, which I’m real excited about. It involves a lot of pie charts and bar graphs. Hopefully animated ones.

So expect more soon. New York is beautiful in the summer, and I’m feeling more productive than ever.

The FF3 update is pretty massive, and there’s a lot of reasons we all will want to switch over to it as soon as we can (not just the graphics thing). However, within 30 seconds of running the app – I noticed that it has new rendering differences (improvements) from the FF2 version. Quickly this turned into a sticky situation, as I was in the middle of debugging some CSS in FF2 that, well… worked perfectly in FF3. It brought home the sad fact that as web developers, we’re still totally owned by browser compatibility issues* and need to support FF2 for a while – until the 3.0 transition is long a thing of the past.

So what’s a girl to do? I really like FF3 and would like to run it as my main browser. Quickly, I reinstalled FF2 as a secondary browser, but alas, FF3 and FF2 cannot be run at the same time, and there’s some weirdness with the Firebug plugin (which is an essential for web developers). I was about to raise my arms in frustration and head back to FF2, when I decided to check Google for some answers.

Quickly I found an excellent resource on how to run multiple Firefoxes at the same time by using a little-known Firefox feature known as a ‘Profile’. The solution posted on the blog is limited to Mac people (Windows peeps, have fun with your own google search), and is targeted for running FF1.0 and 1.5, however it worked exactly the same for 2/3.

Good luck, and happy Firefoxing!

*I didn’t mean to sound so dire, the rendering differences in ff3 actually bring it more on-par with web standards. The future is promising, but we’re only on day 1 and still plagued by the browsers of the past.

When Steve Jobs had his last Keynote presentation at the WWDC, he displayed a chilling vision of how he sees the future of the browser market share. Not only is his vision unrealistic, it’s also insulting (what’s also insulting is he didn’t try to chunk away at IE’s market share). By effectively removing Firefox (and the ‘other’ web browsers) from the pie chart, he is demonstrating to the world that he really doesn’t understand the advantages of Firefox over his Safari browser, and in turn, what makes Firefox a refreshing alternative to any other browser on the market.

When it comes right down to it, Safari is just another IE. It’s a consumer level web browser developed by the same people who make the (native) Operating System. It’s not open-source. It’s not extensible. All it really lets you do is surf the web. Sure, it follows the box-model far better than IE, and it manages (somehow) to pass the Acid2 test, but it’s not flawless. It has it’s own rendering bugs and issues.

As a web developer, Firefox is an essential tool for my everyday life. Looking back, I don’t know how I managed to be an effective developer without Firefox extensions like Firebug and the Web Developer Toolbar. Additionally, even as a consumer I’ve made much use of Firefox extensions, they’ve helped me organize my life and be a more efficient web user.

It’s a shame that Mr. Jobs fails to realize this, and I can only hope that he’ll one day understand that what makes Firefox special (and very much necessary in the market) isn’t the fact that it’s “not IE”, but rather that it’s an open-source, customizable productivity powerhouse for web professionals.