IE8 launch is just around the corner--is your website ready?

dianeja — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 18:13:00 GMT

In preparation for the upcoming launch of Windows Internet Explorer 8 (currently available as a release candidate, downloadable at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/beta/worldwide-sites.aspx), we are encouraging Microsoft partners to help ensure that their websites, and those of their customers, are IE8-compatible. Unlike previous versions of the Microsoft web browser, IE8 renders content to be standards-compliant. This means that web pages will be displayed in Internet Explorer 8's standards mode by default. Why? The decision was driven by our Interoperability Principles and our desire to help developers by allowing them to write one set of code to run on all platforms. Read more about Microsoft Interoperability at http://www.microsoft.com/interop/approach/default.aspx.

What are we asking you to do? Please take a moment to check your own website for compatibility with IE8. If you have a few more moments, look at your customers' websites to see if they are compatible. If not compatible, here are a couple of courses of recommended action:

Preferred: Revise site content to support the standards-compliant default view for web pages in Internet Explorer 8. Visit http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc817575.aspx and read the guidance, "Standards by Default: What Does It Mean?".

Alternative: Tell Internet Explorer 8 to display your site in Internet Explorer 7 mode. Visit http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc817570.aspx and follow the guidance, "How Do I Fix My Site Today?".

To make it easy to find this information, we've updated the U.S. partner portal page for Internet Explorer to include a link about website compatibility: https://partner.microsoft.com/US/productssolutions/psinternetexplorer.

Cheers,

Diane Golshan, Sr. Marketing Manager, U.S. Partner Team

Launch Central for U.S. Partners : IE8

IE8 launch is just around the corner--is your website ready?