At MIX09, Microsoft Corp.’s Web designer and developer conference, Microsoft announced the global availability of Windows Internet Explorer 8, providing better performance, easier Web development tools for enhanced browser experiences and improved security and reliability. In Thursday’s keynote address, Dean Hachamovitch, general manager of the Internet Explorer team at Microsoft, showcased solutions from industry partners such as ESPN, eBay Inc., Digg Inc., Facebook and OneRiot that create new value for their customers.

“With the Internet Explorer 8 platform, Microsoft creates opportunities for Web sites to engage customers in new ways and drive not only more traffic, but also more value in the online experience,” Hachamovitch said.

New Opportunities for Developers

Developers will benefit from performance features that enable Web sites to allow customers to engage more deeply with their site content. Accelerators and Web Slices make it easier for developers to reach beyond the page and provide new ways for people to stay connected to the content and services of their choice. Internet Explorer 8 has enhanced search features and capabilities to provide more interesting and relevant content, increased speed, and enhanced security, and offers greater performance and reliability.

“Internet Explorer 8 is the perfect platform to consume search results from the real-time social Web,” said Tobias Peggs, general manager, OneRiot. “We have developed new search services and Web Slices for Internet Explorer 8 that enable our users to easily find the news, stories and videos that people are buzzing about right now. We have found that Web Slices help bring users to our site 18 percent more per day than average.”

“The new features in Internet Explorer 8 allow fans convenient one-click access to the latest ESPN video and sports headlines,” said Jason Guenther, vice president, technology and product development, ESPN Digital Media. “With Web Slices available on many pages of our site, including team Clubhouse pages and select sport pages, we can add to the easy ways fans can connect with sports news and their favorite games and teams.”

Commitment to Standards and Integrated Developer Tools

Internet Explorer 8 is Microsoft’s most standards-compliant browser to date, and benefits from work the company is doing with standards bodies to bring increased measurement and consistency. As part of Microsoft’s commitment to supporting standards, the company has submitted more than 7,000 cascading style sheet (CSS) 2.1 test cases to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) in the last year to help drive easier and more measurable standards adoption for all developers. Moreover, Internet Explorer 8 now passes more of the W3C CSS 2.1 test cases than any other shipping browser and has invested significantly in support for HTML 5. Defaulting to standards-mode for Web sites and featuring a Compatibility View list to ease the transition enables developers to be sure their code runs across multiple browsers and platforms, freeing developers to innovate, not re-create.

Finally, by incorporating the Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar directly into Internet Explorer 8, Microsoft enables developers to quickly debug HTML, CSS and JavaScript. These enhanced capabilities empower developers to deliver a better Web experience through creating applications for consumers and enterprises.

More information and a download of Internet Explorer 8 can be found at https://www.microsoft.com/ie8. More information for developers can be found at https://www.msdn.microsoft.com/ie, and information for members of the Microsoft Partner Program can be found at https://partners.microsoft.com.