Chapter 1. Internet Explorer 8 and Its Impact on Your ASP.NET Web Sites

Internet Explorer 6 was released in August 2001, and it helped Internet Explorer reach a peak market share of about 95 percent in 2002 and 2003. It appeared that the browser wars were over, and development on IE effectively stopped. Then increased competition, from Firefox in particular, led Microsoft to revive the IE team to deliver IE 7 in October 2006. Now Microsoft has focused extensively on standards compliance and new innovations like Accelerators and Web Slices in its latest version, IE 8. Although there are many new features that provide a great new experience for browser users, this Wrox Blox focuses on features important to web developers (review how to install the sample code at the end of this Wrox Blox). The most important change for developers in IE 8 is its out-of-the-box standards compliance, which will affect many web sites.