Microsoft has issued a third Internet Explorer 8 beta
Microsoft has issued a third Internet Explorer 8 beta that includes a list of compatible websites for users less than “web savvy”.
The IE 8 Release Candidate is the third pre-release version of Microsoft’s browser but the first to include a list of web sites that Microsoft says actually work with its browser.
The Compatibility View List was announced last month by Microsoft after it found users testing the second beta had been unable to view websites without IE 8 scrambling them.
IE 8 introduces two modes for viewing sites: default and compatibility. Default supports the latest web standards, like CSS 2.1. Compatibility is designed to let you view the millions of sites and applications built for old versions of IE that were not compliant with web standards.
The idea was that a button would let users flip over to viewing such sites, but many forgot to make the switch, resulting in scrambled sites. Even sites supposed to work in default mode were getting scrambled.
Microsoft then introduced the idea of the Compatibility View List, which is supposed to tell the browser when it’s viewing a site that’s not been updated to support IE 8.
The list is composed and edited entirely by Microsoft, based on its reading of telemetry data and information from product support channels, the company said in December.
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