Kristof Rennen’s Blog

What a week for Microsoft users and fanatics.
In my 2 previous posts, I already mentioned the releases of Silverlight 3 Beta and ASP.NET MVC 1.0, but ont he same MIX09 event Microsoft also release Internet Explorer 8.

The new features look promising:

• Accelerators (map to an address, translate a word, find someone on facebook, …)
• Compatibility view (render a website in IE7 when its not fully ready yet for IE8)
• Enhanced tabbed browsing (tab groups, tab colors, …)
• A better back button (for RIA applications support)
• Smarter address bar
• Increased performance (even faster than it already was ;-))
• Web slices (to keep up with frequently updated sites from the favorites bar
• And much more …

I haven’t installed this new version yet, and I will probably wait until I have some feedback from other users.
Its not really a good idea to upgrade to another browser when the web applications you are developing still need to support older Internet Explorer versions.

More information can be found on the official website.
The application can be downloaded from Microsoft’s website.

Kristof Rennen Software Browser, Explorer, Internet, Microsoft, MIX, Software

Great news for the Silverlight fans out there since Microsoft already released the first beta of Silverlight 3 at MIX09.
Its a preview release which continues Silverlight’s track record of rapid innovation, introducing 50+ new features.

Some of the nice new features include:

• Support for higher quality audio and video (more formats, 720p+ streaming, HD, content protection, …)
• Empowering richer experiences (animation effects, enhanced control skinning, perspective 3D, …)
• Improving RIA productivity (60+ controls with source, Search Engine Optimization, improved performance, …)
• Out of the browser capabilities (life outside the browser, shortcuts, auto-update, …)

Together with this beta release of Silverlight 3, Microsoft also released a first preview of Expression Blend 3.

More information can be found on the official Silverlight website.
The windows developer runtime can be downloaded from Microsoft’s site.

Kristof Rennen Development .NET, Blend, Expression, Microsoft, MIX, Silverlight