IE8 Hinted at Mix'07, Browser Wars are Back?

MIX has come and gone and Silverlight hogged all the spotlight at the conference, but the sleuths at Ars Technica pieced together what we should expect from IE8. Does anyone really care because I sure don’t. My feeling is that Microsoft isn’t proactive enough to seek out flaws or patch holes until they’re exploited, which leaves everyone vulnerable to whatever the Interwebs has lurking in the dark.

Rumor has it that IE8 will be out in about 18 months, which is definitely up for debate. MIX, however, gives us hints as to what to expect. First? Improved support for RSS, CSS and AJAX have been put at the top of the list. There is also some speculation that microformats and small tags will be embedded in the HTML code that are said to alert software of things such as calender appointments and contact information. That’s all well and good, but can’t Microsoft do anything for themselves? Firefox 3 will undoubtedly have microformat support, so I guess it isn’t a surprise that IE8 will, too. That is what Microsoft is best at isn’t it? Waiting for someone else to announce/leak something about the competition and then make a crappier version of it.

Microsoft drops hints about Internet Explorer 8 [Ars Technica]