RE: IE8 Beta Feedback

  • Article

Thank you to everyone who has provided the IE Team with feedback on IE8. Your dedication to making this product the best it can be is truly amazing. Here is an update on the feedback channels mentioned in IE8 Beta Feedback blog post back in March of 2008:

  • IE8 Technical Beta – We invited a group of beta testers, including anyone who emailed us, from around the world to test and submit issues on IE8 through Microsoft Connect. 
    Compared to feedback during IE7, we received a high percentage of actionable bugs.  We appreciate the time everyone took to file detailed bug reports with the IE Team.

    What happens now?   All Postponed bugs are now active for consideration in the next version of Internet Explorer.  We resolved and closed all other bugs submitted since IE8 Beta 1. The Internet Explorer 8 Feedback website on Microsoft Connect will remain open and we will not delete any of your previously submitted bugs.  Right now we are looking for new IE8 bugs and bugs that have regressed (meaning the bug was previously fixed and now occurs in IE8 RTW).

    In the next couple of months, we will introduce a new type of feedback form designed specifically to handle improvements for the next version of Internet Explorer. Please stay tuned for more information.

  • Public Votes on IE8 Technical Beta bugs – We have opened up the bug database for the IE8 Technical Beta for everyone to view and vote on issues.  There is no need to create a Microsoft Connect account. 

    What happens now?   This site will remain open to the public.  Please continue to rate the bugs most important to you.

  • Report a Webpage Problem Tool - The Report a Webpage Problem Tool is a control you can download and install in IE8. When you encounter a site that is not rendering correctly, you can submit a report.

  • Automated Customer Feedback – Internet Explorer uses an automated system to collect real-world data about crashes and hangs. For more information on this, please read the IE8 Reliability Update for Windows 7 Beta Now Available blog post.

  • IE Beta Newsgroup – This new newsgroup is the all-in-one place to discuss items about IE8 betas.  Thank you to everyone, especially the IE MVP’s, for helping the IE Team monitor our newsgroups and filing bugs on other’s behalf. Great team work!

We are looking for new IE8 RTW bugs, particularly issues where something worked in an IE8 beta release and does not work in IE8 RTW. If you believe you have one of these issues, please take the following steps:

  1. Read the IE8 Release Notes
  2. Visit the Internet Explorer 8 Technical Beta program on Microsoft Connect (https://connect.microsoft.com/) and view bugs in the database.
  3. If you don’t find your issue, you can visit the IE General Newsgroup and post your issue there. Members of the technical beta will be monitoring this newsgroup and can file a bug about the issue on your behalf.

Once again, thank you for your help in making IE8 great!

Allison Burnett + IE Team

Edit 3/23/09: typo correction, Windows 7, not Windows 8 :)
Edit 3/31/09: Please use the General IE newsgroup for issues which area not already in Connect, not the Beta newsgroup. Corrected this reference.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    March 23, 2009
    When are you going to reopen the bugs in the connect bug database that were not solved but closed because there was not time to solve them for the release ?

  • Anonymous
    March 23, 2009
    @hAl: I am assuming you are referring to the bugs closed “Won’t Fix”.  We will not be reactivating these bugs.  The definition of “Won’t Fix” is: “Won't Fix - we know that we will not be addressing the reported issue, usually because it risks breaking the code in other, more serious ways or because the effort to fix the issue is not justified for the improvement.”

  • Anonymous
    March 23, 2009
    "We invited a group of beta testers, including anyone who emailed us..." You did? The original "IE8 Beta Feedback" post says something different: "...tell us why you are a great beta tester.  There is a limit to the number of people we will add..." Although I did find a couple of bugs, I didn't attempt to sign up to the tech beta as I didn't want to use up a slot that somebody else may have deserved more. In addition, I didn't think that I would be a "great beta tester" as finding one or two bugs isn't really that great. Now you're saying that everyone that emailed you received an invitation. Although the bugs I found have been fixed, I wonder how many other people were in a similar situation, and how many potential bug reports may have been missed.

  • Anonymous
    March 23, 2009
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  • Anonymous
    March 23, 2009
    Hopefully this means we can expect IE8.1 or 8.5 in the future, without another 3 year gap between major versions. Oh, and you wrote Windows 8 in the post, instead of Windows 7.

  • Anonymous
    March 23, 2009
    I love the new IE8. It's fast, stable, and just all around great.

  • Anonymous
    March 23, 2009
    "For more information on this, please read the IE8 Reliability Update for Windows 8 Beta Now Available blog post." Windows 8? Jeez, you guys arn't even done with 7 yet... :P

  • Anonymous
    March 23, 2009
    I've only occasionally looked at this blog but my impression over the months is that this blog and the IE8 team's approach are quite above other departments at Microsoft.  Well done and kudos!  I hope it's contagious. Maybe people dislike monopolies only when they don't deliver.  Maybe you guys could turn things around for MSFT!

  • Anonymous
    March 23, 2009
    Very nice job on IE8....grats on adhearing to the spec...Speedy too, I can't wait to see what comes next

  • Anonymous
    March 23, 2009
    First Issue: Can you do anything about the pathetic load time during start up or opening new tabs? Its so bad its almost like someone left a sleep(2000); somewhere in the code. Seriously - whatever stats you have that say load times are fast, you seriously need to get a broader range of test machines. I'm voting this as my #1 bug with IE8 final.

  • Anonymous
    March 23, 2009
    @Allison [MSFT] It is not just the won't fix category. There are also several issues closed with: "Thank you for this feedback. At this time we do not plan on fixing this issue. We appreciate the report, but unfortunately we are at a stage where need to choose what we work on to maximize the value for customers and web developers. We will consider this in a future version of IE. Best Regards, The IE Team" These bugs surely need to be reopened.

  • Anonymous
    March 23, 2009
    I love the new IE8. It looks great, keep up the great work...

  • Anonymous
    March 23, 2009
    Allison, I am convinced that bugs 361181, 407963 and 366200 should be reopened and fixed. Bug 366200 is a rather pretty serious bug. The 2 others involve CSS 2.1 compliance, correct conformance to the spec. regards, Gérard

  • Anonymous
    March 24, 2009
    i like feature webslice .it is good to manage and get update from sites. how to get info on latest features?

  • Anonymous
    March 24, 2009
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  • Anonymous
    March 24, 2009
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  • Anonymous
    March 24, 2009
    This whole IE8 thing has taken a year. I'm tired. Can we take some time off? ;)

  • Anonymous
    March 24, 2009
    @ hAl: Could you provide us with a bug number? Thanks!

  • Anonymous
    March 24, 2009
    @Gérard Talbot: I have reactivated 361181, 407963 and 366200 to be considered for the next version of IE. Thanks!

  • Anonymous
    March 24, 2009
    I wonder why isn't the slowdown related to huge restricted site list listed in the release notes. Looks like a serious issue to me.

  • Anonymous
    March 24, 2009
    And also why do I get a "Service Unavailable" message each time I try to post a comment (which gets posted anyway).

  • Anonymous
    March 24, 2009
    @first issue I experienced that too.  I disabled the "JQSIEStartDetectorImpl" add-on and that knocked about 1 second off of the time to load a new tab.

  • Anonymous
    March 24, 2009
    @first issue In fact, if you disable all Java-related add-ons from Sun, tabs open MUCH faster.

  • Anonymous
    March 24, 2009
    @Allison I am not inclined to go trough the Microsoft bug database to look up all the bugs that the IEteam itself has closed because the were unable to put it in the current release for lack of time. That could be dozens or even hundreds of bugs. It would task of the IEteam itself to find the bugs they should not have closed and reopen them. A normal bugtracker would have them listed as postponed or soemthing

  • Anonymous
    March 24, 2009
    IE8 is definitely a step forward. However - the UI is too slow! A new tab should allow typing of a URL instantly after opening - much like any other tabbed browser around. Instead if you start typing quickly it prepends what you type to the previous tab's URL and just generally confuses! Euck!~

  • Anonymous
    March 24, 2009
    I agree.. IE8 is a great improvement from IE7. It does load pages faster. However opening a new tab takes some time. Is this a bug? I think there should be a update to make opening new tab faster.

  • Anonymous
    March 24, 2009
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  • Anonymous
    March 24, 2009
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  • Anonymous
    March 24, 2009

  • Make IE save web pages without modal dialogs delaying your work.
  • Make IE save web pages without messages saying "This webpage could not be saved". Why is that ? It loaded it fine. Why can't save it ?
  • Password save confirmaion shouldn't stop page load.
  • You should provide a better way to save/load sessions. This one is really ugly.
  • It would be better if all new tabs opened next to the current tab and not at the end of the list.
  • The start page should contain some of your favourite web pages thumbnail-links (like in Opera).

  • Anonymous
    March 25, 2009
    IE file save as should not reload any content from the remote server since it all should either be cached on disk or memory.   Printing to PDF using pdfcreator is my usual way of saving web pages for email or future reference.  Saving as HTML usually breaks down in the future as a large number of web pages have references to remote objects that either a) require context/cookies to render or b) won't exist in a few months. I'd appreciate a way to save a web page as a single html file + all of the non-html parts as individual files (e.g., include all external css/javascript files in the main html file).

  • Anonymous
    March 25, 2009
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  • Anonymous
    March 25, 2009
    @Roman: Unfortunately, the blog site is having some database connectivity issues.  They're working on it. @Greg: If you put unwanted sites in the Restricted Sites zone, their ActiveX controls will not run. I know this isn't the user experience you're asking for, and it becomes cumbersome once there are more than a dozen or so, but it is a workaround available today. @Greg: IE's File > Save respects the HTTP caching headers set by the server.  If those headers are set such that cached resources must be revalidated, then the server will be sent the request to ensure freshness. <<I'd appreciate a way to save a web page as a single html file + all of the non-html parts as individual files>> That's the "Webpage, Complete" option in the dropdown. <<e.g., include all external css/javascript files in the main html file>> That's the "Web Archive, single file" option in the dropdown. @Konstantinos: <<Make IE save web pages without modal dialogs delaying your work.>> Great suggestion, thanks. <<Make IE save web pages without messages saying 'This webpage could not be saved.'>> We fixed some bugs here in IE8. If you know of pages that consistently have this problem, please send us the URLs so we can investigate. <<Password save confirmaion shouldn't stop page load.>> Great suggestion, thanks. <<You should provide a better way to save/load sessions. This one is really ugly.>> I assume you are using "sessions" to refer to the set of tabs open when the browser closes?   <<It would be better if all new tabs opened next to the current tab and not at the end of the list>> Right now, they should appear at the end of the tab group.  I assume you're saying they should appear immediately after the current tab, within the same tab group? <<The start page should contain some of your favourite web pages thumbnail-links (like in Opera)>> Great suggestion.  (I first asked for this feature in 2004.  I'm still asking for it.  :-)

  • Anonymous
    March 26, 2009
    I am in full agreement with Gérard Talbot and hAI; the resolutions for the bug reports are so coarse and unreliable that they are nearly useless.  Prior to the mass-closing of bugs before the IE8 RTW release, most of the bugs in my watchlist were actually closed ones... because I strongly suspected that they had been closed incorrectly, or that the resolution didn't reflect the actual status of the bug, and so I was waiting for them to be reopened.   This makes for a great deal of unnecessary hassle for those of us volunteering our free time to help report and triage these bugs.

  • Anonymous
    March 26, 2009
    As a web app developer, these are the top ten things I would most like to see in IE9 and it's development:

  1. CSS Color Level 3 which includes opacity. Please make sure your implementation of opacity works properly with transparent pngs, Canvas with alpha less than 100% and SVG with alpha less than 100%. The current IE opacity does not play well with transparent pngs or VML with alpha less than 100%.
  2. Native Canvas element
  3. CSS Backgrounds and Borders Level 3 which includes rounded corners, drop shadows, and multiple background images.
  4. Selectors Level 3
  5. Native SVG
  6. Useful JavaScript error messages. Firebug does well here. Opera does great. IE error messages are generally useless.
  7. Memory diagnostic tools. http://benzilla.galbraiths.org/2009/03/23/memory-tools-and-you/
  8. Make it easier for developers to view and submit bugs during the development of IE9.
  9. Make the bug tracker search engine crawlable so searches on Google, Yahoo, or Live Search will find relevant results in the MSDN bug tracker.
  10. It would be really nice to see Interenet Explorer Team member activity on the WHATWG mailing list and in the WHATWG IRC channel. In addition, It would be great to see IE helping nail down and stabilize the specs for Server-Sent Events and Web Sockets.

  • Anonymous
    March 27, 2009
    I tested it and it runs pretty good. Now the only thing is the design, is MS going to facelift the interface. Google chrome is setting new trends and would be good if IE8 came up with an enhanced GUI to back up the progress you guys made. Kudos for the job so far

  • Anonymous
    March 28, 2009
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  • Anonymous
    March 28, 2009
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  • Anonymous
    March 29, 2009
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  • Anonymous
    March 29, 2009
    @Baffin Did you submit this to the Connect bug database which was mentioned in the article ? http://connect.microsoft.com/ie

  • Anonymous
    March 30, 2009
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  • Anonymous
    March 30, 2009
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  • Anonymous
    March 30, 2009
    @Eric: Looks like 9.0.28.0 on one of the machines. I'm not in a position to check the version on the other one at the moment.

  • Anonymous
    March 30, 2009
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  • Anonymous
    March 30, 2009
    2 issues

  1. When trying to vote on the bug database, it requires 'sign in to rate', which is not what this article indicates.  After actually signing in, if you try to vote you're taken to 'page not found'.  So... this whole endeavor not working as intended, at least for some, if not all, of us.
  2. Bug ID 364199 was closed as 'probably not a bug'  (I paraphrase here).  It is in fact a bug on my laptop, and behaves exactly as the original bug report states. Please REALLY open up the database so we can vote on these bugs or it is useless to both you and us. Regards, Concerned User

  • Anonymous
    March 31, 2009
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  • Anonymous
    March 31, 2009
    @John: It's important to understand that buggy add-ons can crash inside IE DLLs.  If, for instance, an add-on passes a null pointer into an IE dll (e.g. mshtml) that DLL will be on the top of the stack when the crash occurs.  You must look at the full stack of the crash to determine the origin of crashes. In your C:windowssystem32macromedFlash folder, how many different .ocx and .dlls do you have? @Concerned: Where exactly did you right-click and not see a menu?

  • Anonymous
    April 01, 2009
    @Eric: Just one. It's Flash10b.ocx, dated 02/02/2009, version 10.0 r22 (10.0.22.87).

  • Anonymous
    April 02, 2009
    @Gerard:  Congratulations, you did what three HTML validators and several humans failed to do -- found an HTML error.  Thank you!  When the error is corrected, IE8 rendered properly.  I'll follow up in postings I made on this in the newsgroup. ps. IE8's DevTool interface to validation doesn't work for me -- when I select it, after the 'do I want' popup, nothing happens.  I've posted elsewhere but no ideas.  So I did the 'validation' manually at htmlhelp.com and w3.org @hAl:  I don't think I can -- doesn't it require registration which is now closed?

  • Anonymous
    April 02, 2009
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  • Anonymous
    April 06, 2009
    @Eric: Looks like 9.0.28.0 on one of the machines. I'm not in a position to check the version on the other one at the moment.