Internet Explorer 8 could break applications, Gartner warns

Microsoft’s improved support for Web standards in its Internet Explorer 8 browser is laudable — but it could cause big headaches for enterprise IT developers…

That’s the assessment of analysts at tech analysis close Gartner, which cautions in a new address that IE 8’s absence standards approach “will aftereffect in pages that don’t affectation accurately for some action applications.”

That’s because abounding Web- or intranet-facing applications acclimated in business were congenital to assignment with antecedent versions of Explorer, in which Microsoft generally advantaged its own protocols over accepted Web standards.

With Explorer 8, slated for abounding absolution after this year, Microsoft has promised absence affinity with W3C guidelines.

Among added things, the browser appearance abutment for Web programming standards such as CCS 2.1 and HTML 5. It additionally promises bigger abutment for the Ajax programming language. “Microsoft is aggravating to woo the Web 2.0 world,” Gartner said in a certificate appear aftermost week.

The advisers said it’s “an indicator of what some accept alleged ‘the new Microsoft.’ ”

Microsoft aftermost ages apprenticed ample abutment for systems interoperability and accessible standards — in allotment to allay European cartel regulators who accept levied added than $2 billion in antitrust fines on the software maker.

Gartner is advising that action developers abatement in band with Microsoft’s charge to standards back creating new Web applications. “Strive to architecture for standards, not browsers,” Gartner said. “Don’t depend on any one client-side technology. Focus instead on accurate user alternation patterns.”

A beta adaptation of Internet Explorer 8 is now accessible for download anon from Microsoft.