IE 8: Microsoft Takes Back the Web

Joe Wilcox News Analysis: The star of today's MIX08 keynote won't be Microsoft's long-delayed services platform. It will be Internet Explorer 8.

An IE 8 beta teaser page already is available, as are links to beta downloads. IE 8 beta almost certainly is coming today.

The IE 8 pages make Microsoft's new browser objectives absolutely clear: Pull computing and informational relevance back to the desktop. It's classic Microsoft bundling at work, as the company seeks to make the new browser more of a development platform than it is today. I call it the Netscape strategy.

During the late-1990s browser wars, Netscape sought to make its browser into a broad development platform that could conceivably rival Windows. But the strategy failed for lots of reasons, including Microsoft's bundling IE into Windows and from there establishing the browser as an alternative development platform tightly tied to the operating system.

A new platform did emerge, beyond the browser and in the server cloud. Microsoft has been struggling to keep computing and informational relevance on the desktop even as it shifts to the server cloud. Microsoft's problem: It's not just losing potential customers to free, low-cost Web-based products or services. The Web 2.0 platform is rapidly becoming developers' platform of choice (e.g., not Windows).

IE 8 will be much more than just another browser upgrade. Microsoft is playing to Web designers and developers in new tools Expression Studio and Silverlight and Visual Studio 2008. Today, the company will reveal how its development strategy meets its new Web browser. Through it all Microsoft is seeking to achieve several important developmental objectives:

• Re-establish Internet Explorer as a Web development platform
• More closely align Microsoft Web development tools with IE 8 features and interfaces
• Re-establish proprietary or Microsoft-sanctioned standards that favor Internet Explorer
• Pull Web-based informational relevance back to the browser (e.g., make Microsoft's browser the preferred way of consuming Web content).

New IE 8 features strongly suggest what are Microsoft objectives. These include:

1. Activities. Microsoft's IE 8 Readiness Toolkit page describes these:

"Activities are contextual services to quickly access a service from any webpage. Users typically copy and paste from one webpage to another. Internet Explorer 8 Activities make this common pattern easier to do.

"Activities typically involve two types of scenarios: "look up" information within a webpage or "send" web content to a web application. For example, a user is interested in a restaurant and wants to see the location of it. This is the form of a "look up" Activity where the user selects the address and views an in-place view of the map using his favorite map service."

Right now, most contextual services are server cloud-based and delivered to any Web browser. Here, Microsoft seeks to create utility that pulls these services to its own Web browser. I presume only, but there hasn't been enough information disclosed to yet say.

The possible tie-ins to advertising and contextual search are huge. Microsoft's Google problem is ubiquity. Google search is available pretty much anywhere. Through Activities, Microsoft can pull popular search and other informational activities down to its browser. In the future, Microsoft can wrap advertising and contextual search around Activities.

2. Webslices. The same page explains this new feature:

"WebSlices is a new feature for websites to connect to their users by subscribing to content directly within a webpage. WebSlices behave just like feeds where clients can subscribe to get updates and notify the user of changes. Internet Explorer 8 Users can discover WebSlices within a webpage and add them to the Favorites bar, a dedicated row below the Address bar for easy access to links. Internet Explorer 8 subscribes to the webpage, detects changes in the WebSlice, and notifies the user of updates."

Microsoft's RSS platform hasn't pulled much developer or user interest. Meanwhile, informational widgets installed on the desktop, Webpages or in browsers grow in popularity. Microsoft wants to pull all this informational querying back to the browser, its browser, and the company has new Web design tools to do it.

I haven't seen anything on the technological implementation, but the discovery reminds of Smart Tags. Anyone remember? Microsoft was forced to pull them from IE 6 back in 2001. Have Smart Tags come back? I would say yes, if only in another form.

3. Favorites Bar. Microsoft has redesigned and renamed the IE 7 toolbar. According to Microsoft:

"The Links bar has undergone a complete makeover for Internet Explorer 8. It has been renamed the Favorites bar to enable users to associate this bar as a place to put and easily access all their favorite web content such as links, feeds, WebSlices and even Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents."

The New Favorites bar isn't just about easy informational access. It's about what people have access to. Why would you want access to desktop files from your Web browser toolbar? One reason: The browser is where you spend most of your time. Another: Because you spend most of your time there, Microsoft wants to make sure its desktop applications aren't forgotten. The Office documents also would be handy for Web-based services like Office Live. Hint, Hint: Bundling.

Couple other features: Presumably in response to Firefox 2 and 3, IE 8 will have new phishing filter features and an automatic recovery mode. Automatic recovery is one of Firefox's most useful features. Content is recovered following a crash. Microsoft tested but abandoned something similar in IE 7.

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