Microsoft launched the last version of World-wide-web Explorer eight (IE eight) towards the Web precisely per week back. But that doesn;t mean users and developers are happy. Rather, countless are champing at the bit to get Microsoft to commit to their preferred missing characteristics for IE 9.Microsoft, for its component, won;t say something about IE nine, apart from it;s within the arranging stage. In the course of an IE 8 Expert Zone Web chat on March 25, members of the IE group reminded participants that Microsoft isn;t prepared to talk at all about IE nine dates or characteristics. The staff definitely isn;t ready but to accept officially suggestions from the user/developer base for Microsoft;s subsequent browser update.(”We will be placing a new form on [the Microsoft private test site] Connect for improvements for the next edition of IE. We will send out an email to the Technical Beta participants when it is available on Connect,” one Softie told chat participants yesterday.)Microsoft;s attempts to slow things down isn;t stopping end users from pitching their top priorities from their IE 9 wish lists. Among the functions participants and other customers with whom I;ve spoken are mentioning: a file download manager, support for diverse Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) Version 3 functions, an XML parser, sounds for Web Slices, better RSS support, and more granular control over JavaScript pages.One chat participant opined that password save/confirmation shouldn;t force an IE page load/login.Kymberlee Price, a Program Manager for Security on the IE team, responded:“Password management is an item we looked at in IE8 but ultimately had to cut. As a user I totally understand why this is a popular and compelling scenario. But as a security person I see it as fraught with challenges to implement. Login with a single master password for example - differentiation of passwords is beneficial to protecting sensitive data like bank accounts separate from less sensitive data like Twitter accounts.”Another chatter said XHTML+MathML support would help students and others who need to publish math-centric content on the Web. A Microsoft official said Microsoft is hearing “a great deal of requests for this feature, as well as for scalable vector graphics (SVG), “both of which add richer presentation towards the Web.” But he made no promises that these would be component of IE 9.Participants within the ExpertZone chat also asked Microsoft officials about recently reported problems between sites running in Restricted Sites zone (like SpywareBlaster,
Office Ultimate 2007, Spybot, etc.) and the ultimate IE eight build.Eric Lawrence, IE Security Program Manager, responded:“This was a side-effect of a recent change to better support non-standard top-level-domains which are becoming more common. You can read about the general issue with non-standard TLDs on IE8 maintains an internal public suffix list. That list changes IE;s handling of ‘known; special TLDs. Unfortunately, the Zones registry format has a dependency on TLDs,
Windows 7 X86, which means that we must recalculate the registry against this new TLD list. That works fine inside the general case, but fails badly when there are thousands of sites in the lists. We;re working on this issue.”(Again, no official word on when a fix might be coming. I;d doubt this one will have to wait until IE 9,
Office 2010 Product Key, still.)I asked Zhu Yan,
Office 2010 Product Key, who runs the LiveSino.Net enthusiast site, what he;d like to see in IE nine. He had a wish list a mile long already, including everything in the aforementioned download manager, to over the internet Favorites service and Windows Live ############## synchronization. He also said he;s wishing for better rendering,
Windows 7 Professional Key, more compelling third-party add-ons and integration with Morro (the OneCare security service replacement that Microsoft hasn;t said anything about for months).What are you hoping to see in IE nine?