Well….Microsoft released IE8 today to the world. I haven’t tried any of the beta versions which have been released over the last few years…

First thoughts…

• It definitely loads faster
• Top bar is too thick…gotta disable some of those toolbars. Screen real estate is key and the default IE settings don’t cut it.
• The lighbox javascript doesn’t work …typical though since their API has probably changed which breaks ajax and js scripts (not smart)
• EPIC ACID3 TEST FAIL – 20/100! (click here to test)

Hopefully there is some sorta patch for the Acid3 test. I’d like to see IE get at least 50/100!
Firefox 3.0.7 currently scores a 71/100 on both PC & Mac.
Chrome scores a perfect 100/100 and loads extremely fast.
Safari beta 4 also scores a 100/100 (my mac friend gave it a try on his computer)

Lastly, the compatability mode seems to render the browser in an IE7 shell which allows the lightbox to work on the images below. I tested my theory below.

User agent string w/o compatibility:
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 6.0; WOW64; Trident/4.0; SLCC1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.04506; Media Center PC 5.0; InfoPath.1; InfoPath.2; .NET CLR 3.5.30729)

User agent string w/ compatibility:
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0; WOW64; Trident/4.0; SLCC1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.04506; Media Center PC 5.0; InfoPath.1; InfoPath.2; .NET CLR 3.5.30729)

So….when is IE8 going to work with acid3 properly?