Microsoft News Tracker

Microsoft’s MIX08 conference has come and gone, but despite the rumors of a massive Web apps push, the actuality was much more pedestrian:

• First public beta of Internet Explorer 8. Tire kickers can download a copy at the IE8 Web site.
• Silverlight 2 beta available for download. In addition, forthcoming mobile support and a Silverlight partner ship with Nokia was announced.
• Strategic relationship announced with Move Networks who will offer Silverlight in the video content it develops for the Web efforts of major broadcasters.
• Expression Studio 2 beta released. Works seamlessly with Visual Studio and has a variety of new features including PHP support in Expression Web and Silverlight support throughout the full Expression family. Grab the beta at the Expression home page.
• SQL Server Data Services announced. SSDS is a cloud based data store that is accessed like a simplified SQL Server. Registration for an upcoming beta is available at the SSDS Web site.

While the last bullet isn’t a Web app, SQL Server Data Services is obviously a building block for constructing Web apps and could fill up some of the data centers that were also part of the rumors. The beta will be available in 3 to 4 weeks with a launch by the end of the year. Note that SSDS isn’t a full fledged hosted SQL Server or just a raw data store like Amazon’s S3. It fits in between as a simplified structured database service with the closest analog being Amazon’s simpleDB. It is early days yet, but one can’t help but wonder whether other major database vendors have the will (and the wherewithal) to join the party.

Finally, while they aren’t Web apps either, earlier last week Microsoft announced some more data center filler with the extension of their Microsoft Online Services offering of hosted versions of Exchange and SharePoint to small and mid-sized businesses.

Predictably, the press release is effusive in describing the opportunities for Microsoft partners, even those whose Exchange hosting services have been neatly undercut. The theory is that they can now sell Microsoft’s hosted service with a bunch of their own embellishments. Less happy are ISV’s who sell SharePoint add-ons that won’t appear in the Microsoft offering. There’s surely a pony in Microsoft hosting their own server applications, but it’s a low margin, capital intensive business compared to selling software.

With Neelie Kroes looking over their shoulders and the entreaties of Web developers ringing in their ears, Microsoft is promising that the default mode for Internet Explorer 8 will follow the latest Web standards:

Consistent with its efforts to promote further interoperability across the Web, Microsoft Corp. is now configuring the settings in Internet Explorer 8, the upcoming version of its browser, to render content — by default — using methods that give top priority to Web standards interoperability.

The progressive evolution of the Web has necessitated that browsers such as Internet Explorer include multiple content-rendering modes – both supporting strict interpretation of certain Web standards and also supporting behaviors designed to maintain compatibility with existing Web sites. Web site designers generally have the ability to specify which mode they are designing for; in the absence of specific instructions from a Web site, browsers are pre-set to use one of the modes by default.

Internet Explorer 8 has been designed to include three rendering modes: one that reflects Microsoft’s implementation of current Web standards, a second reflecting Microsoft’s implementation of Web standards at the time of the release of Internet Explorer 7 in 2006, and a third based on rendering methods dating back to the early Web. The newest rendering mode is forward-looking and preferred by Web designers, while the others are present to enable compatibility with the myriad sites across the Web that are currently optimized for previous versions of Internet Explorer.

Originally, the plan had been to make the IE7 compatible mode the default. The first beta of IE8 is expected in 1H2008. I also hope that the second thing on Microsoft’s IE8 list is to spiff up the incredibly sluggish performance of IE7.

Update: No sooner mentioned than the first beta of IE8 arrived on March 5, but there still are problems with IE8 passing the ACID2 test.

European Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes, fresh off her antitrust victory over Microsoft in the European Court of First Instance, has launched two new investigations into anticompetitive behavior by Microsoft:

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I guess the Microsoft Internet Explorer team took the developer complaints about lack of Internet Explorer 8 information to heart. Today, much reviled Internet Explorer General Manager Dean Hachamovitch took to the Microsoft IEBlog to report that the upcoming IE8 passes the Acid2 Test:

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Opera, the Norwegian browser company, has filed an antitrust complaint with the European Commission claiming that Microsoft is abusing is dominant position in the PC operating systems market by “offering only Internet Explorer as a standard part of Windows, and hindering interoperability by not following accepted standards with IE.”

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