This week I decided to be daring and install Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 on my Windows XP computer at home. I especially like the Developer Tools which are similar to Firebug and Firefox’s Web Developer toolbar.
The ruler is a nice tool which will eliminate the tiresome chore of launching Photoshop and copying and pasting a cropped image to find its dimensions. Please note that another tool will show you an image’s dimensions. The ruler is for measuring something without dimensions that can be revealed. Here is a hot tip for you; select an element to get a blue border around it before trying to measure it with the ruler.
Something you may not notice right away is that there are improvements to the JavaScript error dialog box. This dialog box provides more information and includes a handy button to copy the details to the clipboard.
The HTML Layout tab features a fancy diagram of the box model for a page element. Notice how actual values are being given. This will prove invaluable when you are trying to troubleshoot any problems with margins and padding.
You can generate a detailed report on all the images in the page:
You can also outline a variety of page elements which eliminates the chore of adding borders to your tables and divs in order to solve layout problems.
There is an option to show class names and ids and image alt text and image file paths which saves you the trouble of digging through the page’s source code. You can also show the image dimensions which will be easier than using the ruler.
And finally we have the color picker which again saves you the trouble of launching Photoshop to pick a color from a screen capture:
So far Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 has not negatively impacted my web browsing or web development. My WordPress blog has been the only web site that looks really terrible in this new browser so I have to look into that problem.
I have not investigated Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 support for advanced CSS except for the border-radius property which gives you rounded corners. Apparently IE will not be adding support for that CSS feature. I think they are supporting before and after as selectors now.
