IE8 compatibility looking good...so far

I downloaded the first beta of Microsoft Internet Explorer a couple of months ago to check out the new features and, while I was at it, find out how well AdvancedMD runs in it. (I blogged earlier about some of my fears about IE8.)

This is an important issue for us, because, historically, new versions of IE and (especially) Windows have caused us a few problems.

Most of the hurdles have come in the form of security enhancements. For example, we sometimes pop up dialogs outside the viewable area of the screen to test for the existence of controls, measure window title bars and borders, etc. Well, a couple of years ago (IE6 SP2), Microsoft decided to stop allowing windows to be opened outside the visible area of the screen (by default). Not a big deal--the only impact was that screens that used to be invisible suddenly started popping up on our users' screens. (Well, they would have if we hadn't identified and addressed the issue before SP2 was released to our customers.) But it was annoying.

Quite often, we see changes in behavior early in the beta process, and the behavior continues through the second beta, or even the release candidate, but the previous behavior returns in the final release. That happened in IE7, where the beta releases blocked pop-ups in the Trusted Sites zone (and we were scrambling to figure out what to do about it), but then the final release restored the previous behavior. (Pop-ups should not be blocked in the Trusted Sites zone by default.)

So, given this history, I was more than a little concerned when, after downloading and installing IE8 Beta 1, I couldn't run AdvancedMD. At all. I couldn't even log in. In fact, the user name, password, and office key text boxes didn't appear, just a scary-looking security alert of some kind.

Well, a few days ago I installed IE8 Beta 2, certain that I'd see the same behavior, and we would have to start exploring the problem and devising solutions.

To my astonishment, though, AdvancedMD runs perfectly under IE8 Beta 2, at least in all of the areas that I tested. Our QA team will continue to validate my findings, but at the moment, I'm very encouraged.

Perhaps the best explanation for this is that Microsoft invested extremely heavily in IE6 SP2 and IE7 to restrict javascript behavior to avoid the wide array of exploits that had become prevalent (and that seriously, perhaps permanently, damaged Microsoft's security credibility). That work is largely done, so they've begun to focus more on the feature set again. And javascript has been so severely restricted at this point that few further changes are required.

Whatever the reason, it looks like the upcoming release of IE8 will be uneventful for AdvancedMD and our users...unless they introduce something in the final release.