Wictor Wilen

Recently my laptop (DELL XPS m1210) has been really sluggish and I have had several BSOD’s when I have been working with it. I try to keep it pretty optimized and up to date so it will behave nice. I think I’ve read most of the optimize Vista articles and posts and I always keep track on which processes and services running and how much memory is used etc etc.

Mozilla Links has an article about the Firefox ultimate feature - Performance, in which they compare the JavaScript performance on different web browsers. Firefox 3 beta 4 as some really impressive JavaScript performance and outruns Internet Explorer 7 with about 700%. But the article did not test Internet Explorer 8 beta, which I think should have been there (at least for reference). Since the IE8 team claims the performance is so much better, and my feeling after a few days of IE8 usage says so I had to do some testing on my own.

ECMA International TC46 has updated the XML Paper Specification documents to working draft version 1.1. The new drafts can be found here as PDF or XPS and the changes can be found here (only as PDF :-) in the issue list. It seems like there are no major changes, mostly minor and editorial changes. I think we can expect some more changes when Office Open Xml has gone through the last steps of the ISO Fast-Track procedure, especially the references to the OPC.

Finally Internet Explorer 8 beta 1 has been released into the wild and of course I had to install it right away and try it out, and these are my first impressions. Installation The installation went smooth and just a reboot on a Windows Vista Ultimate machine. Speed This is by far the best experience so far. It starts really fast, it opens a new tab/windows faster and it renders the pages even faster. What will happen when they start optimizing it! After some testing I find it even faster than the Firefox version I’m using. Thank you!

Microsoft has published the Internet Explorer 8 Readiness Toolkit site, since IE8 Beta will be available for download very soon. The site contains information on some of the various new and interesting stuff that IE8 will deliver for consumers and developers. Most of the links are currently not working as this post is written… Here are some of the highlights if you ignore all the improvements such as CSS compliance etc.

Breaking news! Good news! Finally! Microsoft and the Internet Explorer team has finally decided to change their previous decision and decided that Internet Explorer 8 will render pages using web standards by default, instead of having some backwards-compatible mode. To catch up and read more head on over to these posts/links. I guess the blogosphere will be flooded with this today… Microsoft Press Release on the subject IEBlog - Microsoft’s Interoperability Principles and IE8 Mary Jo Foley - Microsoft caves: ‘Super-standards’ mode to become IE 8 default This is by far the best news in ages from Microsoft (the new open Microsoft?), even better than the news to open up the Windows Server Protocols, since it will affect the end-users more immediate.

The Ballot Resolution Meeting, BRM, on DIS 29500 is currently taking place in Geneva and I’m really curious on what’s going on in down there in Switzerland. There has not leaked anything of interest, just some rumors and photos. I guess we all have to wait until the weekend and then we will be flooded with upset|angry|joyful|content|happy comments from the delegates.

The SDKs for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and Office SharePoint Server 2007 has been updated and are now available at the Microsoft Download site. Windows SharePoint Services 3.0: Software Development Kit (SDK) (version 1.3) SharePoint Server 2007 SDK: Software Development Kit (version 1.3)This contains several updates and worth to notice is the Search sample protocol handler, Custom Content Source and the BDC editor.

A few days ago Microsoft dropped the news that they are increasing their openness regarding interoperability. This is great news for the world of software, even though everyone has their own opinions in this matter. What now have been made public is more than 30.000 pages of documentation of the various protocols used within Microsoft server products (Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, Office 2007, Exchange Server 2007, and Office SharePoint Server 2007). You can find the documentation in the MSDN Library or on the Microsoft Download site.