Design Updates that Impact Compatibility between Browsers

This section and the following table show the four major areas of compatibility (not in order of incidence or ranking of priority).

Changes from Internet Explorer 6 to Internet Explorer 7 Changes from Internet Explorer 7 to Internet Explorer 8
Versioning
  • Version Vectors
  • User Agent String
  • Version Vectors
  • User Agent String
Standards
  • HTML 4.01 improvements
  • CSS 2.1 improvements
  • Additional HTML 4.01 improvements
  • Full CSS 2.1 compliance
  • Some HTML 5.0 support
  • ECMAScript 3rd edition support and some ECMAScript 5th edition support (including native JSON)
Security
  • HTTPS improvements
  • More secure scripting
  • Protected Mode (Windows Vista and later versions)
  • Better protection from malware
  • DEP/NX & XSS filter on by default
  • HTTP/HTTPS mixed mode
  • AJAX more secure
Architecture
  • Loosely coupled Internet Explorer

 

Addressing Application Compatibility When Migrating to Internet Explorer 8