Trying Out New Browsers Today

I decided to track down IE8 Beta as well as try out the new Opera - version 9.26 for Windows. The latter I have not used in years, not even to test with, (well except on the Wii) but was intrigued when I saw the latest version at SXSWi and noticed it has tabs. I love tabs, can't do without them now.

IE8 Initial Thoughts

• It's interesting how it makes the domain name stand out with black text and everything else in the URL is gray text.
• I was working with an accessible form and noticed that the tag legend for fieldsets renders completely within the fieldset. Opera and Firefox render it at the top of the fieldset within the border, but I don't know which is correct, if either.
• Wow, so uh, I just looked at several sites I work on that render fine in Firefox but are now exploded apart by IE8. It's not clearing my floats and it's putting extra padding on some menu list items :( I guess I shouldn't feel too badly when microsoft.com has the meta tag to make it render as IE7.
  

Opera 9.26 Initial Thoughts

• It was a bit difficult to import my bookmarks and then get them to show up on the "Personal Toolbar"; also had to turn on the status bar.
• I like the "Speed Dial" option when you open a new, blank tab. Reminds me of the launch page on the Wii version.
• Kept looking for the security icon in the status bar area. Took awhile to realize, it's in the address bar along with other indications usually found in the status bar like page load progress.
• The Voice option seems cool but it was a little difficult to get it to respond. The reading voice is relatively clear and easy to understand. (Did you know Acrobat Reader can read PDFs aloud?)
  

On a side note, why doesn't Blogger have quick buttons for heading tags? *checks WordPress* Bah, none there either. I'd think there would be some backlash for not having these blog tools be easy to format text using standards-based markup. Honestly, the fact that it uses a double line break instead of p tags annoys me to no end. Not to mention wrapping bold elements in a span instead of using strong tags. I've tried just using the code view but that kinda defeats the purpose of this nice content entry screen. Oy just tried putting in encoded characters for greater than/less than brackets and no dice.