IE8 and the Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar

When I read today in an email from Microsoft that IE8 was at RC1 status, I thought I’d give it another try.  (I’d downloaded an early beta and it got in the way of me getting things done.)  Once I’d installed IE8, rebooted, and launched it, much to my chagrin I was informed that the Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar was incompatible with IE8.  This wasn’t going to do at all.  I use the IEDT constantly to check my CSS, pick apart the DOM, grab color codes, etc.  I can’t work without it!  Was I doomed to use IE7 forever?

A few deeps breaths and a little searching and I landed right back on the IEDT download page, which told me this:

The Developer Toolbar is not compatible with Internet Explorer 8.  Please use the developer tools included with Internet Explorer 8.  Press F12 or click the ‘Developer Tools’ entry in the Tools menu to begin using the tool.  Click here for more information on IE8 Developer Tools.

Well this was a horse of a different color!  Now the IEDT capabilities are baked right into IE.  From the looks of it, there’s more capability as well. My old favorites are still there (Select Element by Click, Show Color Picker, Outline Table Cells, etc.) and there’s some more as well.  One obvious improvement is the the left window now can show the HTML, CSS, and Script separately, nicely colored for easy deciphering.  There’s also something called the Profiler which lets you capture what’s going on with scripts running so that you can optimize things.

I’ll post more once I’ve used the new Developer Tools a while, but it’s worth a look.  Oh, and I’m guessing that IE8 may have some other new capabilities, too.