IE 8 Beta : The First Experience

[gxsaurav]

This just in, at Microsoft Mix 08, Microsoft has reveled some of the features of Internet Explorer 8. Seems like IE is again going to win the browser war this time, after years of facing criticism from Firefox, Opera & Safari Users.

IE 8 as it is going to be called will be available for Windows XP, Vista & Server 2008 users soon this year. It is going to be 100% standard complient as said by Microsoft & will feature better integration with Web 2.0 services. Since it is made for Windows, you can be sure that it will run faster & feature a nice integration with the Windows Enviroment.

Here are some of the new features of Internet Explorer.

Activities

Activities are contextual services to quickly access a service from any webpage. Users typically copy and paste from one webpage to another. Internet Explorer 8 Activities make this common pattern easier to do.
Activities typically involve two types of scenarios: "look up" information within a webpage or "send" web content to a web application. For example, a user is interested in a restaurant and wants to see the location of it. This is the form of a "look up" Activity where the user selects the address and views an in-place view of the map using his favorite map service.



An example of a "send" Activity is a user reads an interesting article and wants to blog about a portion of the article. The user can select a portion of the article and uses the blog Activity. This navigates to the user’s blog site with the selection already available in the edit field.

Activities are services that the user can install and manage. Users can install them from the Internet Explorer 8 Service Guide or through any website that advertises Activities.

WebSlices

WebSlices is a new feature for websites to connect to their users by subscribing to content directly within a webpage. WebSlices behave just like feeds where clients can subscribe to get updates and notify the user of changes.



Internet Explorer 8 Users can discover WebSlices within a webpage and add them to the Favorites bar, a dedicated row below the Address bar for easy access to links. Internet Explorer 8 subscribes to the webpage, detects changes in the WebSlice, and notifies the user of updates. Users can preview these updates directly from the Favorites bar and click-through to the website to get more information.

Favorites Bar

In Internet Explorer 7, the Links bar provided users with one-click access to their favorite sites. The Links bar has undergone a complete makeover for Internet Explorer 8. It has been renamed the Favorites bar to enable users to associate this bar as a place to put and easily access all their favorite web content such as links, feeds, WebSlices and even Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents.



A user can easily add a link to the Favorites bar by using the Add to Favorites button and selecting the Add to Favorites Bar option.


Automatic Crash Recovery

Automatic Crash Recovery (ACR) is a feature of Windows®Internet Explorer® 8 that can help to prevent the loss of work and productivity in the unlikely event of the browser crashing or hanging. The ACR feature takes advantage of the Loosely-Coupled Internet Explorer feature to provide new crash recovery capabilities, such as tab recovery, which will minimize interruptions to users’ browsing sessions.




Improved Phishing Filter

Internet Explorer 7 introduced the Phishing Filter, a feature which helps warn users when they visit a Phishing site. Phishing sites spoof a trusted legitimate site, with the goal of stealing the user’s personal or financial information. For Internet Explorer 8, we are building on the success of the Phishing Filter with a more comprehensive feature called the "Safety Filter."



The Safety Filter continues to block known Phishing sites and now blocks sites known to contain malicious software that could harm users’ computer or steal their information. Beyond this improved protection, the Safety Filter operates more quickly than ever before to ensure that users can browse both safely and quickly.

For IT administrators, new Group Policy options are available to remove the user-override option and fully block access to known unsafe sites.

IE 8 Beta 1 is available for download now. Internet Explorer 8 can be installed on Microsoft Windows Vista® Service Pack 1 (SP1), Windows Vista, Windows XP® Service Pack 2 (SP2), Windows Server® 2008 and Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2 (SP2).

[nish_higher]

^ it shows page not found when i click those download links

[victor_rambo]

Relieved to know that it will be standards compliant.

^Ye, even I am not able to download the beta pack.

[sabret00the]

wow gx_saurav thanks a lot for sharing this information will try to download it once I get back home from office...

[Vishal Gupta]

Its just a test page. You'll not get the working download links atm. They are setting all the things, so bookmark the page for future.

[victor_rambo]

Originally Posted by Vishal Gupta

Its just a test page. You'll not get the working download links atm. They are setting all the things, so bookmark the page for future.

Do you have any idea when it will be available for download?

[Hitboxx]

Good good, finally MS is doing the catchup work with Firefox although Firefox offers lot more, but still a nice start.

[ravi_9793]

I will waiting for a beta drive. Looks very exciting

[Vishal Gupta]

Originally Posted by rohan_shenoy

Do you have any idea when it will be available for download?

It'll be available after Mix08 conference.

[victor_rambo]

Originally Posted by Vishal Gupta

It'll be available after Mix08 conference.

hmmm......so we will probably get it in next 2-3 days!

[gxsaurav]

Originally Posted by Hitboxx

Good good, finally MS is doing the catchup work with Firefox although Firefox offers lot more, but still a nice start.

I stopped using firefox long time back cos it is not native to Windows Vista, means no cleartype for HTML in firefox.

Tell me, what makes firefox better then IE 7? You can include extensions in the comparision cos when you do that, I will show u the same extensions for IE 7/IE 8

Originally Posted by rohan_shenoy

hmmm......so we will probably get it in next 2-3 days!

Yes.

[Vishal Gupta]

Originally Posted by rohan_shenoy

hmmm......so we will probably get it in next 2-3 days!

It'll be available within a few hours. It has been told that it'll start working arround 1:00 PM to 3:00 PM Pacific Time.

[casanova]

Looks good. Would download it tomorrow most probably

[Vishal Gupta]

As I earlier said, links are working now. You can download the IE 8 Beta1, Its 11 MB.

[gxsaurav]

Already downloaded & using in Windows XP SP2 VM. Can't screw Vista this easily, we just need to test yaar...

[Vishal Gupta]

^^ Its working fine in Vista.

[gxsaurav]

I know it is working, but this is a good way to test my Shining new Core 2 Duo E6550's Intel VT technology

[ravi_9793]

Originally Posted by Vishal Gupta

As I earlier said, links are working now. You can download the IE 8 Beta1, Its 11 MB.

Thanks
Starting my download .

[gxsaurav]

Using it now in Vista. Many web pages look weird now in IE 8 mode, looks like they will need to be updated. Even digit forum's reply box is giving problems. I am using IE 8 in IE 7 mode as I like the new look & feel but want to keep the old Trident Engine right now as not many websites are made for IE 8 yet.



The interface is more polished now, better icons etc. There aren't many changes yet, but since it is Beta 1 this is expected.



Menus now have icons, finally.



Page rendering in IE 8 mode is very fast though.

The new management center from where you can manage activities & Add ons. IE 7 Pro works fine in IE 8.

[victor_rambo]

downloading

[kumarmohit]

No changes in the look, and how heavy is it?

[nish_higher]

not heavy at all.but crashes with google toolbar.and i cant live without google toolbar so IE 8 uninstalled.its real fast than IE7.

[drgrudge]

Good to see IE 8 so soon. It’s about time that MS starts to keep pace with the competition.

Personally I feel the features 1, 3 & 4 (Activities, WebSlices & Favorites Bar) are bloats. Nevertheless it’s good for developers. IE 6/7 was a headache as was not web complaint. IE 8 should set the records straight.

Go IE 8! MS release IE for Mac too.. (ok, kidding )

[axxo]

funny to see that favourite bar, crash recovery were so called as features

[debsuvra]

Much buzz is going on Microsoft’s latest incarnation of its famous and most popular browser Internet Explorer. Although the version 8 is not officially released, the Redmond Company has released a beta 1 version of the browser for general public yesterday. Check

On the IE8 Readiness Kit webpage, given links for downloads were not working till today. I downloaded the browser today on Vista and gave it a go for testing. The download was an 11MB one, and it is almost double of its most prominent rival, Firefox. Firefox 3 beta installers are amazingly smaller than any other browsers and IE8 is no match in this category.

Installation

After completing the download, I started the installer to begin. At first glance I though what I was going to install was IE 7 as the both installer has a striking resemblance in the UI. Checked again and being assured as it was indeed IE 8, I proceeded with the installation. On the second step it asked whether it would download the necessary updates automatically for IE8. User can also check the contents of the selected update from the link given on the installer window. Proceeding through this step started the actual installation and updates were started to be downloaded.

There are four steps in the installer to be completed when installing the new version. These are Downloading Necessary Updates, Installing Updates, Installing Internet Explorer Components and Finishing. Shockingly, the installation took a good amount of time as well. Downloading Updates part is completely depend on internet speed, but letting it aside, installing the updates, installing the Core Components and finishing took a lot of time. And finally after a gasping 10 minutes wait, installer stated that the system need a Restart to complete the installation. Proceeded, and when shutting down, the new updates began to configure and upon restart it was working.



Experiencing Internet Explorer 8 Beta

Fired up IE8 at last and I am really happy to see the speed of the application as it opens so fast in comparison to FF 3. The interface is not really changed and almost same as the previous version, only a new toolbar consisting of the ‘Favorites ‘links has been added just beneath the Address Bar.

Page loading speed is improved over the previous versions and it is quite faster than its last version. Though in comparison to Firefox 3 Beta 4, it is somehow slow in rendering but quite impressive on the performance front.
A whole lot of new features are introduced on IE8. I am not going to repeat the feature list here as one can easily check them from the Microsoft site itself @ http://www.microsoft.com/windows/pro...ewFeatures.htm
The newly introduced Webslice feature is somewhat similar to Safari 3’s new feature named Webclip. The later one allows one to select a part of a webpage and watch it live on Dashboard. Although the new feature in IE 8 fetches Webslices from certain websites like msn.com where Microsoft SlideShow is available and a purple colored button become active in the main toolbar. Clicking on it can activate the feature and can show Webslices in the Favorites bar. It can be described as live RSS feeds with interactive contents in it.
Another new feature is the Activities and it is really a nifty one. When watching some contents on a site, one can easily select what to do with them. Adding the contents to various bookmarking sites, blogging them using Windows Live Writer etc.

In the Address Bar, IE8 shows the main name of a site clearly leaving the other parts of the URL like www and sub domains grayed. This helps to recognize the website at one catch.

Performance

Amazingly IE8 fails to deliver some good rendering performances in AcidTest 3. When I tested it using the much coveted benchmarking tool, it simply failed. Even I added it as a Trusted Site so no restrictions were present to render the page contents. But it scores only 19 in the test and that is even very little in comparison with Firefox 2.


I reviewed IE 8 BETA @ IE 8 Beta : The First Experience

[praka123]

firefox3beta5 gets almost 70 in acid3

[ray|raven]

Woah!, Beta 5 ? I thought FF3 was still at beta 3?

[gxsaurav]

Originally Posted by praka123

firefox3beta5 gets almost 70 in acid3

Ya, u r right.

Hey, I can still browse all my orkut, facebook, myspace, evermotion, MSDN web pages fine in IE. How the hell did this happened when IE cannot pass Acid Test

Oh! I just realised that Acid test doesn't mean anything in real world.

[ray|raven]

Oh, wait , if it doesnt mean anything, why is MS working on getting standards right?

Wake up and see the light dude, developers are getting tired of making a separate version of the webpage just for IE.And if MS doesnt adapt standards , they might just well start losing their share when pages stop rendering right.

[praka123]

^still n00b vista users will stick to IE8 as it is bundled by default bad dream!
http://www.anybrowser.org/campaign/