Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 Review

Not long time ago I meet with last stable version of Internet Explorer 7 and few months after IE7 I have opportunity to test Internet Explorer Beta 1 version. Although the first beta version of Internet Explorer 8 is primarily intended for Internet professionals, all people who want to find out more about IE8 Beta 1 than just reading this text can download it from Microsoft download center, in the form of executive file with size of 15 MB. Installation of IE8 Beta 1 is almost similar to its previous version, and it is enough that with few mouse clicks you finish the installation.

When you first start the program, you are demanding to determine the adjustments that will be used for further web browser work. The first option is to choose Express Settings, thus the settings from previous version of IE will be held in the new. Another option is to pass through the step by step guide and according to your own needs choose default search engine, turn on / turn off security filter, import browser settings from another browser installed on the computer, etc…. Since you have finished all adjustments, in front of you appear the window which in first glance does not differ too much from previous version. How it usually is, the real changes lie under the “hood” and bring the user more comfort in everyday work.

Two biggest changes compared with previous version of Internet Explorer are “activities” and “web slices”. 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. WebSlices is a new feature for websites to connect to their users by subscribing to content directly within a webpage.

Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 Beta Screenshot

WebSlices behave just like feeds where clients can subscribe to get updates and notify the user of changes. Some of the major sites, that support slices are currently eBay, Facebook, MSN and StumbleUpon, and since Microsoft is given the necessary information about the slices format, there is no doubt that more and more websites will support Web slices (I also hope that our softwaretipspalace.com website will support this feature in future).

Links bar from previous versions of Internet Explorer in "8" has been renamed the Favorites bar and now you can add the favorite RSS feeds, web slices, and even links to files on the local hard disk. Tabs, which are added to the previous version of Internet Explorer, in this version, are fail safe. From tab losses users are now protected with Automatic Crash Recovery (ACR), which provides that after any resulting problems users return to a previous state. Also, the ACR is trying to limit fails to one tab, offering users the ability to close the problematic tab.

One of the reasons why web developers traditionally prefer Firefox compared to Internet Explorer is a tool for developing web applications that is embedded or can be easily be uses in Firefox, while Internet Explorer mainly relied on huge additional tools, which are not able to easily integrate in the browser. It can be said that version 8 bring us a huge changes in this filed because IE 8 comes with integrated development tools such as JavaScript Debugger, tool for viewing and manipulation DOM model sites, tool for viewing and manipulation CSS and other useful tools. In addition, new Internet Explorer offers a better integration with a number of additional tools for development, which will definitely attract more sympathy to some web developers, and I am one of them.

Improvements which we get with first beta version of Internet Explorer 8 represent a step in advance, although the stability of its browser reduces the usability. What is certain is that web developers will be most satisfied; after all, this beta 1 version is earmarked to them. As for the other group of users concerned, it is probably better to await a new and stable version of IE 8 as well as the adoption of standards and features.

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