p2pnet news | Products:- Bill and the Boyz have released the first beta of their Internet Explorer 8.

Do people still use IE?

Looks like and, "In this early version, IE 8 is not an upgrade that’s going to bowl you over with amazing new functionality," says PC World, going on:

"Microsoft is touting its better compliance with Web standards. (Shouldn’t the world’s dominant browser already be super-compatible with the Web?) It says that IE now recovers from crashes more gracefully. (Wouldn’t it be nicer if it didn’t crash?) A feature called Activities lets developers add functionality to IE in a way that doesn’t seem radically different from things clever sites have done for years with plain ol’ bookmark buttons; Web Slices, which let sites create widgety little snippets of information that you can view by clicking a bookmark button, are kind of interesting–but they’ll only take off if they’re widely supported by major sites, and they’re not radically different from Apple’s Web Clip feature in Safari, which works with all Web pages, not just ones designed to support it.

"IE 8, in other words, may turn out to be an improvement on IE 7…but it would appear to be a minor upgrade."

PC Magazine has Matthew Lepsen, from the Microsoft IE development team, saying on a video, "A lot of the end user or consumer features are not featured on this build because it really is targeted at the developers and the designers."

Oh.

"There are not going to be huge landmark changes," Lepsen said. "We want to have continuity with the new functionality, so we don’t want to shock our viewers with a whole bunch of changes."

"I’ve just downloaded and installed the beta 1 of Internet Explorer 8 into a virtual machine (no way am I ready to let that loose on my systems outside of a VM)," says Adrian Kingsley-Hughes on ZDNet, continuing:

• Install was quick, easy and painless.
• IE8 looks an awful lot like IE7, just with a few tweaks.
• Speed-wise IE8 feels snappier than IE7 … might be an illusion.
• If features such as Web Slices are going to take off, Microsoft needs to get web developers on board … fast.
• The redesigned address bar might help curb phishing attacks by making the domain you’re visiting easier to spot.
• Thanks to all the Activities stuff, the right-click is awfully busy.
• I’m seeing a lot of minor site breakages in IE8 (running in IE7 emulation mode unbreaks the sites).
• IE8 recovers from unexpected shutdowns very well.
• Contrary to some reports I’ve been reading, IE8 Beta 1 passes the ACID 2 test …

[NOTE - p2pnet is running a special reader’s survey. It only takes a minute - literally. Please click here. Cheers! And thanks … Jon]

Slashdot it!

Also See:
PC World - Internet Exporer 8 and the Boring Era of Web Browsers, March 5, 2008
PC Magazine - Microsoft Releases Internet Explorer 8 Beta, March 5, 2008
ZDNet - Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 - Tour, March 5, 2008

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This entry was posted on Thursday, March 6th, 2008 at 7:39 am and is filed under Product News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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