Microsoft's IE8 Beta Sports New UI Features

[balaganesh]

Microsoft's IE8 Beta Sports New UI Features

Microsoft swore it would not allow another huge gap between Internet Explorer releases like what happened between versions 6 and 7 (Vers. 6 was released in 2001 and 7 didn't come out till 2006) and it's on track to keep that promise. The firm posted the second beta version of Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) on Wednesday.

In early June, Bill Gates promised that the company would post IE8 Beta 2 before the end of August.

Whereas the first beta, released in March, focused on the plumbing of the browser – addressing compliance with new Web standards and such – the second beta addresses user interface issues.

"We focused our work around three themes: everyday browsing (the things that real people do all the time), safety (the term most people use for what we've called 'trustworthy' in previous posts), and the platform (the focus of Beta 1, how developers around the world will build the next billion web pages and the next waves of great services)," wrote Dean Hachamovitch, general manager of the Internet Explorer team on the IEBlog.

The much-talked about "porn mode" – a switchable setting where all content, like files, cookies, and HTML code, is not saved to the cache – is a part of IE 8 beta 2, along with a feature familiar to Firefox users.

Like Firefox, IE adds a searchable address bar, so the user can type in the actual URL or words from the site and IE will narrow the search as more letters are entered. This is similar to Firefox 3.0's "Awesome Bar," which Firefox users have disliked from day one.

The search box has been modified, adding suggestions on how to make a more effective search, and offering a list of search providers, something Microsoft  had to do after complaints from Google over Internet Explorer 7's search engine. IE 8 will even allow for searching Amazon.com and eBay.

There are new security protections, including a feature called the SmartScreen filter, which expands upon the Phishing Filter in Internet Explorer 7. The IEBlog said there are upgraded security feature to protect against things like cross-site scripting attacks, one of the most common forms of Web-based attacks.

[Kalyan]

Microsoft's Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 looks very promising, but it is very obvious why it is and will be for some time in beta phase. Apart from several annoying bugs reported by those who downloaded the early next-generation browser from the Redmond company, there are some problems with Windows XP's Service Pack 3 as well.

Microsoft Corp. warned users of Windows XP Service Pack 3 that they won't be able to uninstall either SP3 or Internet Explorer 8 beta 2 under some circumstances. The actual problem appears only in users who downloaded and installed IE8 Beta 1 prior to updating Windows XP to SP3, Microsoft said, which triggers a special installation message which reads:

If you chose to continue, Windows XP SP3 and IE8 Beta 2 will become permanent.

Internet Explorer 8 will feature a full-fledged privacy mode which will prevent the browser from saving any browsing or search history, will delete your IE8 browser cache at the end of every session and will also disable saving of cookies, data, passwords and other offline data. The tools share the "InPrivate" name, which Microsoft registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office several weeks ago.

Internet Explorer 8.0 includes three rendering modes: one that is using the current web standards, a second one that reflects Microsoft's implementation of Web standards at the time of the release of Internet Explorer 7 in 2006 and a third one based on rendering methods dating back to the early Web. By default, the first mode of rendering will be enabled in Internet Explorer

[ganeshbala]

IE8 Beta2 Features: Browsing Anonymity, Improved Tabs, Smart Search

Microsoft released Internet Explorer Beta 2 this week, in a clear attempt to catch up with some of the rival browsers, such as Firefox 3, Opera or Safari. For this reason, Internet Explorer 8 Beta got a complete makeover, providing new features and improved functionality, for an easier and faster experience.

So what do we make of this release? First of all, unlike Beta 1, which was intended for developers, Beta 2 aims at a much wider audience. According to Microsoft, IE8 is based on three main areas of interest: everyday browsing, safety, and the platform.

Among the first features we get to see when first trying IE8 is "Suggested Sites," which may seem interesting at first, but I don't honestly find it to be that useful. It's start however towards meeting user demands and perhaps making the experience more interesting. Anyway, it didn't work that well for me, since the suggestions were not quite what I had in mind.

Other than that, and probably the most impressive feature that I've seen, is the new tab system, which at a first glance seems quite good, easy to use, especially since the browser does all the grouping for you.

Here's how this works: Microsoft intended to incorporate "the natural flow of how users work," by taking into account the relationship between new tabs. This will make your tab bar look quite colorful, in a good way, making navigation quite easy. The browser will not only color similar tabs, but it also re-arranges them so that all related tabs are next to each other.

And that's not all, as the user gets to move tabs and integrate them into a tab group by simply dragging the desired tab to its rightful place. Accidentally closing tabs still make you re-open each tab, instead of the entire tab group, but that might change in the final version of Internet Explorer 8.

IE8 Beta 2 also comes with a Smart Address Bar, strikingly similar to the Firefox 3 idea, but hey, as long as it's useful... The address bar offers not only URL suggestions, but also includes Favorites, History and RSS feeds in the search process. All the search suggestions are separated into different sections, i.e. history suggestions in History category, feeds in Feeds and so on.

Microsoft went even further and added Accelerators, previously known as Activities, to the Beta 2 (of course, most of them are Microsoft services, but that doesn't make it less interesting). Accelerators facilitate access to web services from any visited page. This opens up new choices towards a faster, easier experience. In addition to that, the Web Slices deliver Web information on the go, somewhat similar with RSS feeds, but relying on graphically rich visual content.

Another aspect that we must give IE8 Beta 2 credit for is the speed: the browser works much faster than IE7, and shows some improvements compared to IE8 Beta 1 as well. In addition to that, the stability factory also adds to the overall performance.

Finally, we can't forget about the InPrivate Browsing feature, which promises to act as users' very own magician, making history, temporary Internet files and cookies disappear at the end of the browsing session. This is why it's now known as the "porn mode," although I don't really think this is the first idea that went through Microsoft's mind...

Microsoft still has a lot of work to do before unveiling the final version of Internet Explorer 8, but things look quite promising at the moment. Furthermore, it does seem to work quite well in terms of stability and speed, two key elements that promise to turn it into a key player among current browsers.