Thursday, March 19, 2009

Buh Bye Internet Explorer 7, Hello IE8


That's right, coming at you with "porn mode" er, I mean "InPrivate" enabled, is the all new IE8. It's been in development since 2006 if you can believe that, & the web is all abuzz...about other stuff, not this.

Despite using a Windows machine, I haven’t touched IE for weeks. I downloaded the release to check it anyway out but since then I have only opened it a few times. I only use IE to check client's work anyway lately, for various reasons.

Here are some items of note:

  • IE8 has some new security features (yawn), like an updating list of “bad” sites, and it will pop up a message if you go to one.
  • IE8 uses "Accelerators" to give you more options in the menu when you right click a word or phrase.
  • There's a drop-down menu that previews suggested searches. (joy...the last thing I want is a browser telling me what to look at on the Net)
  • Tracks headlines
  • Tracks eBay auctions
  • Tracks weather
  • Uses "Web Slices" to track using the Favorites bar
  • Related tabs are color-coded (ok, I kind of liked that)
  • Search field can show images now
  • Add to Favorites with one click (ok, I kind of liked that too)
  • Here's the Wikipedia article about it.

For the record, it's already been successfully hacked, more than once. But then again, so have all the other browsers out there so I'm not sure that I just gave you any real news.

All in all, I think this browser is an improvement over IE7, which was an improvement over IE6, etc., etc..

The real question in my mind will concern two things--speed & stability. I run XP & Vista on a variety of machines & whenever I check IE always comes in dead last in speed. IE8 slows down considerably when you have more than about 10 or 15 tabs open, even after they're finished loading. As for stability, only time will tell.

So buh bye IE7, thanks for the memories. Hello IE8, I hope we get along.

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