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Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 start page.
Microsoft throws out some fresh beta software for everyone to try.

DailyTech reported last month that Microsoft was on the verge of releasing test versions of the Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) web browser. Microsoft made good on that promise today with the public release of IE8 Beta 1 at the MIX Conference in Las Vegas.

The beta browser is available for a wide range of Windows operating systems including Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista and Windows Server 2003 SP2. According to Microsoft, IE8 Beta 1 will not install on "prerelease versions of Windows Vista SP1" or "checked versions of Windows".

IE8 includes a number of new features including the "Activities" contextual data management service, a new Favorites Bar, an improved Phishing Filter, Automatic Crash Recovery and “Webslices”.

Microsoft software architect Alexander Strauss goes on to explain Webslices, stating, “Webslices are simply portions of arbitrary websites to which a user can subscribe to. This enables a user to have updates of sites he regularly visits right at his fingertips without navigating to the respective sites. A webslice behaves just like an RSS Feed. The slice itself will be added to the Favorites bar of IE8 when a user subscribes to a webslice. In order to subscribe to a slice it must be discovered. The discovery is quite easy as IE8 will display a special symbol if a page offers a Webslice.”

IE8 will face some stiff competition from Mozilla later this year. Mozilla's Firefox 3.0 web browser is currently in the Beta 3 phase and has received generally favorable reviews around the web.

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That was quick!
By kibets on 3/5/2008 6:14:04 PM , Rating: 2
Seems like just a year ago they launched IE7 (which I use and love). Now we have IE8 with more features still!




RE: That was quick!
By bunnyfubbles on 3/5/2008 6:48:15 PM , Rating: 5
You can thank FireFox for that. Competition FTW.


RE: That was quick!
By BruceLeet on 3/6/2008 5:35:19 PM , Rating: 2
Maybe so.

We're getting IE8 because of FF3...so can we expect IE9 with Vista's SP2? Assuming there will be a 2nd service pack with a more 'features'.

Or will "IE9" be released with Windows 7?


RE: That was quick!
By MattCoz on 3/5/08, Rating: 0
RE: That was quick!
By othercents on 3/5/2008 6:56:44 PM , Rating: 1
I still haven't migrated my office over to IE7 because there are websites we use for business that are IE6 only.

Other


RE: That was quick!
By michal1980 on 3/5/08, Rating: 0
RE: That was quick!
By MattCoz on 3/5/2008 7:32:59 PM , Rating: 3
Ok, for Microsoft it's quick. IE6 to IE7 was an eternity.


RE: That was quick!
By Ryanman on 3/6/2008 3:39:06 PM , Rating: 2
I think taht it's insane ANYONE is looking forward to IE. Are you serious? All of their browsers are abysmal compared to Mozilla.
Obviously you're one of those people who never explored a second option when it came to web browsing.


RE: That was quick!
By mechBgon on 3/7/2008 12:28:09 AM , Rating: 2
quote:
All of their browsers are abysmal compared to Mozilla.


Try enterprise management, configuration, enforcement and auditing of a fleet of several hundred (or several thousand) browsers sometime. Microsoft can do this using Group Policy, and has been able to do it for the better part of a decade. The "stiff competition" still has nothing, as far as I'm aware of.


RE: That was quick!
By TomZ on 3/5/2008 7:48:10 PM , Rating: 1
What websites are IE6 only? I wonder what would make it IE6 only in the first place?

In my experience, as a user, I haven't come across even a single web site that doesn't work properly with IE7. But maybe I have just been lucky.


RE: That was quick!
By arazok on 3/5/2008 8:01:11 PM , Rating: 2
Anything made for business.

I've developed a few online apps that are IE6 only, although with Vista out, IE6/7 is pretty much a must do now.

You might love firefox, but as far as your system admin is concerned, it's not doing much that IE can't do. Therefore - not installed.

It also makes my life easier, and keeps development costs down.


RE: That was quick!
By LongTimePCUser on 3/5/2008 10:35:35 PM , Rating: 2
Right. Anything made for business that explicitly tests the browser version for IE6 and puts up an error message if anything else is found.


RE: That was quick!
By retrospooty on 3/5/2008 8:01:36 PM , Rating: 2
Some Corporate and financial stuff as well as alot of companies internal Intranet.


RE: That was quick!
By retrospooty on 3/5/2008 8:04:08 PM , Rating: 2
I should have added that its not that it wouldn't necesarily work, its that alot of sites like that are coded to allow IE6, if browser = IE6, continue, if not equal to IE6, halt.

Its generally rule based, not tech based.


RE: That was quick!
By TomZ on 3/5/2008 11:14:42 PM , Rating: 2
There's an easy workaround for that - just use a utility that sends an IE6 user agent string in IE7:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?fa...

But really, requiring a specific web version, and then not testing and updating for a newer browser version that's been out 2-3 years, is pretty lame on the part of the web developers. Can't really blame Microsoft for that.


RE: That was quick!
By andrep74 on 3/6/2008 3:15:38 AM , Rating: 1
Well, the right way to do it is to test for the specific capability you need rather than for a specific browser.

The "not testing and updating for a newer browser version" is a pretty naive statement: it assumes that the developers are still around to do so, and are being paid to do so. Businesses don't normally pay for an application used in-house and then pay for maintenance of the code when it still works on the browser it was originally designed against. It's the same reason I've seen 3rd party apps being used on a Windows NT 4.0 machine ten years after that OS was released: saying it's lame that it hasn't been updated to run on Vista would be like saying it's lame that your 1996 Camaro doesn't run on ethanol.


RE: That was quick!
By Snuffalufagus on 3/6/2008 3:39:29 AM , Rating: 3
"it assumes that the developers are still around to do so, and are being paid to do so. Businesses don't normally pay for an application used in-house and then pay for maintenance of the code when it still works on the browser it was originally designed against. It's the same reason I've seen 3rd party apps being used on a Windows NT 4.0 machine ten years after that OS was released:

That's exactly what good businesses do. If they cannot afford to then they can always use virtualization or other alternatives to continue using their legacy applications. I can't think of many reasons everyone should need to wait for some outdated tech to come up to speed so everyone else can move on.


RE: That was quick!
By johnsonx on 3/6/2008 12:05:12 AM , Rating: 1
it isn't so much public websites, or even corporate intranet websites that require IE6. It's server based applications that use browser windows to display the application's GUI to the user. In many cases the user might not even realize that it's being done through a browser. These sorts of business apps are the ones that tend to be IE6 specific (though in my experience so far, most have now been updated for IE7). In many cases, they simply won't work in any other browser. These are also the ones that only work with Microsoft SQL Server, IIS 6, etc. Deploying in a MySQL, Apache, Tomcat, Firefox environment simply isn't even an option.

Another example of a program that uses IE that many users don't realize is QuickBooks... my understanding is almost everything displayed by Quickbooks uses the browser's page renderer. If you run Quickbooks, installing IE8 beta may not be a good idea (NOTE: I'm not saying I know that, I haven't tried it, haven't read anything about it; I'm just giving an example). Back when IE7 first came out, Quickbooks would bitch and moan if you installed it, though I don't recall any actual problems with 'normal' functions.


RE: That was quick!
By 3v1lkr0w on 3/6/2008 5:42:58 AM , Rating: 2
The only time i use IE is at work cause the Air Force uses IE...we just moved over to IE 7 a few months ago too...I use Firefox at home on my computers...Firefox FTW!!!


RE: That was quick!
By Shoal07 on 3/7/2008 12:43:36 PM , Rating: 2
We're still on IE6 here at work - come to think of it, I've never seen an IE7 on a work/business machine. Also, while the beta may have been out 2 1/2 years ago, the final "pushed by windows update" version hasn't been out that long.