I love the New IE 8 Beta 2…You will love too !
- I Love the New IE 8 Beta 2
Microsoft has come out with an updated browser, Internet Explorer 8, Beta 2. Lets scan its features, though, it promises to give you a whole new experience in terms of secured Internet browsing, but we should experience those features ourselves.
The new updated beta version is more compatible with web standards.It looks similar to IE 7 but Microsoft has introduced a gamut of new features. You must have also come across new features in Firefox 3, Internet Explorer loyal users will be pleased with the new features, Microsoft has come out with.
Tabbed Browsing
- Tabbed Browsing (Color Coding)
Tabbed browsing is quite common in browsers these days, it indeed is very helpful, but this feature is much more smarter. If you accidentally close a browser window in IE 8, or gets closed itself, due to some application fault, you can opt to restore it, when you reopen the program (similar to what you can do in Firefox). IE 8 will group related tabs together using a color coding.
For e.g. if you open a link from xyz.com in a new tab, it will open adjacent to the original tab, and the tabs themselves will have a matching color.
We have often seen that if we are surfing a website having coding errors, it some times causes the entire program to crash, now with this feature, only the tab displaying the problematic website will crash, allowing you to continue browsing.
Improvised safe browsing
- Inprivate Browsing
If you enable IE 8’s InPrivate feature, the browser will not save any passwords, cookies, log-in info, history and temporary internet files, etc. It would be as if a browsing session has never happened. This feature reminds me of Apple’s Safari browser for Windows, which mentions of Private Browsing as one of its key features. An icon in IE’s address bar makes InPrivate’s active status more obvious.
The browser’s phishing filter-called SmartScreen – is an improved version, with such features like thorough checking of the website addresses (and their hidden urls). The Phishing feature depends on the existing database of phishing websites, so any new website, may pass through it, until it is reported as a phishing site by users.
- Domain Highlighting
It also displays websites’ domains in a darker text (www.gsworldonline.com) highlighting feature is a welcoming feature. So it identifies whether you are actually visiting a genuine website or in reality a page on some other site which you may have never heard of.
Innovative features
Features such as Webslices and Accelerators have been carried forward from IE 8 Beta 1, but is something through which one can popularize feed syndication.
What is a Web Slice?
The Web Slice is based on the hAtom Microformat , with a few additional properties. The Web Slice itself uses simple, semantic HTML markup to represent a portion of Web page that can be subscribed to. Annotations can be applied directly to content within the HTML page; additional files are not required.
What is an accelerator?
An Accelerator is a kind of mini-mashup that delivers information from another website to your current browser page, or that interacts with another website or service. For example, if you’re on a page with a street address, you can highlight the address and choose an Accelerator such as Live Maps or Google Maps. The Accelerator will then display the map in a pop-up or open another tab, depending on how the Accelerator has been written for that site.
Web Compatibility
Creating a website that looks identical in Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari can be a challenge. IE 8 Beta 2 offers better support for W3 Web standards
–a set of guidelines developed to ensure that a Web page appears the same in all browsers. The downside is that IE 8 will break some pages designed for earlier Internet Explorer versions.
This happened when I was accessing my blog, it was showing out of place menu, some text and few images. So, switching to compatibility mode will help you view those pages better as they were designed to work for older browsers.
- Compatibility Issues (out of place item)
- Compatibility View Running
- Compatibility View Tab enabled makes the browser compatible with Website.
I think, Microsoft is closely studying its rival Firefox and now Apple’s Safari, and is introducing the best of both in IE 
and I am lovin’ it !
August 29, 2008 at 11:25 am
[...] befriedigen, und (zumindest) in den eigenen vier Wänden bekommt niemand etwas davon mit. “InPrivate Browsing” heißt das Ganze und soll die Privatsphäre des Anwenders schützen, sofern diese Funktion [...]
August 29, 2008 at 5:09 pm
Hey, glad that you’re loving the new IE. There’s no denying that they’ve come up with some pretty cool new features.
I’m Jen, part of the team at Me.dium. Two days ago, we joined EBay, Amazon, Facebook, Digg and Yahoo as a featured partner for IE8’s Beta 2 launch.
We are so thrilled to be part of IE8, as our goal is to make the internet a more social place. We’ve got a lot of exciting things going on like our What’s Hot WebSlice, Me.dium Discovery Accelerator, and Visual Search, (you can check out our search homepage at http://me.dium.com/search.)
For all the details of Me.dium+IE8 take a look at http://blogme.dium.com/content/2008/08/medium-makes-hot-stuff-for-ie8/
Thanks, and feel free to email me with any questions or thoughts on Me.dium: Jboyle@me.dium.com
August 29, 2008 at 6:41 pm
KallOut Brings IE 8 Accelerators and More to All Office Apps, Firefox and Adobe Reader
If you think you might like the IE 8 Accelerators feature, you will absolutely LOVE KallOut.
As shown on http://kallout.com/product_tour.html, KallOut offers many more accelerator pages and it offers them in floating palettes that work for selections that you do inside any of the following apps:
1. IE 6, 7, 8
2. Firefox 2, 3
3. Microsoft Office Apps: Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Notepad, WordPad
4. Microsoft Outlook
5. Adobe Reader
This means that just about every major Windows app (with Mac Apps coming soon) supports a Best-of-Breed suite of Content Providers in a dynamic, context-sensitive, BestGuess Menu (not just Microsoft products).
Clearly, KallOut’s shipping product is superior to this initial entry from Microsoft in the Selection-based Search category.
Please try it out and let us know what you think.
Thanks,
Lee Lorenzen
CEO, KallOut — a new way to search using only your mouse
September 1, 2008 at 12:18 pm
How much did Microsoft payed for this entry?
- “updated beta version is more compatible with web standards.” False, even if it passes Acid 2 some sites that you can browse with firefox, safari and opera are destroyed using IE8 “standards”.
- Safe browsing. Some one has to prove me that IE8 is more safe than anything else.
- Web slices require specific support. That means that Microsoft again is imposing its way of doing the things on the web. Good, that’s gonna be like the scrolling text years ago.
But the worst is that all these “advances” are integrated in the browser. They’re not plugins that show how the browser can be improved. They’re just hard coded there.
And I guess we shouldn’t speak about Javascript performance or canvas support.
So my recommendation for your readers. If they’re willing to do the “change”, it’s better to do “Another” change and experience the web as it was meant to be using: Firefox, Opera or Safari.
Signed: Someone tired of IE hacks.