Internet Explorer 8

[Andrew]

IE 8 beta 1 released

The browser war has begun again.

With Firefox 3 and Opera 9.5 being released shortly, this is great news for consumers. Will be interesting to see what happens after the 3 new versions are released.

Overview of new features so far

Standards Compliance: About 5 years late

Facebook Integration: MS owns part of facebook (or it at least threw money at it to serve ads). I'm not exactly sure how this is good. Probably good to increase facebook/MS ad revenue. Also for facebook addicts.

eBay Integration: Umm, ok another integration with a website. I'm sure there are lots of widgets and extensions that can already do this.

Live Maps Integration: wow, tieing the browser with another MS product to increase ad revenue. This would only be relevant if it is easy to switch to google maps or mapquest etc or whatever your preferred map service is.

Integration with Me.dium: ?? Sounds like one of those stumbleupon thingies. Another web 2.0 fad. MS also has a financial interest in this company

Working with AJAX Pages: Hmm, if you hit the back button it zooms out instead of going to the previous page. Is this normal for other web browsers? I would think hitting back button would go to previous page. There should be a zoom button inside the webpage to use. If I zoom in 100 times, does that mean I have to hit back button 100 times?

These integration with websites in a toolbar sound ok, but I wonder if it slows the web browser down if I have it integrated with say 10 sites and it would be constantly updating that info. But I'm guessing they will find a way to integrate ads into this sidebar.

Official MS new features

Activities: Sounds ok

WebSlices: ok?

Favorites Bar: Not exactly sure how this is any different than firefox bookmark toolbar.

Automatic Crash Recovery: Good. Firefox already implemented it back in 2.0. There was an extension for it back in 2004 at least. So MS is 3-4 years behind in this area.

Improved Phishing Filter: good news.

[Andrew]

Internet Explorer 8 beta 2 released

Let's see.

Accelerators: probably the most interesting thing, although mozilla has released something better called Ubiquity

InPrivate Browsing: In firefox->ctrl+shift+delete or set it up to do so when you close firefox.

Search suggestions: google has had it for years, firefox has it in awesomebar.

SmartScreen Filter: most browsers have this I think

Web Slices: sounds interesting, I'm sure there are firefox extensions capable of doing it.

The funniest thing was part of the changelog I saw at one spot that said:

From our customer research, we saw that the bulk of user activity outside of web pages involved tabs and “navigation” – the act of getting to the site the user wants to get to

Tabs!? Welcome to 2002.

[Andrew]

So Internet explorer versions had a big vulnerability in the last day or two.

Serious security flaw found in IE

MS Advisory

Users of Microsoft's Internet Explorer are being urged by experts to switch to a rival until a serious security flaw has been fixed.

I just went to windows update, and it is asking me to install something. This is usually normal, but right now it is not describing what it wants to install.

Normally it just says that windows update needs to be updated in order to continue with windows update and I allow that, but this time I have no idea what it wants to install.

see screenshot.

EDIT:

I cancelled, and what I got on the website now is

Install the ActiveX control required to view the website

The website will not display correctly on your computer without this control. To install it:

1. Right-click the Internet Explorer Information Bar. It's located just below the address bar.

2. In the right-click menu, click Install ActiveX Control.

3. In the Security Warning dialog box, click Install.

Note: If the Information Bar doesn't appear, or if you've installed the control but still can't use the website, take these steps to solve the problem.

Example: Internet Explorer Information Bar with right-click menu

Sorry, but I'm not installing something when it doesn't tell me what it wants to install.

Guess I should boot back into ubuntu...

[Andrew]

I'm using IE7

So I clicked install, and now it is asking to install another one!??!

so I clicked install again, and now it is asking me to update windows to work with the website. wtf is wrong with microsoft.

So I click update, and it shows it downloading updates. It was small filesize since it went fast (guessing 200kb).

Now it is checking to see if I have activex installed again (like it normally does when you first go there).

Dunno why but windows update is always slow for me. It always waits to download a couple images, and there is no network activity dyring this time. And when it does finally finish downloading images, then I have to click between express and custom, I select custom, wait 5 minutes for it to load, then click on a category to see what to install, wait another 5 minutes... It's not my internet, as there is no activity during this time. Probably spying on me or something.

EDIT:

More info on the security problem with internet explorer

1:15 pm EST December 17, 2008 - When we asked Microsoft's Jonathan Ness for clarification of whether Microsoft believed there were active attempts to exploit the problem that's the subject of today's out-of-cycle fix, he responded that his team now has reason to believe that one Windows user out of every 500 may have been exposed to a Web site which may contain real, active, non-imaginary, verifiable exploits for this problem.

1/500 windows users exposed to this exploit...

They estimate 0.2% of Microsoft Windows users worldwide have been exposed to websites containing exploits for this vulnerability. Each of those users running IE7 on either Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 will have gotten infected, unfortunately.

EDIT:

Apparently IE8 RC1 was released to some people recently.

From slashdot: Exclusive: First look at Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 RC1

RC1, which is believed to be the first feature-complete version of the browser, will not match the Javascript performance of all other major browsers.

Doesn't look like anything interesting about it.

[gryphon]

If you don't trust it you can always use the automatic update feature in Windows itself. :)

[Andrew]

Well IE8 was released yesterday.

From what I've read it is faster, but still sucks compared to alternatives.

Any reviews?

How did install go?

Microsoft's new browser is causing big problems for some computer users.

Saw another article about IE8 increasing MS web browser marketshare by 30%. I think it was IE8 marketshare up 30% (growth, not actual marketshare)

[gryphon]

Well IE8 was released yesterday.

From what I've read it is faster, but still sucks compared to alternatives.

That solemnly depends on the references you use for suck. ;)

http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=2941

have been using the Beta for a while now. upgrading didn't result in any problems and it handles styles better then IE7 could.

[Andrew]

When you install IE8 it becomes default browser without asking you.

Make Firefox the Default Browser (Again) After Installing Internet Explorer 8

[Andrew]

Windows Internet Explorer 8: Get the facts

MS website explaining why IE is better than firefox and chrome. Read for a great laugh. It's a simple checkmark table.

As for their privacy claim, firefox will have it in a month.

their mythbusting is also funny

Myth #4: Internet Explorer doesn't play well with Web standards.

The Real Deal: Internet Explorer 8 passes more of the World Wide Web Consortium's test cases than any other browser.

Huh?

[gryphon]

to be honest I didn't even bother to read it.... nor gonna to.