AdventuresInVista » » The Browser Wars Are Back! (IE8 Beta 2 Released)

The Browser Wars Are Back! (IE8 Beta 2 Released)
9 October 2008 in Browser Wars & Internet Explorer 8 | Comments enabled

The latest Beta of Microsoft’s new super-standards-friendly browser, Internet Explorer 8, has been released.

This latest version offers many enhancements and new features, including…

Completely CSS 2.1 compliant
New features including Accelerators and Web Slices
Compatiblility mode (basically IE7 mode)
InPrivate browsing - a new way to browse without leaving any traces. Your history, cookies, etc are not stored
New Safety features including SmartScreen filter
And much, much more

Of course, this is still only Beta 2. The final version is due to be released before Christmas, but this release seems very stable - in fact, this post is being written on IE8!

I can’t help feel though that we’re in for a new round of browser wars. Safari is getting better, we have Google Chrome (built on Safari), a new version of IE on the horizon, and of course Firefox. Let’s hope this time web developers aren’t caught in the middle!

Find out more and download at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/beta/

UPDATE Click here for my regularly updated IE8 Beta 2 Buglist

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2 comments. Add your own comment.

Jim Andrew says 9 October 2008 @ 19:52

Dan,

I’m also a Firefox lover who tried out IE 8 Beta. I think the killer feature in IE-8 is “selection-based search” where you can search with only a mouse. MS calls this Accelerators (or something like that).

The version of selection-based search which I love is KallOut. It’s available at http://www.kallout.com

It already works over IE (the older versions) and Firefox (my favorite) as well as all of office. It’s really a killer application IMO for selection-based search, IMO.

What IE8 Beta really needs is a way for the application to automatically choose which accelerator you need to use for a given selection-based search request. The problem with Accelerators is that they are unusable if you have a list of more than a two or three of them installed. It’s just junk. KallOut solves this by choosing the best accelerator to use based on the text you have selected.

Just a random reader opinion, anyway. Check out http://www.kallout.com for yourself!

Jim