Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Tuesday, 02 September 2008 15:49
Opinion and Analysis
Page 1 of 2
IE8 has finally launched in beta 2 mode, dubbed “ready” for consumers to play with and try, and so far, it seems to match the competition with long-overdue features, while adding some new ones of its own. Should you download it?
If you’re a beta-junkie, happy to be an early
adopter that installs everything, then chances are, you’re already
surfing the web, at least some of the time, with Internet Explorer 8.
I’m personally one of these people – I was even running Windows Vista
RC1 onwards quite happily (for the most part, minus some driver issues
that eventually were fixed), and have even been very happily running
the beta of Norton Internet Security 2009.
But if you’re one of those more cautious types, not willing to install
beta software, or even the release version of software until the first
update or service pack is released, then you’re way at the other end of
the scale, and IE8 probably won’t land on your computer for some time
yet.
Most people are probably somewhere in between, but given that many
people happily ran beta versions of Firefox 3 during the months it
spent in the beta process, IE8 is something you will likely be quite
happy with, if you’re willing to install it.
After all, we’re not talking about strictly cutting edge software here
– it’s “just” a browser, but still, Microsoft has seen fit to implement
some features that competitors have taken for granted, while including
at least one nifty feature that I haven’t seen on other browsers
before.
There are, of course, already reports of issues some people are
experiencing. For example, if you installed IE8 beta 1 on your XP
machine with SP3 loaded onto it, and forgot to uninstall IE8 beta 1
before installing the new beta 2, IE8 won’t uninstall.
Microsoft itself has a page of other compatibility issues
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/949787, although for the most part,
you’re likely to be unaffected and will just use IE8 mostly as you did
IE7.
So, what are some of those new features? Please read on to page 2.
