Internet Explorer 8 - does it rate as Firefox bait?

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Tuesday, 02 September 2008 14:49

Opinion and Analysis

Well, one cool feature that is so far exclusive to IE8 is the ability to colour the “tabs” of open browser windows according to which page you opened them from. This helps you to visually group open tabs and, at a glance, see which ones are related to each other. It’s a feature other browsers should copy, pronto.

IE8 also better supports web standards, but ironically, this means that some sites you open up with IE8 will look “wrong”. This is because those sites had adjusted themselves to IE7’s standards, and because IE8 chooses proper web standards by default, it “breaks” web pages designed for earlier versions of IE.

Thankfully, there’s a simple “compatibility” button at the end of the address bar – click this and the page will reload as though it were being viewed in IE7, and balance will be restored unto the force of the web. Over time, we should see less of these compatibility issues as developers organise their sites to render properly in IE8.

The “Find on page” feature mimics that used in Firefox – no more floating “find” boxes over your web page, something that was such a throwback to an earlier era, but is now over.

Other features include a “private” browsing mode, and features such as “accelerators” which are like web enabled smart tags.

You can find out more of IE8’s features at Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8 pages http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/beta/features/enhanced-navigation.aspx, but all up, browsing the web in IE8 is a much more pleasant, more Firefox-like experience.

Firefox 3 still seems faster, but IE8 hasn’t left the beta stage yet, so we can expect speed improvements to come.

As I’m attending Tech Ed 2008 in Australia over the next three days, I’ll try to find out from Microsoft exactly when they plan to release, but the new Beta 2 version is good enough for most web surfers to jump right into and wade around the web in.

It took Microsoft years to get to IE7, but IE8 is coming along much faster, and so far I’ve been pleasantly surprised. If only Microsoft would be as consistent in delivering good experiences, all Microsoft users would be a lot happier!