Geek Reviews: First Look at Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2
It's been a long time since Microsoft released the first beta of Internet Explorer 8, which left me wondering what they had up their sleeve. After reading that they added a ton of new features in Beta 2 like private browsing, tab grouping and a new smart address bar, I just had to try it out and share with all of our readers.
Installation
Ok, we are off to find out what Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 has to offer. First let’s take a look at the options during initial installation. I am writing about this screen for screen so if you have not yet explored this new beta you're seeing each of these screens for the first time along with me.
During the initial install it looks like I have the option to get the latest updates. Sure, might as well.
After Installation is complete time to reboot.
Ok, looks like IE wants to help me discover websites by suggesting them to me. Normally I would not want this feature, but for this review I am turning it on. You can always turn off the suggested sites at any time.
Time to choose Express or Custom settings. If you want more control over the setup process you will definitely want to use Custom Settings.
Choosing Accelerator Providers
Accelerator Providers work with selected text on a webpage to perform different tasks such as looking up word definitions or get directions on a map to a street address. If you are familiar and comfortable with Microsoft’s services go ahead and select that option. For this installation I am selecting the option to see even more Accelerator options. There is an option to disable the Accelerator providers, but come on test things out! I am very excited about these new built in features.
SmartScreen Filter
Because I want to try out everything in this beta including the enhanced security features I am going to turn it on. This feature will protect you from phishing attempts and other scams.
Finally, choosing to let IE be my default browser, sorry but I am still a Firefox man for now. However, I will Import from Firefox.
After clicking finish on the previous screen I get the other browser selection screen.
Bookmarks and Feeds Import Successful.
Taking A Look At New Features.
Let’s start digging in! The first thing which caught my eye is the list of Accelerators to choose from which is a very comprehensive list. Expect to see more and more third party Accelerators as IE 8 becomes more of a standard. I will test these out later, moving on.
The next thing which caught my attention was a message saying that the MSN homepage may require an add-on. It is similar to the ActiveX warning but did not explicitly say it so I was not totally sure. You'll also notice how the domain name is highlighted in a different color than the rest of the URL.
I do wish Microsoft would stop this from popping up on their own site! I accept it and continue. (although you should weigh carefully before allowing ActiveX controls to run because they can be a security risk)
One of the cool things about this Beta is the amount of features already installed without having to download Add-ons. Many features are enabled by default such as Developer Tools.
It looks like everyone now wants an intuitive address bar. Firefox 3 has the so called “awesome bar”. IE 8 comes with a Smart Address Bar which tries to guess what site you want to visit based on past history. Only 5 history entries will be shown. If you want to see more just click on the expand arrow near the bottom. As I am using the Smart Address Bar, I find it more intuitive and responsive compared to “Awesome Bar”.
Better Tabbed Browsing
IE 8 offers new functionality to tabbed browsing, as you'll notice if you right-click on a tab… now you can Duplicate tabs or even re-open the last opened tab, features that required an add-on before.
The Tab Group feature will highlight tabs that were opened from other tabs, so you can visually identify a group of tabs by where you opened them from… or also close them all at once. Very useful for doing research and opening a whole bunch of tabs from Google, you can simply close all of the tabs that you had opened while keeping your other tabs open.
The Quick Tabs button shows a small thumbnail of each page you have open in different tabs. This comes in handy if you have multiple tabs open and need to access a certain page quickly. This isn't a new feature, but you'll notice that tab groups are now highlighted in this view.
With this version IE takes a lesson from Firefox and has included Crash Recovery. If the browser happens to crash you can get the last session back with all the open tabs. This is a feature that previously could only be used by installing add-ons.
Searching
The Search feature has improved a bit as well… here is a list of the different providers you can add. Even though you have one of the providers as default you can still add as few or as many as you want.
When searching you can choose a different provider and get results directly in the drop down box. Here is an example of searching for a product with Amazon.
You'll also notice that the drop-down for the search box now shows both your history as well as suggestions from Google or whoever you are using for searching. You can even click the icons at the bottom to quickly switch between them.
Improved Security With Private Browsing
Another cool built in improvement is two tools that allow better security and private browsing. InPrivate can be turned on from the Tools menu. This feature basically allows you to surf the web and none of your tracks (cookies, temp files, history, etc) will be saved. Tired of your “significant other” harping on you about sites your visiting? This feature is right up your alley!
Suggested Sites
Anytime you are at a particular site you can press the Suggested Sites button to find other websites with similar content. While trying it for this review I did have some problems finding similar sites for smaller blogs but I am assuming this will improve over time.
Compatibility
Whenever a new browser version is released, there's always issues for webmasters trying to make sure their websites work correctly in the new browser version. IE8 uses "Standards Mode" by default, which adheres much more strictly to web standards, but sometimes causes problems with certain websites.
If you encounter an issue viewing a website, you can click the new Compatibility View button on the address bar, which will switch to viewing the site in a more compatible mode.
Conclusion
This version of Internet Explorer is miles ahead of any previous version of IE, enough that it's actually able to compete in features with the default Firefox, at least.
If you are an early adopter, it's well worth trying out… but there are a few compatibility issues still, so if you depend on IE for your work you might want to wait a short while for the final release.
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Looks Good! Well, I love these new features that characterize Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 however i prefer Safari 4.0 Developer Preview 2: more speed, more utility. On Acid Test 3, IE 8 Beta 2: 21/100, Safari 4.0 DP 2: 100/100.
Anyway, My Firefox (Minefield) 3.1 pre-alpha 2 is the best in all.
Regards, Luca
Thanks for that reviews..
It really gives me a lot of infos,
IE8beta2 was release i think of should I download/Install? or i'll just wait for the final version.
and when i read your review, i finally decided, i have to wait for the Final
again, nice reviews.. Thanks..
Yeah, I'll still continue to use Firefox and Opera instead of IE.
Literally the only reason I use IE at work is for two websites that are IE dependent, everything else works fine with Firefox or Opera.
—
While the new features are a nice addition, I see nothing really special that a FX or Opera extension could replicate.
Because this review made the product look so enticing I thought I'd give it a try (Vista 64 bit). Boy am I sorry I did! Now my add ins don't work in IE (incompatible) and I keep getting a popup saying that they are disabled. I click the toolbar - all enabled! Settings confirm they are enabled. Flash doesn't work, Skype doesn't work. It's a nightmare. I wanted to go back to IE 7 but noooo… there's no turning back apparently. This really blows.
I don't mean for this post to sound negative and maybe I'll post a request on the forum, I just wanted to provide a warning to everyone with the specific issues I encountered. People should think twice before running a beta program - I sure wish I could turn back time!
I do love the How To Geek and appreciate all the advice - again, just a warning to others out there who might want to give it a try. If you aren't a techno geek, be warned!
you most certainly can go back, just uninstall the beta. you will probably have to run the ie7 installer again, to clean up the rollback (so grab that from the MS site before you delete ie8)
@ Jenna:
That is interesting I also Vista Ultimate 64 and have had no problems. Did you install the 64bit version of IE 8?
One thing you guys should take care that you should not install IE8 and Service Pack 3 together. If you do, you would not be able to uninstall the Internet Explorer 8, Microsoft has said.
Also I would say one should create a restore point before installing IE8 so that you can revert back to normal state if its not working right as in case of Jeena, above.
I am currently using IE8 and liking it so far. The group tabbing is good. I have used it for more than 24 hours continuously and it has crashed only once, as compared to previous beta this is great.
Also the session restore is great. IE 8 tries to keep all other tabs open, except the once which is closing due to any issue. This is great and something that Firefox doesn't have! The one time it crashed out of total 11 tabs opened 2 crashed and IE8 recovered both of them successfully..
So far its looking good, however some websites and blog designs arent being rendered properly. But this is just Beta, I am hopeful the final product could be a killer app.
Does clicking the IE7 compatibility button force the browser to restart like with IE8 beta 1?
I recently installed this IE8 Beta and removed it just as quickly. I use iGoogle as my home page and immediately I had concerns with my gadgets. 50% were not visible until you rolled the mouse pointer over them and the 0ther 50% just weren't visible at all. I like the new features but I'm not interested in finding out what else doesn't work down-the-line. I'll wait for the full release.
Thanks for your article! I'm a Firefox girl, too, but I have to use IE for a couple work websites. I've been curious about the beta, though, so thanks for your review! For me, it's onwards & upwards to the beta.
after installing i had problems w/computer freezing up….OS is 32-bit vista….i just did a system restore and everything is back to normal….some of the features were cool, think i'll wait till bugs are worked out
Works OK with Vista, not so well on XP. At least that was my experience. And, unless you haven't installed SP3 you won't be able to install it.
I think the new features make it quite competitive, Firefox 3 continues to be buggy for me. I'm thinking of returning to 2.16, it seemed more stable even though it is a memory hog.
It works great, as it is expected.
I tested both 32bit and 64bit versions of it with no problem at all, eventhough it is in its beta period.
Tested 32bit version on Windows 2003 Server (32bit of course) and the 64bit version on Windows 2008 Server (64bit).
Hi,
Thanks for the informative description. I needed that, as I never got that far.
Jenna Wrote:
"Because this review made the product look so enticing I thought I'd give it a try (Vista 64 bit). Boy am I sorry I did! Now my add ins don't work in IE (incompatible) and I keep getting a popup saying that they are disabled. I click the toolbar - all enabled! Settings confirm they are enabled. Flash doesn't work, Skype doesn't work. It's a nightmare. I wanted to go back to IE 7 but noooo… there's no turning back apparently. This really blows."
I'm having exactly the same issues as Jenna. All the groovy new features described never got the chance to endear themselves to me as I couldn't get past first base. From the word go, that hyper-annoying yellow bay pops up with it's just as annoying loud 'b-l-o-o-o-p'. Now, this isn't just once, it's 'every' new tab that you go on to open. You click the blaxk 'X' to make it 'Go 'Way' but it's back as soon as you click through to a new page, hit back/forward or refresh the page.
Okay, so apparently I'm really supposed to care about this fact that 'Add-Ons appear to be disabled your browser'…because IE8 B2 appears to 'really' care, it just can't 'stop' telling you, even though the pages seem to loading just fine. As with Jenna, when trying to work out what you have to do to appease the 'Bossy Little Yellow Bar God' there is no single little button to click…off/on…the add-ons each have to be dealt with on an individual basis, but as with Jenna, they read enabled, so exit and -'Obersturfurer Yellow Bar' is back.
With me too, it's the case that a great many of the Add-Ons are listed as 'Not Compatable', same with my Google toolbar which has all my faveorite little gizmos in and is the only toolbar I use.
Despite my toleration rapidly failing from being constantly harranged with every move I made by the 'Yellow Bar', I persevered and visited my phpbb2 group I post at. Replying to a post and (trying to) highlight a section of text to quote, each attempt to run the cursor with left click down over a portion of text would cause the the whole page to violently scroll up or down…in a second, you'd suddenly be 20 posts up/down from the post you're trying to highlight. That was 'every' attempt. That was the last straw for me…these two issues effectively rendered the browser unusable junk. Also, bossy software is a 'big' no-no for me. I am now using my Opera instead.
Notes: One thing lacking from IE8 Beta 1 in the B2 that I really liked, is the nice big 'Run as IE7′ (or similar) button. If things weren't working right, new features were being a pain, it got buggy…you clicked on that and 'everything' just went away and you could just carry on with what you were doing on whatever site you were on and went to from there. It was a massive mistake removiing it from the beta 2! I might even still be using it now if it was there. There also needs to be an 'I Don't Care!' button for annoying repetative features like the yellow bar, which should also have a 'Fix it Then!' button. Failing that, a 'What The Hell Do You Want From Me?' button. There is nothing worse then bossy alerts that steal focus and give you no clear and simple option to fix the issue, leaving you completely confused as to what's required and no way to turn them off.
System: XP Home SP3, full Windows Updates, Latest: Java, Flash, Shockwave etc. No other issues with system.
Hi, I downloaded IE8b2 and find it good.
One comment. I found some secure sites would not accept IE8 and did not open eg Banks. The way round, found by trying everything, is to use Compatibility View. This is the broken page right side of address bar next refresh and stop and on Tools in the browser. Putting the relevant site in Compatibility View Settings fixes any problems. It would be good if once you have a number of these "fixes" to tell us of them in an article. I think there is nlots more of IE8 under the bonnet (hood for USA). thanks
I like it! Better than the rest including safari.
Thanks for the review. Not being as inclined to early adopt as I once used to be, it was great to see the "mild" disclaimer at the end. The comments by Jenna & Michael accentuated my trepidation towards trying yet another beta product. After being burned by a certain RC from MS, I leave the testing to people who know what they're doing. (Like I used to think I did. *snicker*)
Very informative, and we all know that sooner or later we will have to install IE8 eventually. It's looks like it has some great potential.
well installed and i totally wish i had not……. :o( gone is smooth scrolling ,pages load REALLY slow now, and now its on my machine and CANT be removed
CAUTION!!! INSTALL AT OWN RISK!!
I'll wait for the final release, as most of these new "features" are just ported from MSIE7Pro. I've been using IE7Pro for over a year. Most of the options and add-ins make it very similar to Firefox. Plus it has the option for user scripts as well (Greasemonkey?)
Great article, Geek! Keep up the good work!
D
For all those mentioning having to use IE for specific sites, I had this issue as well until I downloaded the IE Tabs Add-On for Firefox, which allows you to switch to an IE tab without leaving Firefox. No more IE! Woohoo!
I have just installed IE8, and first opinions are that it is really nice
I'll keep you all posted…
For all the people having problems uninstalling IE8 on Vista, IE8 will not show up in the normal add/remove progams list. You need to click on "View installed updates" on the left hand side bar of the add/remove progams window. "Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2″ is listed there under Microsoft Windows group
Installed IE8 and I am impressed. New search functionalities are great. Now I can search directly on Amazon and Wikipedia means less Google. InPrivate browsing is nice, but no way to activate it permanently. It resets everytime you close the browser. Issue with signing in as a different user in GMail. Problem with stock charts in Yahoo Finance. But these issues go away when I click the compatibility mode.
When I access my company Outlook web access, it crashes 100%. So far, this is a keeper. Oh, and it is really fast compared to IE7. I use WinXP Pro. I always liked IE's font and icon rendering compared to Firefox, and IE8 is the same as IE7 in this regard.
I have been using XP Pro, SP3 and had some problems with IE7 seizing up on me often so I installed IE8 Beta 2, and what a mistake that was! It installed and seemed to work well until I went to use windows/microsoft udate. Every time I go there Internet Explorer crashes my PC and my Processor hits 100% and sits, so I have to manually reboot. That is with 2.7 Dual Core AMD with 4 Gigs DIMM2 Ram. Think I will just keep on using my Firefox3. Don't have hardly any problems with it usually. But after I did install IE8 it started to seize up a few times til I deleted it and reinstalled IE7. Now, I can only get updates automatically and not able to use the update site to get others I want and need. All I get now is Cryptographic Errors Detected and have tried all the fixes microsoft said to use. So reinstalled my Firefox (thank GOD I had it still on my desktop from before hand. lol!
Another think I highly recommend is to try and stay away from SATA drives! Weather it be hard drives or DVD/CD Rom's. They are way too fast and if you have any disks or programs even on other IDE drives that you may install, all will come up with corrupt files most of the time! Just a warning to those who have older or even not so old CDs DVD,s or programs. I had to us my old IDE DVD R/RW to install all my programs to my pc after I rebuilt to a totally new updated system just to be able to read the windows installation disk.
Good luck eveyone with that IE8 or other IE. Firefox is still the best bet for sure. Much more stable and faster too!
I tried this newer version and also found it far better than first release, except for the biggie.(at least on both my machines vista and xp) i would download a file and it would just dissapear when i tried to run it. Same thing with a winzip file. Also opening winzip i found it had taken all files away. I would reload them and everytime i tried to open one it would once again dissapear along with all other assosiations. Back to IE 7 and all is good.
I installed IE8B2 and the problems that I had were I could not watch TV online. The players would not play from NBC.com or ABC.com. Also secured sites were denying entry using IE8. Yahoo mail did not open in the new format. Needless to say I reverted back to IE7 Pro
I was enticed too by some comments, but I wish I would have never downloaded it. It is like always with MS, soooooo many bugs and it just slows down your enitre machine and you wonder why. Next to a really bad OS (Vista), which is a memory hog by itself, now you have something that's even worse.
I don't know what's wrong with people these days. Everybody seems to like things that are a trend or a new technology. It doesn't need to do the job, but hey, it is cool and the latest. I am so sick and tired of new technology. Today nobody develops software anymore for functionality and reliability, no, it has to be the latest. That's why we have so many problems with anything and everything takes soooooo long. In addition, it takes sooo much longer. Sometimes I think even manually you could do that faster.
Sick and tired of this stuff. Don't download it, very soon you will think I should have listened to this Dark Lord guy, he was right. MS uses you to test their stuff, because they don't know how to test their stuff themselves.
DO NOT DOWNLOAD IT. NOT READY YET.
Great, now I have to go and figure out how to get it back to 7, it this is even possible.
I hope soon Google or some other company that is big enough will come out with some new OS that will actually work and have cool stuff, like real next generation stuff. Neither Apple nor MS knows how to do this. It seems like with WM, MS is stuck in their pattern and they don't know how to get out of it.
Can somebody please develop something new and get a rid of all this trash. I cannot believe we pay all this money for being a tester for them.
The Dark Lord
okay i tried it it sucks…its fast wen it wants to b otherwise it freezes up i want my old internet back….PLEASE SOMEONE HELP
I have tried several times to install the "final" version of Internet Explorer 8 ;but, I always get a response from the install program that it has to install another file–which when I try to download that program from Microsofts' download sight…says, I already have a file more "current" than that one..And, subsequently..backs out of installation,and stops the install process. Is it even worth the effords to try to get this so-called "free" upgrade.
From what I've read here—I don't think so…
Microsoft—what a "greedy" and dangerious company…
P.S.: I've tried to sigh-up for like a personal comment/question for your newsletter;but, I'm getting an "error" and some code I can'r recall.
Your Web site has my e-mail address;and, and I do receive frequent e-mails for "How To Geek". So, I would like this cleared up,due to the fact that you offer knowledge–that even Microsoft won't give out–without a major credit card, and your 1st born.
P.S.:Again… By the way My first name is Joseph. It's been a long day.
Sorry about that, chief.
IE8 update for vista 64 seems to be very piggy…
I have highly suspected ie8 for vista sp1 64 bit is a big resource hog too. I have tried 3 different times to install the internet explorer 8 update for vista sp1 64 bit and everytime afterwards, even after several restarts, the load on my intel quad core processor becomes elevated and erratic without ie8 even open and remains that way until I use the "MicrosoftFixit50238.msi" tool designed specifically to remove ie8 after which my processor resources return to normal and are non-eratic. I want to install the update for security reasons but I am trying to not use internet explorer much until a new version of the ie8 update gets released. Hopefully a cleaner coded version is coming soon.
I tried IE 8. I hate it. It freezes my computer, loading so slow. How can I uninstall it and install IE 7 version back? Please help. Thanks
what external harddrive recomended for backing up entire OS