Web Browser News and Reviews » Interent Explorer 8

Site Compatibility and Internet Explorer 8

Vygantas Lipskas — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 12:57:30 +0000

Quite informative post has been published recently on IE’s Blog which includes some of the IE7 and IE8 compatibility differences/issues as well as solutions on how to fix them.

Windows 7 Beta and Internet Explorer 8 Experience

Vygantas Lipskas — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 13:01:32 +0000

I was playing with the public beta of Windows 7 for a while now and decided to show you a few neat features of it while browsing with Internet Explorer and just show the overall experience.

Windows 7 shows all opened tabs on Internet Explorer 8.

Right Click on it and you’ll see your history.

Suggested sites.

As I haven’t installed Video drivers, this feature was not availaible to me. Picture source: IEBlog

Live Search Suggestion seems to be broken.

Sending a feedback.

Nice download progress bar in the task bar.

As you can see, tabs and history trick works on Internet Explorer only.

Small Google Chrome issue.

Not sure where to begin now. As for Windows 7 and Internet Explorer 8 integration, it’s a really nice idea. I understand why Microsoft hasn’t enabled the same feature for other web browsers. My guess would be: this is because of the development cycle. Even if they would do that, there are no guarantees that after the next release of any web browser; this feature would still work (due to core changes).

And regarding IE8 itself, well, as I said some time ago: it’s Microsoft’s first release close to a “real web browser”. There’s nothing new to say there.

And speaking about Windows 7 itself, I found it pleasant to have taskbar on the left side (which makes overall experience much better, due to similarities between start menu) of screen. Show desktop could be somewhere near start menu though.

[digg-reddit-me]

Internet Explorer 8 Slices for Firefox 3

Vygantas Lipskas — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 08:04:46 +0000

Not so long time ago Microsoft introduces web slices feature for IE8. However, if you don’t want to use Internet Explorer 8 yet, there’s a Firefox 3 add-on which allows you to subscribe to any web page section. Add-on developers aren’t sleeping.

Download WebChunks.

Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) Beta 2 Released

Vygantas Lipskas — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 09:21:25 +0000

As promised by Microsoft earlier, the 2nd beta of Internet Explorer 8 was released today. I really never thought to say that about IE, but it feels “OK” and assuming the fact that it’s only a Beta 2, it has a bit of potential to stop losing big pieces of market share every month.

What’s new in Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2?

New Tab experience

Here’s what you are going to see after new tab opened

Click to Enlarge

IE8 takes into account that there are often relationships between new tabs that users open, and the browser can make it a lot easier to figure out which tabs go with which. Below, the tabs that came from the links in the search results page are grouped together and colored differently from the headlines the user followed off another page, which are different from links the user followed off other pages:

Click to Enlarge

IE8 has finally received a Smart Address Bar which will surely increase users experience.

Click to Enlarge

Visual Search

As well as increased Safety and better web standards support.

Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 is available for 32- and 64-bit editions of Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, and Windows Server 2008.

Download
Upgrade Guide

Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) vs. Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) (Performance)

Vygantas Lipskas — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 13:25:40 +0000

I’ve some great news for Internet Explorer users. While IE8 Beta 1 had some performance improvements over IE7, it was not enough and developers knew that. As a result, they’ve made Internet Explorer 8 even faster. As it says:

Some of the tests we have done show pure JScript performance improvements up to 2.5 times. We also measured the performance gains on common Gmail operations, like loading the inbox (34%), opening a conversation (45%) and opening a thread (27%) compared to IE7.

I think that it’s a great improvement and Internet Explorer 8 Final will probably be even faster.

Now here’s what else IE 8 is going to offer:

Scripting Improvements
Memory Management Improvements
Networking Improvements
Rendering Engine Improvements
New Developer Features
Data URI
Selectors API
JSON

and much more.

[digg-reddit-me]

For a more detailed list of IE8 improvements, check this blog post.