Internet Explorer 8 (Beta 2) - a promising, bold new version

Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 is out and I took it out for a spin.

I had dabbled with IE 8 Beta 1 on XP2 VPC (Virtual PC) Hard Disk Image. I'm glad Microsoft has provided a VPC (Disk Image of Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 or a .VHD file on Windows XP SP3 (of 464.6 MB size) soon after it's release. I tried it out on the freely downloadable Virtual PC 2007.

IE 8 Beta 2 is bold because it has greater standards compliance than previous versions, a fact lauded by none other than Peter-Paul Koch who maintains the most comprehensive analysis of the quirks & behaviors of different browsers.

It is promising as it has features like Accelerators, InPrivate Browsing, Tab isolation, Domain name highlighting that make for a better & safer browsing experience. There are over a dozen new features compared to beta 1.

One of the Firefox features I sorely missed in IE was the inline type-ahead Find feature. IE 8 Beta 2 now has a non-modal Find that appears as a toolbar below the Tabs (unlike in Firefox where it appears at the bottom). It is somewhat similar to the Find feature in Safari which shows count of results with highlighting.

Private Browsing in Safari 3 gives you no visual clue if that feature is activated whereas in IE8b2, the InPrivate label is shown in the address bar.

Integrated Developer Tools is a cool addition that Developers will love.

I hope IE8 will have even more pleasant surprises when it is finally released. Meanwhile I will go back to learning more about Accelerators.

Related links:
Safari on Windows
Free ebook - Firefox 3 REVEALED