Try out the IE 8 Beta

It seems like it was just yesterday that IE 7 was released. Well, the IE 8 beta is now available to the public, and anyone can download and try it out.

I had a chance to download and give it a try. It does have some ground breaking features. I am not sure if they will take hold or not.

One example is the activity providers. You can right click anywhere within a web page and launch an activity provider:

So for example, I visited our website, right clicked and went to translate. I was brought directly to a translation:

IE 8 Activities Providers Translate

Another interesting feature is in the address bar. It highlights the domain name, so you can clearly see the exact URL you are visiting:

IE 8 Address Bar

This is the first browser Microsoft has released that is standards compliant. This comes at a cost, since not all websites are. For example, when I went to blogger.com some of the buttons were not aligned, and the subject edit box was missing:

IE 8 Some Sites Broken

This can be easily fixed by switching to IE 7 Compatibility mode:

IE 8 Emulate IE 7

It is an interesting release. I suggest checking it out.

Posted By: Steve Wiseman on Friday, March 14, 2008

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