Brightrev

Microsoft recently released Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1, which promises better standards compliance, faster performance and several new features. Though the IE8 has rendering issues you’d expect from an early beta product, the product’s compelling new features make it worth a look.

IE8 doesn’t yet render every page correctly. I’ve seen rendering problems with Google calendar, as shown below.

I’ve also heard of problems with Windows Live Hotmail and Windows Update. Brightrev.com seems to render correctly, though mouseovers are a little slow, and IE8 seems to ignore the HSPACE and VSPACE IMG tags. These kinds of issues are to be expected from a Beta 1 release and will certainly be addressed in later betas.

IE8 has several cool new features. A few of the new features, like Activities and WebSlices, are big additions being promoted by Microsoft. However, there are a couple of smaller features worth mentioning.

When you download a file in IE8, a new Microsoft Safety Filter checks to make sure the download is safe. This should become an effective layer in preventing malware infections.

I’ve seen sites that entice you to download an executable when you hit the page, and others that pop up a download window when you click a link. Experienced users aren’t generally taken in by this, but less technical users are often fooled into infecting their own PCs with malware. If IE8’s Safety Filter can stop these downloads either by list or behavior, it will be another important step in eliminating the malware scourge on Windows.

In another small but useful feature, IE8 highlights just the domain name of whatever URL is in the address bar. Phishing sites often have URLs like: http://www.paypal.com.hacker.stealing.money.tv/somedirectory/seconddirectory/

Technical users know that the domain name in that mess is money.tv. Is it useful for a non-technical user to pick out the domain name in that URL? Definitely. Is it reasonable to expect everyone who uses the Internet to develop that skill? No.

A non-technical user could easily think that paypal.com is the domain name and end up handing over control of their bank account to a hacker. As you can see below, IE8 highlights the real domain name, so you can tell an IE8 user to look for the name of their bank in black, rather than having to explain how to parse a URL.

Automatic Crash Recovery catches up with a similar feature in Firefox, but it’s too useful to limit to one browser. To test ACR, I opened a half-dozen IE8 tabs and then killed the process, and ACR restored my session on reopening the browser. One would hope ACR wouldn’t be needed too often, but Murphy ’s Law says the browser will crash when you have a dozen tabs open, so crash recovery is nice to have when you need it.

Microsoft included two major new features in IE 8. The first feature is called Activities, which allow you to perform certain operations, like translate text or view a map, without leaving the current page. To use an Activity, highlight and then right-click text on any web page and then choose an activity.

My ASRock motherboard’s BIOS doesn’t support Windows Vista sleep mode, so I use a modified BIOS from German site PcTreiber.net. The BIOS options are in English, but instructions are only offered in German, so I need to translate German text. I can now use the Translate with Windows Live Activity without having to copy and paste text or a URL into Google Translate or AltaVista Bablefish.

There is also a useful mapping Activity from Microsoft Live Maps. If I’m planning a trip and want a general idea of where something is located in the city, I right-click the address or landmark name and click Map with Live Maps. Live Maps gives me a nice little pop-up map that I can click and drag to scroll.

Webslices are the second major new feature in IE8. A Webslice is a snippet of a web page that you can embed in your Favorites bar. Microsoft provides an eBay Webslice with Beta 1 that allows you search for and follow the progress of an eBay item with a single click.

There are a myriad of ways Webslices might be useful. For example, if you’re traveling between two cities, you might embed a weather Webslice for both the origination and destination city so you can quickly check the weather in both places. Similarly, you might add a flight status Webslice so you can check flight status without getting up from your chair to check the screen.

Microsoft added several great new features to IE8. Activities and Webslices will get all the attention and become increasingly useful as web developers implement these features on their sites. In addition, Microsoft has made both formats available in a Creative Commons license for use in other browsers. Several smaller features have the potential to reduce malware infections and phishing attacks, which are major problems on the Windows platform. I’m a Firefox user and I don’t plan to switch. Even for IE users, IE8 Beta 1 isn’t quite ready to become your default browser. However, IE8 will eventually give current Internet Explorer users good reasons to stay with IE, and pending new features in Firefox 3.0, it might even cause users of Firefox on Windows to reconsider.

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