IE8 Beta Released To Public 605
Tim writes "English, German, Simplified Chinese, and Japanese versions of Internet Explorer 8 have been released for public beta. New features include accelerators, which provide instant context menu access for a number of common tasks; automatic crash recovery, which prevents a single page's failures from taking down your entire browser; and browser privacy, a feature that didn't make Firefox 3. I'm primarily a Firefox user, and I've been using IE8 at work (MS) for the past few weeks. It's a definite improvement over previous versions, and brings a lot to the table that Firefox requires extensions for. Give it a spin, submit feedback, and help keep all browser makers on their toes by facing each other's competition."
Browser privacy (Score:5, Interesting)
I wonder how the browser privacy feature will work regarding external content from sites:
flash files store preferences outside of explorers' reach.
java applets get placed outside of the cache.
movies files play outside of ie.
pdfs might open outside.
word documents listed in word recent files list.
theres many more programs and protocols which would leave tracks.
people expecting privacy mode to actually keep things private are going to be in for a BIG shock.
good luck
Press the button and protect your privacy .... (Score:4, Interesting)
> and browser privacy, a feature that didn't make
Yeah, but the user has to turn it on .... Press the button, enter "InPrivateBrowsing" and your privacy is protected .... Kind of silly. Shouldn't such a feature be activated in the first place? And then, when the application requires the long-term cookies or you want a history, you turn off certain parts of it?
Re:Shows what competion can do. (Score:5, Interesting)
Yup, I'm wondering why the beta is available in german rather than a language with more speakers, such as spanish. Are they perhaps trying to win back the notoriously large amount of Firefox users in Germany?
Re:Standards-complient or not? (Score:0, Interesting)
Web masters do their share too. Imagine how the web would look if all the hacks went away tomorrow.
It would look great, because MS would have fixed their pile of shit browser already.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Thoughts (Score:3, Interesting)
New versions of IE is a Good Thing... Competition is good with something like browsers.
For the average Joe having features which normally require extensions just be there is probably a good thing. Perhaps Firefox should have the option to enabling a set of officially sanctioned extensions while installing? Bloating is not the solution, but checking the "enable feature X" checkbox beats searching for the actually good ones...
Private browsing is a two-sided thing. It's a good feature, but sort of pointless if you actually want to store bookmarks of things like your favorite naughty sites... I run two Firefox profiles personally. Unfortunately it's a bit difficult to set up, but I get the best of both worlds.
Re:Shows what competion can do. (Score:4, Interesting)
I believe that German was chosen over Spanish for the betas because it's the second-most popular spoken language for programmers (at least, it used to be; I'm not too sure anymore). They cover the top two for debuggers out there, and then also include packages for Chinese and Japanese to test the character rendering and what-not.
Crash recovery... (Score:4, Interesting)
Sounds like a great feature, I can't try IE8 since I'm on Linux, but from the descriptions I've read of it, it seems like they're doing something right this time instead of just jacking up the release number.
I can't believe I'm actually sitting here hoping that Firefox will copy a feature from IE. Good game, Microsoft.
Re:Standards-complient or not? (Score:4, Interesting)
Developers, Developers, Developers.
Developers have moved on. IE is one of those things you test for once you've finished your work in Firefox.
This private browsing thing, if it wasn't a closed source application from a group that has a history of co-operating with US intelligence gathering organizations, might be vaguely interesting.
But the circumstances being what they are, it strikes me as a way to help the overstaffed NSA by red flagging your most sensitive items for their attention.
Re:Extensions are bad? (Score:5, Interesting)
> You say that like it is a bad thing.
It *is* a bad thing. Usually built in features work - extensions in my experience, often don't and can easily be incompatible with each other.
I've only got a handful of extensions (5) installed and Firefox 3 crashes about 12 times a week according to the logs. According to the same logs, IE has only crashed twice EVER since I built the machine 6 months ago and I use it almost as often (I'm a web developer).
I think it's the extension-heavy approach which makes Firefox the least stable piece of software I've ever used. I doubt it crashes if you don't install any extensions. More basic features should be built in in my opinion - so you don't need to install an extension to get an extremely rudimentary feature like a close button on each tab.
Re:Thoughts (Score:5, Interesting)
Imagine being able to download from the official Firefox site such distributions as:
Re:Browser privacy (Score:5, Interesting)
Although casual users cannot see the previous user's search history, authorities such as the police will be able to access it if necessary.
Kind of makes it seem like it's still stored somewhere, and while I don't know how the data is stored, I can't imagine it will take too long to figure out how to view the history of others.
Also interesting is that people at MS apparently nicknamed it 'Porn Mode'.
Re:Extensions are bad? (Score:5, Interesting)
Interesting. Let's take a slightly deeper look, by looking at the most popular add-ons, and see if most non-savvy people would want them:
1.Ad-block plus - Users might like it, but people running the sites and companies would absolutely hate it. Get ready for a huge backlash on enabling this one in the base package.
2. DownloadHelper - Again, users may like it, but the people running the video sites would be fuming. As would people who do simple paid-for web tutorials, who would have everyone able to get their stuff extremely easily. Once again, good size backlash. This also has features that may need to be updated more frequently, such as when embedding code changes or something on the popular sites changes.
3. No-Script - I don't know if this would really help most non-savvy users, as they wouldn't understand why many more popular sites won't work that well, not to mention all the ajax-y things they'd miss.
4. Download-them-all - May be a good thing to implement (along with Download Status bar, a personal favorite). I'm not sure how many people would use its benefits though, but this one is a serious contender.
5. Flashgot (See Download Helper)
6. Firebug - No real use to non-savvy people.
7. Fast-video Download - See Download Helper
8. Cooliris - Cool, but no real functionality. Of course, Compiz, Widgets, Apples, etc all live off of cool, but I don't think this should be standard, especially since it is windows only.
9. IE Tab - Very nice for people who still stubbornly make IE specific sites, but still windows only.
10. Colorful tabs - cute, but not really functional. Might be a nice option though.
So, of the top 10, only one could really have a good argument made for it being in the base package. I actually think Mozilla does a pretty good job finding the middle ground of stuff to keep in the base, and stuff to have as extensions, and that helps keep the energy where they think it should be, instead of focusing on little segments.
I might add that I like extensions also since they can add new functionality before a new version comes out.
Isn't Firefox smaller in download size than IE?
Re:Shows what competion can do. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Extensions are bad? (Score:4, Interesting)
Out of curiosity, what extensions are you using? I have around 7 or 8 depending on computer, and I've had no crashes. As always, people's problems vary, but I'm curious as to what may be crashing you.
As for the most popular extensions, such as downloadhelper, firebug, etc, those tend to be pretty darn reliable, which may be due to many bug reports, the open source concept of helping out with fixes, or because people tend to use things that work, but I have had very few problems.
On the other hand, I've had VERY bad luck with active-X "extensions" in IE, and even when not allowing ActiveX, I crash more with IE.
On another note, is it the sites you are working on that tend to crash, or basic browsing? Maybe IE is more forgiving of code you are still working on and may have forgotten a curly brace or two?
Automatic crash recovery sounds interesting (Score:3, Interesting)
but does it also prevent tabs from hogging resources (e.g. in Firefox, where an applet loading in one tab can lock the entire application).
Re:Shows what competion can do. (Score:3, Interesting)
What makes you think those people seeking an alternative browser wouldn't have chosen Opera instead? (not open source, and frankly much better than both FF and IE IMHO).
Yes FF has a bigger market share than Opera, but Opera may have had that share if FF didn't exist, prompting MS to take the same action.
Re:Extensions are bad? (Score:2, Interesting)
Most of the crashes I experience are due to Flash, and even that doesn't come close to crashing 12 times a week.
Re:Is Microsoft trying to hurt Google? Yes (Score:3, Interesting)
Msie, apparently, has a firefox like drop-down box of search engines, and wikipedia, etc. But the msie drop-down menu does not include google. Ouuu what a burn! Also, if you highlight a street address, msie will take you to msft maps, not google maps.
Just one more reason to use firefox instead of msie. BTW: according to the same article, firefox installed base is up 6% to 19% while msie fell 6% to 73% of the installed base, or something like that.
http://www.forbes.com/technology/2008/08/27/microsoft-google-browsers-cx_vmb_0827ie.html?feed=rss_technology [forbes.com]
Loop de loop? (Score:2, Interesting)
Sounds like a loop to me, unless the crash happened due to random memory corruption in IE? I could be missing some common error that can happend to browsers so please correct me and I'll learn something.
---
When I made the switch to FF, initially I just prefered the look and feel of the browser. First thing I liked about it, was that the adress field was pre selected when you started it. In IE you had to use the mouse. This was just a small difference, but when you have loads of these little differences, where someone has really taken their time with the details researching what comes natural to the user, at least it was clear to me that FF was the way to go.
How about you?
new features not in Firefox .. (Score:5, Interesting)
What's tools->clear private data
and
Firefix - Restore Previous Session
Your last Firefox session closed unexpectedly. YOu can restore the tabs and windows from your previous sessions, or start a new session if you think the problem was related to a page you were viewing.
| Restore Session | | Start New Session |
Re:Shows what competion can do. (Score:1, Interesting)
now, try to get stats for "native spanish speaking working with teh internet" and for "native german speaking poulation working with teh internet"... i fear you will get the inverse values.
a.
Re:Shows what competion can do. (Score:1, Interesting)
ermm... actually, greek language has the longest words
Hopefully (Score:3, Interesting)
Hopefully they fixed FTP handling, which the broke horribly in IE 7.
I pretty much have to log in twice to get ftp to work in windows explorer.
Re:Oh, I'd like a version (Score:3, Interesting)
BSD users use BSD because they love Unix.
Which is the best part of BSD. I love unix and I love windows. Nobody cares if I submit new freebsd ports and happen to use a text editor in windows to create the Makefile and Outlook to mail the attachment to the port maintainers :-)
If you tried that on Linux, you'd probably be flamed to a crisp.
Re:Browser privacy (Score:3, Interesting)
Also interesting is that people at MS apparently nicknamed it 'Porn Mode'.
Those crafty Microsoftians, always innovating! [tuaw.com] Only 3 years behind this time... I think that's a new record! *rolls eyes*
Re:Running multiple versions of IE (Score:3, Interesting)
http://tredosoft.com/Multiple_IE [tredosoft.com]
Multiple IE works for me, as long as you aren't on Vista. I have all the IE versions back to 5 running.
Re:Shows what competion can do. (Score:3, Interesting)
I have no inside knowledge of IE8, but I've worked on other localized products before. It's quite likely that the German translators were done, but the Spanish translators were still working on it. In other words, it may not have really been a conscious choice by MS to include German but not Spanish, just an artifact of the translators' schedules.
Not always true (Score:2, Interesting)
I'd gladly pay MS £30 for a set of working Direct X libraries for Linux. That's about how much a Windows OEM license is; I just hate having to reboot for modern games!
I moved to Linux about 11yrs ago because I really hated Windows. I've been using Debian for 8yrs and now that I've spent (read:wasted :P) all that time getting it working exactly how I want it with all the apps I love I just can't bear to use Windows anymore. It's a pain!
Now that I've been using GNU/Linux for so long I've turned into a total True Believer so I'd never use MS (or Apple for that matter) apps / tools but I don't care about games being proprietary. I'd view it as akin to paying money for a console and I own several of those.
Re:new features not in Firefox .. (Score:3, Interesting)
I think this is one of the most exciting features, on a purely geeky level. I can't profess to know how Microsoft engineered this, but it reminds me of the move that operating systems made to protected memory [wikipedia.org]. We used to have to deal with situations in which one application's crash would take down the entire operating system and all other applications with it (Mac OS 9, I'm looking at you).
Now that the web browser metaphor has changed from "windows reading static documents" to "tabbed window with multiple web applications," the similarity to an operating system has become much clearer. A crash in one tab (application) can take down the entire browser (operating system). IE8 seems to be moving toward a protected memory model, which is a major step forward in rethinking how the browser's handling of web pages (i.e. web applications) is engineered.
I'm a Mac user and Firefox user, but I have to give credit where credit is due and say that, on the technical side of things, Microsoft is the one pushing the envelope on this score and getting the geeky things right.
Re:new features not in Firefox .. (Score:4, Interesting)
I can't profess to know how Microsoft engineered this
Here's a blog post [msdn.com] from the IE team that describes how the feature works, if you're interested in more. Basically, it creates a couple different processes, which are all separate from the main UI frame. This means one process can crash, bringing down all the tabs in that process, but the rest are unaffected.
I agree, I think it's a pretty exciting feature. It almost makes crashing your browser an enjoyable experience. (I managed to crash a tab when I installed the Adobe SVG plugin to see if I could get another point or two on the Acid3 test).
One negative side effect of this is that there is some overhead in creating new processes. This will probably lead to Slashdot complaining about how much memory IE uses and how bloated it is, but personally, I find the reliability gains worth it. Another positive side effect though is that it isolates the Javascript interpreters from each other, which keeps one misbehaving page from locking up the whole browser.