DISQUS

Matt Shaulis · 10 months ago

Shilling for Microsoft much?

With the exception of "Compatibility View"* there was not a single original feature introduced by ie8 to the browser community at large... as with most things Microsoft, they have simply lifted the most logical features off of their competitors...

"Accelerators"... well that's just Microsoft coming up with a proprietary name for an already ubiquitous process ... in other words: processing of microformats AND/OR extensions. Old hat and nothing MS deserves any praise for FINALLY allowing into their crap browser.

"Web Slices" ... hmmm, seems to me that Safari 3 introduced this functionality with OSX Leopard long ago. What? Windows stole a feature from OSX?? Unheard of... Also, "you can receive updates whenever you get a new email" .. uh... I don't know about you but I don't need ie8 to tell me I have an email... haven't for years... so that bit was a little strange.

*Compatability View??? Let me see if I have this straight: The IE team is getting praise for sucking so bad in the past that they need to program a safety net into subsequent products?? No Comment.

The worst part of all of this, however, is that you really seem to honestly believe that it's too bad you can't put this shit product on a device built specifically to protect you from the eternal headache that is "dealing with a Microsoft product"! You should be falling on the ground and thanking god in heaven that you will never have to put up with ie8 on your Mac. (Do you forget what drove you to Mac in the first place?)

** Oops.. I guesss I forgot to give the IE team credit for their new anti-phishing protection... No browser "allows" XSS, lol. This is just MS fixing a flaw in *their browser* that has been brought to the table for years without any effort by MS to fix it... now they have... again, let's be careful not to praise MS for simply sucking less.

wait a second... you wrote this whole thing without even trying the browser?

Anthony Ha · 10 months ago

Um, this isn't a product review, just a short note that RC1 has been released, and a brief description of some of the more interesting features. The point wasn't that IE8 is hugely innovative, just that it sounds like a big improvement on IE7.

Matt Shaulis · 10 months ago

Shutting down the IE project would be the best improvement over IE7. ;)

Jennifer · 10 months ago

Not everybody hates IE, and I don't imagine a web browsers war without IE.

TJ · 10 months ago

preach on brutha... i couldnt believe the author was giving kudos but has never used the product. wtf.

Anthony Ha · 10 months ago

Note that my "kudos" consisted of saying that the features I've been shown looked cool. Which is true.

Please point out where I say this is a good product, or imply that this post is a product review of any kind.

multisystemuser · 10 months ago

have you even used it? I use it, firefox, safari and very very rarely chrome. They're all fine.

And anyway, who really cares who copied what from who?!? Everyone, EVERYONE, has copied something from someone. at the end of the day I just want to use my machine. It works. end of story.

Krystalo · 10 months ago

You can use it on your Mac, install Windows.

Anthony Ha · 10 months ago

That doesn't count!

flannelplanet.com · 10 months ago

MacCook?
Get yourself a PC

Anthony Ha · 10 months ago

Ouch. Fixed.

SethGilespie · 10 months ago

Anthony,

I agree with you that the killer feature in IE-8 is Accelerators. The problem with Accelerators is that the user has to figure out which one to apply to his selection. It’s just unusable once you get more than two or three.

The version of selection-based search which I love is KallOut. www.KallOut.com

KallOut already works over IE (the older versions and the new one) and Firefox (my favorite) and Chrome, as well as all of office.

What IE8 Beta really needs is a way for the application to automatically choose which accelerator you need to use for a given mouse-based search request. Kallout already does this with its “Best-Guess” feature.

I downloaded the Kallout application from CNET but its main site is www.kallout.com
-SG

Anthony Ha · 10 months ago

How do you think KallOut compares to Vysr or Ubiquity?

kosso · 10 months ago

It *might* 'accelerate' the web for a user, but it slows down every web developer I know who has to try and make pages look exactly like the standards-compliant browsers out there.

Seriously. IE is by far the worst browser out there to develop for, wasting so much design/development time, and it's about time that the courts forced them to take it out of Windows by default - which is THE single only reason it has such a high market share.

So many (normal) people think the internet IS that blue 'e' icon, having no idea about alternatives.

ugh · 10 months ago

Yeah, have the courts force them to take out a product they developed and put into a product that they developed. What's next? Tell Sony to take out memory sticks slots from their devices and allow for sd cards? Some people need to realize that MSFT never *prevented* people from downloading another browser. That would be an issue. But why should they include other choices or take out something they spent millions on developing? To "play nice"? I imagine Apple would have no problems including Zune format songs in iTunes, right? Ya know, to give people a choice.

kosso · 10 months ago

You will see here that the courts around the world are starting to agree :

http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&client=fi...

My main beef with IE is the hours and hours of time wasted in *tweaking* sites to work 'properly' within IE. It simply does NOT conform to standards. Are you a web designer/developer?

(I will say that I hear that IE8 appears to be working better than previous versions, but it takes years to upgrade from older versions, especially on corporate desktops)

Quite simply, it is not a very good browser and also the most unsafe of them all, though thankfully they are at least making an effort to deal with security more these days.

I'm no Microsoft hater, I use ALL OSes regularly in my work, having been a web designer and developer for well over a decade. I'm not a Firefox fanboy either, though it is my favorite browser. I just, quite simply, want to stop wasting time dealing with things that should not be 'broken' in the first place.

JRP · 10 months ago

Internet Explorer has adopted strict web standards with its newest browser version. This unfortunately creates issues with websites optimized for older versions and other browsers. IE8 has included compatibility view to ensure these sites still function properly in the meantime as more sites update. Take a look for yourself:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSs1ulZKgCA

halflet.com · 10 months ago

I'm not going to back to IE, there a lot issue, freeze, crash.even the features.. ugly, nothing can beat firefox imo.

sudo apt-get install · 10 months ago

Are we that quick to dismiss technology innovation simply because it's being developed by a company you don't care for? Fanboys...

Matt · 10 months ago

You have got to be kidding me. Is this what passes as a product review these days. You regurgitate a bunch of stuff you read on the web and don't even try the product yourself? Why should I ever read anything that you write again? I have no idea how you clawed your way to the top of techmeme with this useless article. In the future could you please at least try to put in an honest days work .

Lame! Lame! Lame!

ugh · 10 months ago

I actually use FF3 about 60% of the time and IE8 the rest. Some sites just work better with one than the other. Chrome sucks IMO - too spartan for my tastes.

Q dub · 10 months ago

Accelerators look conceptually a lot like Ubiquity but not built after a command line, which I actually think is the better solution for mainstream users.

JRP · 10 months ago

We really do feel these features create a unique new browser experience. IE8 is designed to make the things most users do online quicker and easier. Take a look at these videos to understand how these features function a little more clearly.

Web Accelerators:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pmw4nJBJ0s

Web Slices:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqXR79P_Uzo

JRP
Internet Explorer Outreach Team

frost · 9 months ago

I really hope that I can stop wasting time on IE specific development with this release. Microsoft has forever alienated me as a web designer, and for that reason alone I will never support any of their products.

I believe that with the Open Source movement, companies like Microsoft will be chipped away at until they are only dealing with the years and years of problems, that their "vendor lock-in" business model has created.

Don · 2 weeks ago

I agree!!