Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 Now Available

The second beta of Microsoft’s upcoming browser Internet Explorer 8 has been released today to the public according to the Internet Explorer Blog. Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 is available for all 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows Server 2003 / 2008 and the languages English, German, Japanese and Chinese with additional versions to be available at a later time.

The Internet Explorer development team focused on three themes according to the announcement: Everyday browsing, safety and the plattform with everyday browsing probably getting the biggest boost in this beta.

Microsoft is providing a navigation bar that is doing more than just opening urls or showing pages that have been visited before. The navigation bar resembles that of Firefox’s location bar with suggestions, feeds, history and favorites thrown into the mix. The Smart Address Bar as it is called now looks cleaner that that of Firefox because it breaks down the different data locations nicely.

The Internet Explorer developers introduced colored tabs, so called tab groups, depending on the type of site and source that has been accessed and way to restore closed tabs and entire sessions.

Internet Explorer Activities have been renamed to Accelerators and Beta 2 sees a few new additions to the concept. Lastly you get a visual search when entering a search term in the default search bar in the header area.

Some features in the everyday browsing category are interesting. I like the clean look of the smart address bar and the colored tabs.

The team is also stating that they have speed up Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 performance wise but I was not able to test that yet extensively.

A lot of smaller changes have been introduced in Internet Explorer 8 as well that make the web experience a tad easier. Take Find on Page for example. When you search on a page Internet Explorer is showing you the number of hits it found on that page. A very nice handy feature.

A lot has been done in the security sector as well. InPrivate Browsing ensures that no data is written and stored on the local PC while browsing Internet sites. In addition to that InPrivate Blocking makes it possible to block third party web content that track or aggregate online behavior.

The development team has put lots of though into this version and I can say that I have not been so excited about a new version of Internet Explorer in a long time. Firefox users can add most of the features with add-ons but it is definitely a step in the right direction for users who are using Internet Explorer. Well done Microsoft.