It seems that they have taken a good look around in the browser market and analyzed the crown jewels of the other browsers integrating them into the new Internet Explorer 8 Beta. This begins when starting Internet Explorer 8 for the first time. It asks you if you want to import bookmarks from either Firefox or Opera into the Microsoft browser. Something unthinkable in the past, at least at such a prominent position and location in the browser.

Bookmark import is fluent and Internet Explorer 8 does not seem to have a problem importing Firefox 3 bookmarks. That’s good. Internet Explorer 8 features an add-on browser similar to that of Firefox with the exception that you cannot search for add-ons in the menu itself. It does list all the installed toolbars, plugins and add-ons though which is great for getting a quick overview and disabling them.

Memory Footprint:

The memory footprint of Internet Explorer 8 is surprisingly low, using only half of the computer memory and virtual memory that Firefox 3 uses under similar circumstances.

Internet Explorer 8 Address Bar:

The new address bar which incorporates auto suggestions, the history, bookmarks and feeds looks clean and tidy which I personally like better than the display all mixed that Firefox 3 uses. The only negative aspect are the light colors that are used, it is hard to read for the eyes. Could be related to the Windows colors that I’m using on my system though.

Find On Page:

Another handy feature is the advanced find on page option that displays the number of occurrences of a term on a website. That’s handy if you are scrolling through a source code or large website and want to find a specific item. This enhanced feature is also highlighting all finds on the page at once which is great for a quick overview and orientation.

Tab Groups:

Internet Explorer will color tabs with a similar color if a user opens a link from an existing tab making it easy to distinguish websites and information.

Undo Close Tabs / Restore Sessions:

Internet Explorer comes with features to reopen tabs that have been closed by the user.

Enhanced Search:

The search box is now showing real time suggestions including images plus it includes the user’s favorites and browsing history.

Accelerators:

Accelerators are functions to use services of other websites on the current page. It reminds me a bit of Ubiquity with the difference that Accelerators are individual services that have to be activated. Accelerators are installed like add-ons and provide access to popular services like Stumbleupon, Facebook or Google Maps.

Web Slices:

Web Slices are items that can be placed in the Internet Explorer Favorites Bar who update themselves automatically. This can be news related, new items on eBay or Amazon, weather information or practically anything that is updated regularly.

Security:

Security has taken a major step in the right direction. Internet Explorer 8 comes with a Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) filter, Domain highlighting, Per-site and Per-user ActiveX and Data execution prevention.

InPrivate Browsing was introduced which allows to surf the web without storing data about that session in the browser.

Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 shows lots of promise. The version is feature complete which means that there will be no additional features in the release candidates and final release version of Internet Explorer 8.

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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.

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