Mark Long, newsfactor
Microsoft's next-generation browser for 32-bit and 64-bit computing platforms is currently available in English, Japanese, Chinese and German, with additional languages coming soon, said Dean Hachamovitch, general manager of Microsoft's IE8 development team.
"While Beta 1 was for developers, we think that anyone who browses or works on the Web will enjoy IE8 Beta 2," Hachamovitch said.
Real-World Browsing
Suggested Sites is one good example of the IE8 development team's commitment to streamlining Web navigation. Click on the Suggested Sites button on the toolbar to see the top recommendations, based on choices made by online users visiting the same page.
In addition, the browser's new address bar is no longer just for URLs. Simply type a keyword into IE8's new "smart" address bar and the browser immediately searches across a user's history, favorites and RSS feeds to identify all the resources accessed during past online sessions. Users also can hit the return key after inputting a word to tell the browser to display the results of a Windows Live search.
Moreover, IE8's Web Slices capability gives users the ability to subscribe, view and interact with portions of their favorite Web sites with a single click on the Favorites bar.
"We looked very hard at how people really browse the Web," Hachamovitch said, "and tried a lot of different designs in front of many kinds of people, not just technologists."
Accelerated Access
Much like the Mozilla Labs new Ubiquity plug-in for Firefox 3, IE8's Accelerators option makes it easy for users to launch a variety of online services without leaving the page currently being displayed. Simply highlight any text on a page and right-click on it to reference a map, define a word, place content in e-mails and blogs, or even translate foreign-language snippets into English.
Browser crashes have been one of the most frustrating downsides to working with Internet Explorer 7 because the user loses every tabbed page open at the time. However, the loosely coupled structure of IE8 separates the browser's frame from the tabs, and the tabs from each other.
"Crashes are more contained and affect fewer tabs than before," explained Hachamovitch. The last browsing session from the most recently closed instance of IE8 can also be reopened.
Multiple tabs are now categorized into color-coded groups that make it easier for users to navigate among a large number of open Web pages. And if a tabbed page does crash, it will be automatically reloaded and any information the user may have already entered on the page is also restored.
If you are thinking about taking IE8 for a test drive, keep in mind that this is not a final product and it will not necessarily work smoothly with certain services, applications and add-on programs. But for the most part, Beta 2 integrates a number of improvements that can help users surf the Internet in a quicker and more efficient manner.
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