Reviewing Internet Explorer 8 Beta version
As the tagline of upcoming Bollywood flick, Karzzzz says, “Vengeance is back”. Firefox 3 was really a top notch browser, which helped Mozilla, making its presence much dominant, than IE. But, Microsoft is back, with their new version of IE, competing for the “Best Browser for Windows” title, yet again.
Beta version of IE is officially available for download on Microsoft’s site, for quite a time now. For past few days, we went on testing this new iteration of IE, and for a sweet surprise, it actually surpassed our expectations. Obviously we don’t expect very much from IE, since the launch of Firefox 3, but still IE 8 is quite comparable to FF3, in terms of stability, security, faster loading, crash recovery and other such useful features. Only thing that IE still lacks is the number of addons available to download, to customize your experience the way you want it. Here is what we found about this new browser in the market.
- Security :- A really important issue, with any browser. IE8 definitely, is quite an improvement in this area, over its previous version. It easily clears the Acid test, making sure, that your experience with web is quite secure. Since its a beta version only, it definitely needs further improvement to be as secure as FF3, but still we have to wait a little more to see if IE8 is really secure and bug free.
- GUI :- Just by the looks, one can say, that it is made according to Windows Vista’s looks, which feels really catchy, than FF3’s default GUI. Although, FF3 has got some addons to improve its looks, in its arsenal, but on Windows Vista, IE8 definitely feels better than FF3. In beta version, though, we found few GUI issues, that were there in previous version of IE also, worth mentioning. The worst of all is the top menu bar, which takes up a full line, and shows only six menus. It would have been nice, if we can change its size just like a toolbar. Maximum no. of tabs shown at a time should have been less, so that tabs are easily.
- Faster loading :- Well, sorry Mozilla fans. But i have tried IE8 on a very old configuration too. It loads really faster than FF3. And it is even better at memory management. FF3 takes up nearly double memory space, for same 6 tabs, compared to IE8. Really a nice work, by guys at Redmond.
- Tabbed browsing :- A ripoff of FF3’s offering, its really well implemented. Tab grouping is another nice aspect, offered inbuilt in IE8, although for Firefox, add ons are available.
- Crash Recovery :- Something every one wanted to see in IE, after it has already being implemented in all other competing browsers. Finally with this iteration of IE, its here, and to much of our relief, it works flawlessly. And even better, it just doesn’t asks for restoring your previous session once like in FF3, but gives you an option to come back to your previous session, anytime, during the next session. So, even if crashed, and next time, you by mistake clicked on cancel instead of Restore, not everything is lost. Also, re opening a closed tab, is finally supported. Again, a rip off of Firefox’s offering, but a point scored for IE8, nonetheless.
- Address bar & Search bar :- Again a copy from FF3’s feature list. Address bar displays results from your web history, RSS feeds too, just like FF3. May be they should add desktop search, too alongwith this browser, just like Vista’s start menu. Although search bar is defaulted to Live Search, with an option to change it to other search providers, but still when we tried adding Google in that list, it just didn’t accepted it. Adding Wikipedia, amazon, etc. too was a lot of pain. We can expect to get this issue resolved, in final version. Still, displaying web results alongwith thumbnails, is real cool, and should be copied in FF3 too.
- Accelerators :- Nice innovation really. Although, adding other accelerators is a real pain, but that is just a bug, waiting for a fix. Anyways, it was really helpful to use those accelerators, really. I was easily able to cut down on my internet usage by 15% easily. Really helpful for everyone.
- Webslices :- Once again, a very innovative thought. It lets you get the latest info on a webpage without even navigating to it. Really a useful way, to keep an eye on stock quotes, or your favourite news site, or may be on a bid you placed at amazon. It is really useful and at times cool enough. Although, since this is just a new idea, not many websites are available which offers creating webslices of their pages. May be soon enough, we will see a better implementation of this feature, and a lot more sites, supporting it. Firefox developers, time to write one more add on for your FF3, this feature is a real killer.
- Safety Filter :- Have you ever got this warning that this page may harm your computer, while navigating from Google’s search result page. But wait, what if you would have come to that link directly. Definitely, this issue needs to be addressed. And here we have it. The same malicious web filter, in Google search engine, has been made redundant with this Safety filter in IE8. One more feature, we would like to see in FF3 as an add on.
- Performance :- Apart from Javascript, every where else, FF3 came crashing down to IE8. IE8 is twice as faster in rendering any graphically extensive site, than FF3. With Microsoft trying hard to gain an upperhand in graphically intensive sites, with its light weight Silverlight, on for Adobe’s Flash player, this high difference in performance is obvious. Something where FF3 needs to play catch up soon.
- InPrivate mode :- Also called “porn mode” by nearly everyone, this feature is once again, a nice innovative idea. As expected, not even a single information is stored about your web browsing, even if it crashes. That means if you visited a site, that crashed IE while in InPrivate mode, sorry to say, but Automatic Crash Recovery won’t help. Obviously that’s what we call a good implementation. One more point scored for IE8.
In all, IE8 is a very good browser, worth upgrading if you are using IE 7 or previous versions. It is not so secure as other browsers, but still enough secure for a regular user. And the other new good features provided alongside rip offs of features from other browsers, make it real worth giving a try. Switching from FF3, would not be a good option at this point as IE8 still lacks proper implementation, and few bugs are waiting to be taken care of. But that may soon change, once the final version is out, which is expected to be much stable and bug free. Its time to see, which one of these two browsers, get more of user’s attention. With google’s Chrome set to be released soon, this war is really going to be tough, which is definitely a good news for users.
A new study released by 
On April 17 hundreds of thousands domains from USA and from UK are infected with the SQL injection as well as IFrame injection attacks. Including some of the .gov domains also. Many of these websites are serving the malicious web pages using the JavaScript and IFrame. These web pages tried eight different ways to hijack the end user computer and trying to install some malicious software on the end user computer. SQL injection and IFrame attacks are mainly ended up redirecting users to malicious webpages.
According to the 
Many people now surf Internet for sharing and creating content. Various websites provides a medium for sharing and creating content. Microsoft Corp.’s upcoming Internet Explorer, version 8, embraces those trends by adding an “Activities” feature that makes all that easier for PC users.
