Tech & Biz

Internet Explorer 8 Beta Reviews and Download Links.

by dexternights | March 6, 2008 at 07:44 am

821 views | 0 Recommendations | 7 comments

Internet Explorer 8 Beta released yesterday really excited me, this version of IE is supposed to be following open and widely accepted standards. Usually whenever Im doin some site designing I have found my site either working with IE (mostly) and will break up in Firefox. Since majority viewers use IE, I sometimes forget Firefox. So it was always bad news for users of firefox.

Not only this site ,But I have seen several sites rendering differently in IE and Firefox. Also It seems Firefox has recently Adapted itself to suit IE’s rendering. The main concern area of IE7 and previous IE versions was the CSS rendering. Since Microsoft had its own way of understanding CSS the sites looked awful if written for IE and rendered in some other browser.

So what does IE 8 do? Microsoft has enabled IE8 to follow the web standards by default. So is it good? Yes it is good in the long term.. But bad for web designers in the short term. IE8’s default rendering breaks most(yes it does) site’s layout(including this site). And strangely this site works well with both IE7 and Firfox(not as good as IE7) but only breaks with IE8, which indicates how much Firefox has tweaked itself to survive with Microsoft OS.

But there is a “Emulate IE7″ button in IE8 which saved me this time, you can always click emulate IE7 and close all windows and open them your browser will work in IE7 mode..as a charm and my website works . So what does IE8 add to our arsenal, it helps developers have a real feel of what users will see after launch of IE8. With open standards and buzz created by this it is expected IE8 will occupy 50% off all internet hits and completely replace IE7.

So any other change in IE8 from IE7? As far as I have seen nothing much differs, its all feautures of IE7 with much more stability and fixes.. that is IE8 for you. Will get back to you with more news if available in future. By the way if you want to try IE8 Beta You can follow the link below.

Download Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) Beta version Free

Internet Explorer 8 for VISTA

Internet Explorer 8 for Windows XP

For others and everybody(including VISTA and XP if above links dont work)

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magicbus

at 11:19 on March 7th, 2008

In my opinion, Firefox is much better than Internet Explorer. But thanks for your interesting report, dexternights!

Swan

at 11:33 on March 7th, 2008

Hello Dexter!

This was a great review by you, even if I don't agree with it. I used IE for many years, until I changed to Firefox, which as far as I'm concerned is definitely the more superior browser.

I've never had any sites not render well in Firefox, whereas I ran across them all time with IE7. Having been a web designer, I design for as many browsers as possible to ensure readability for all and I have them all installed, including Flock (which I love also.)

I think I'll skip the beta for IE. Micro$oft are notorious for offering up a compromised beta browser, using the average Joe to do their testing and suffer the numerous bugs.

It will be interesting to see how both of my own web sites render in IE8 when the time comes.

Thank you for the interesting write-up!
~ Swan

Jordan Yerman

at 11:52 on March 7th, 2008

Firefox's only disadvantage, for me, is its inferior speed. Otherwise, its stability, scalability and developer-friendliness are superior to IE's.

Jordan Yerman

at 12:03 on March 7th, 2008

Another thing for site-builders to keep in mind is their target audience/market: the majority of users rock IE because it's free with their machines, but, if your site is art- or design-based, you have to consider Safari-friendliness (for example).

dexternights

at 11:56 on March 7th, 2008

Hi guys,

I would gladly agree that Firefox is the better of the two. Even Im using firefox in the rugged terrain(Like a SUV). But IE is used mainly for ceratin sites including my sites which use wordpress.

I have found very strange behaviour whenever I edit my old articles in wordpress using Firefox, This might be a problem with Wordpress engine.. But still it works fine in IE. Otherwise I will rather use Firefox for most of my browsing. And plugins like sopcast and other media plugins are not still supported in Firefox(or developers din care).

I always see the CSS behaviour changing between Firefox and IE.Whenever such problems occur and when Im not able to solve the issue, I make sure to leave it So that it works in IE.

And moreover when u see from developers point of view they have to worry about IE.. In my sites its like 80% of all visitors use IE6 or IE7 .(Statistics of my site) Firefox is 20% and if you go by users mostly Firefox has spread among US and other more technical world and in other places where the users arent sophisticated they still prefer IE. So Thats why I always say IE factor is Big