Microsoft have released their Beta 2 of Internet explorer 8 IE8 will be the replacement for IE& when it comes out of Beta, Many have said that the Beta 1 appeared to be more of an alpha but IE8 is certainly coming together with Beta 2.
Ie7 has been hasn't really been around for very long, and in terms of appearance IE8 retains a lot of the looks we have come to know with regards to IE7. IE8 certainly does seam to be an enhancement of the existing browser as opposed to a radical rebuild. The last massive difference we saw with Internet explorer was the introduction of the new look with IE7 as opposed to the more traditionally laid out IE6.
IE8 looks very similar to IE7. The biggest change from IE6 to IE7 was the tabbed browsing feature. This has been retained in IE8 The first thing that appears different is the "compatibility view button located next to the GO/refresh button. In basic terms this button is to allow you to better display websites that have been designed with older browsers in mind. Many have been critical of Microsoft in the past because they don't exactly follow web standards when designing browsers. In effect the Compatibility button allows IE8 to have a second chance of rendering the page correctly.
In fairness If MS where to develop a browser that exactly followed web standards users would experience problems getting web pages to display correctly. By building a browser that will render as high a percentage of pages as possible in a usable way, it is of benefit to the user.
Another key feature that Microsoft are keen to inform users of is "Private surfing" This feature allows users to explore the web without leaving a trail of history pages or temporary internet files on their computer. This can be enabled or disables by the user at any time. This feature may well have its uses, but it may have detrimental effects to webmasters who rely of affiliate cookies being placed on users machines in order to gain affiliate commissions. When a user is surfing in privacy mode the machine will delete all cookies placed on the machine during the private surfing session. By default private browsing is disables, but it is fairly simple to activate it. This may cause problems for webmasters if this becomes a widely used feature.
One small detail I noticed when I installed IE8 was the menu is visible by default. IN IE7 the main menu was hidden by default and the user had to press ALT in order to view the menu. This may well be as a result of feedback received during the IE7 lifecycle. In IE6 a lot of the browsers features where available through the main menu, perhaps users got used to using the menu and Microsoft have decided to put it back.
There are a lot of users who are still surfing with IE6 or older, I wonder what Microsoft will do to push IE8 towards die hard users of older web browsers...
Microsoft have certainly released IE8 Beta at a very difficult time. Not only are they competing with Opera and firefox who are Microsoft's traditional competetors within the browser market place, they are also coming up against Google who have just released their own Beta version of a web browser called "Chrome"
Once again it looks as if we may be heading towards a browser war.
