In Beta form for some months now, Microsoft has finally released IE 8 which I should probably be excited about because it could mean the death of IE 6 for many users. That would be a definite improvement for anyone who develops online content of any kind. IE 6 rapidly became the bain of web designers/developers and was akin to Netscape 4 in terms of its stubborn refusal to accept web standards. IE 6 probably won't go away that easy. A lot of PC users don't have automatic updates turned on and a lot of corporations haven't even migrated to IE 7 yet.
So what's new in IE? A slew of security and productivity enhancements as well as some performance boosts. Here are some highlights:
Accelerators: This feature gives you more access to typical features at the touch of a button. Highlight some text and then click the blue Accelerator button to perform common functions on that text, like definitions, translations, search, and blog.
Navigation: IE features improvements to it's Tabbed navigation and has enhanced Location bar features that show more of what you might want to see when typing information into the bar. There's also a compatibility view feature that allows you to view pages designed for older browsers.
Improved Performance: Microsoft simply claims that it's faster. Apple did the same thing with the recent release of Safari.
Better History and Favorites Management: One click Favorites, a Favorites bar at the top of the browser, RSS feeds in the Favorites bar, and History searching make for easier access to sites that you've previously visited.
Visual Search: When you type a search term in the Search field, you are now presented with a visual list of results to choose from.
Web Slices: No, not the ones you make in FireWorks. These slices help you keep track of time-sensitive sights like eBay, so you won't miss that bid for the new 2010 Ford Mustang you've been drooling over.
It took a while for me to install IE 8 on a Dell Dimensions 2300, running Windows XP. During the installation, the installer checked for malicious software, then I was prompted to restart.
At first look, IE 8 doesn't look that much different from IE 8. After starting it up, it asked me if I wanted to turn on Suggested Sites, a feature that allows me to discover sites I might be interested on based on my surfing habbits, I assume. After accepting the default settings, I was asked to import favorites and feeds from my other installed browsers.
The Quick Tab button in the tabs bar is a great way to see multiple tabs in a single window. You can then choose the tab you want to see. One tiny feature about the location bar is that after you visit a site, the address is dimmed except for the main domain, such as adobe.com.
Viewing Source Code now shows up in a window that has color-coded code with line numbers. This is a huge improvement for developers since the default behavior was to open the source in Notepad - without code hinting. Another potentially great feature for developers is the ability to save the page as either an HTML file without it's accompanying files or with. The file gets saved in a folder with all of its supporting files, including style sheets and images.
Like Safari, there's a private browsing feature called InPrivate. In this mode, nothing like cookies, cache, and history files are saved on your hard drive. Hmm, wonder what that could be for? Oddly enough, to turn off the feature, you have to close the browser window. There's also InPrivate filtering where you can choose which sites you want to receive information from.
In terms of speed performance, I'm not so sure about that, but then again, my Dell is over 10 years old and our network here is pretty shoddy. I did a quick comparison between IE and Safari and Safari delivered adobe.com much quicker than IE.
Summary: IE 8 has some pretty cool features tucked in it, but I still don't think it's a huge leap and I, for one, won't be switching to it as my main browser. Not that I won't use it everyday, I have to, but Firefox has something going for it that Microsoft hasn't quite caught on to yet and that's all of the great Add-ons you can get for Firefox that add that layer of productivity and use that makes it a remarkable browser. But hey, Microsoft is at least moving in the right direction and if this version can kill IE 6, well, that would be good for all of us.
| instructional design | online training content development | accessibility |
| section 508 | interactivity | learning activities |
| elearning podcasts | usability | CSS Flash XHTML |
| semantic markup |
Al Lemieux
Senior Designer
SyberWorks, Inc.
SyberWorks e-Learning Podcast Series SyberWorks LMS e-Learning Implementation Podcast Series e-Learning Lingo Podcast SeriesSyberWorks Learning Management System
Join the SyberWorks Learning Management Technology Group
on Linkedin
Follow SyberWorks on
Twitter
Comments