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Internet Explorer 8 Beta Features Revealed

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the hey-there-new-browser dept.

Admodieus writes "It seems as though the veil has been lifted on the Internet Explorer 8 beta. Microsoft has revealed a list of the new features in IE8, including two interesting new additions called Activities and WebSlices. From the site: 'Activities are contextual services to quickly access a service from any webpage. Users typically copy and paste from one webpage to another. Internet Explorer 8 Activities make this common pattern easier to do ... WebSlices is a new feature for websites to connect to their users by subscribing to content directly within a webpage. WebSlices behave just like feeds where clients can subscribe to get updates and notify the user of changes.' Also aboard the upgrade train is automatic crash recovery, a favorites toolbar, and improved phishing filter protection. Microsoft has also posted links to download the beta, but none of them are working right now."

16 of 281 comments (clear)

  1. Broken links in the summary by BadAnalogyGuy · · Score: 4, Funny

    You can download the latest browser from here: www.microsoft.com/IE8/download

    1. Re:Broken links in the summary by OrochimaruVoldemort · · Score: 2, Funny

      *inhales crack* they did

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  2. Crash recovery, eh? by religious+freak · · Score: 5, Funny

    Also aboard the upgrade train is automatic crash recovery Kind of funny, you'd think they'd work on not making it crash. Or at least spin it a little better.
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    1. Re:Crash recovery, eh? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Kind of funny, you'd think they'd work on not making it crash. Unlike Firefox, I haven't had IE crash at all in the past 4 years.

      Oh yeah, that's because I haven't used IE in the past 4 years. :-)
  3. WOW! by quaketripp · · Score: 5, Funny

    First they introduced tabbed browsing, now they've upgraded the context menus and integrated feeds! I just don't know how anyone can keep up with them. OMG and they're integrating group policy options to block sites! finally! that was impossible to do on a firewall! viva la revolution!

    1. Re:WOW! by MrNemesis · · Score: 5, Funny

      Hey, we can at least be thankful that they didn't move the "back" button to the bottom right hand corner, remove the option to configure connection settings from within the app itself, reverse the direction of scrolling (i.e. scroll right and left to go up and down and vice versa), raster bitmaps and GIF files in CMYK as opposed to RGB and turn sentences begining with prepositions into French swearing. All these new UI paradigms we're missing out on!

      In a rare moment of originality, a young MS exec, having just read the hitch hikers guide, sent a binary of IE7 back in time in an attempt to sue the companies developing firefox, opera and a million and one other more inventive browsers in the future for copying IE's features. Unfortunately, the court dismissed the new IE interface as a crude hoax perpetrated by 4chan, and the budding young exec was made Ballmer's personal chair man.

      Not that I think the IE7 interface is an abomination of consistency and style or anything ;)

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  4. un, effing, real. by sootman · · Score: 5, Funny

    This is hysterical. 'WebSlices' are similar to Safari's Web Clip feature. Crash Recovery... aka Session Restore in Firefox. (And Saft gives it to Safari.) And can anyone decipher the marketing BS that somehow says the Links bar is new? In Internet Explorer 7, the Links bar provided users with one-click access to their favorite sites. The Links bar has undergone a complete makeover for Internet Explorer 8. It has been renamed the Favorites bar to enable users to associate this bar as a place to put and easily access all their favorite web content such as links, feeds, WebSlices and even Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents. So... it's called a "favorites" bar now so users will think "aha! I can put links to my favorite things here!" rather than the old "links" name which led users to think "aha! I can put links to my favorite things here!"? Ooh, and it can hold links to documents as well? Er, yeah, that makes a lot of sense... I've always felt that the biggest thing missing from a web browser was access to random local documents. Because there aren't enough other ways to access often-needed files.

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  5. Safety Filter by losethisurl · · Score: 5, Funny

    We can filter if we want to
    We can leave your friends behind
    'Cause your friends don't filter and if they don't filter
    Well they're no friends of mine

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    Seriously, is it supposed to look like that?
  6. the classic joke... by Tumbleweed · · Score: 5, Funny

    Microsoft: "Hey, wait for us - We're the leader!"

    I'm glad they're going to be supporting all these 'new' standards. :)

  7. Here we go again... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Funny

    if IE3 ....
    else if IE4 ....
    else if IE5 ....
    else if IE6 ....
    else if IE7 ....
    else if IE8
        GetFirefox()
    fi

  8. IE8 supports the latest features by R3d+Jack · · Score: 3, Funny

    In keeping with this theme, I suggest that the IE8 name be dropped in favor of something to reflect just how up-to-date this new browser is. How about IE 2005?

  9. Re:SVG by CrazedWalrus · · Score: 2, Funny

    I just wish they'd have pushed out a patch for working PNG transparency support. Just the other day I went to my personal/quasi-business web site from work (IE6, meh) and realized that my site logo was nothing but a big white block in the middle of the top banner. Converting it to .gif made it look like crap, so I had to take it down until I can come up with something that looks okay with transparent .gif.

    How do you guys deal with the requirement for transparency coupled with the requirement for more than an indexed color pallet? I'm thinking about replacing the logo for IE6 visitors with a logo that says "Get Firefox Already, or buy a new damn computer if that's too difficult for you."

    On second though, that might be a bit too wordy.

  10. Re:Get FF3 out already by Hatta · · Score: 2, Funny

    Are we talking about the american SNES FF3 or the japanese famicom FF3?

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  11. Must be said by kahrytan · · Score: 2, Funny



      But does it work with Linux?

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  12. Re:SVG by jrumney · · Score: 3, Funny

    I'm pretty sure the Internet Explorer and Office teams have a competition going on how far they can get away with breaking the Windows UI guidelines and still manage to ship it past QA and management. The Office team used to be well ahead, but with IE 7 the IE team are starting to get closer.

  13. Re:Crash recovery, eh? Crash Recovery... by AeroIllini · · Score: 3, Funny

    Join me: i will try to lead the way... Ok, and when we're done fixing English to be less arrogant, we can hold hands, sing Kumbaya, and complain about how rich people are evil.

    The Germans capitalize *all* their nouns, the arrogant bastards! What makes a noun so much more important than a verb? Nouns don't even *do* anything!
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