IE8 Beta Released To Public

Tim writes "English, German, Simplified Chinese, and Japanese versions of Internet Explorer 8 have been released for public beta. New features include accelerators, which provide instant context menu access for a number of common tasks; automatic crash recovery, which prevents a single page's failures from taking down your entire browser; and browser privacy, a feature that didn't make Firefox 3. I'm primarily a Firefox user, and I've been using IE8 at work (MS) for the past few weeks. It's a definite improvement over previous versions, and brings a lot to the table that Firefox requires extensions for. Give it a spin, submit feedback, and help keep all browser makers on their toes by facing each other's competition."

Comments

Re:Shows what competion can do.

[diegocgteleline.es]

There're not many spanish-speaking programmers. Most of the spanish speakers live in countries where getting a internet connection is not so easy as in EEUU/europe/japan

Re:Shows what competion can do.

[AKAImBatman]

I'm still not impressed. I don't care how many whizzy-gig features Microsoft adds to their browser. It is still useless to developers until Microsoft installs standards support. And by standards support, we don't just mean fixing the broken setAttribute method. How about supporting a fucking decade old standards?!? Nope, still no mention of it. In fact, the bug on the issue was "closed by design".

By design? By fucking design?!?! BULLSHIT. Microsoft does not want to be interoperable with other Web Browsers. Period. If Microsoft really wanted to turn around their image in the market, they can start with something as stupidly simple as supporting addEventListener, removeEventListener, and dispatchEvent. I don't even care if the code looks like this:

Element.prototype.addEventListener = function(name, callback, capture) { attachEvent("on"+name, callback); }

^That's fucking WRONG and it would STILL be an improvement!

Microsoft can take their God damn browser and shove it where the sun don't shine for all I care. They have shown such incredible disdain for their customers, that I have to wonder why their even trying to hide it from the market.

*DEEP BREATH*

Microsoft, you are transparent. Your juvenile attempts at lock-in are NOT working and will NOT work. All you're going to do is piss off the people recommending software to grandma, grandpa, mom, dad, sisters, cousins, next door neighbors, school teachers, bosses, subordinates, government agencies, etc. IE will continue to lose market share. It won't be much longer before the alternative browsers reach critical mass. Many websites already show Firefox maintaining parity or even surpassing Internet Explorer. If you actually want to WIN the market, try competing for a change!

Can I get an AMEN?

Part of WGA, don't trust it.

[HermMunster]

Though you may be able to install it on computers that do not pass the WGA test it will likely set up some mechanism to monitor your computer. There's no trust in Microsoft whatsoever that we should partake in. We are best advised to use Firefox or some other browser. Even if the WGA aspect doesn't prove true, which I'm sure it will, we don't need another version of their browser that is just as insecure as the one prior.

Friends don't help friends lock themselves into Microsoft products/platforms.