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

Shows what competion can do.

[xzvf]

While IE8 doesn't work on my chosen platform, it shows again how open source sparks development in stagnant environments. This product would never have happened without Firefox.

Re:Shows what competion can do.

[Bashae]

Yup, I'm wondering why the beta is available in german rather than a language with more speakers, such as spanish. Are they perhaps trying to win back the notoriously large amount of Firefox users in Germany?

Re:Shows what competion can do.

[will_die]

According to the European and thier language report German is the 2nd highest known language in the EU at 32% of the population speaking the language. Spanish is at 15% and is 5th.
For the top 5 it is:
English 51%
German 32%
French 26%
Italian 16%
Spanish 15%

Also by mother tounue German is at 18% and Spanish is at 9%

Re:Shows what competion can do.

[TheP4st]

Native Spanish speaking population in the world 330 million
Native German speaking population in the world 100 million

Re:Shows what competion can do.

[jorx]

Opera wasn't free until Firefox existed... so, there's that...

Re:Shows what competion can do.

[MobyDisk]

In that case, they would have released it in Klingon. Everyone who I know who speaks even a small amount of Klingon, uses Firefox.

Re:Shows what competion can do.

[GIL_Dude]

Actually almost all Microsoft Beta code is available in the same languages at first - English, German, Japanese, and sometimes Simplified Chinese. The thing is that they are trying for coverage of the code to make sure localizations fit dialogs, etc. For example, of the languages that use an English like character set (what is it called, Roman or whatever), German tends to have the longest words / phrases. So by covering German they find out whether all of the localizations are going to fit in the space provided. In a similar way, by covering Japanese (and in this case Simplified Chinese) they are covering localizations in non-Roman character sets. Its really not about the number of users / speakers - its about the coverage of testing on the localizations and getting them to fit properly.

Re:Shows what competion can do.

[jrumney]

Microsoft has long had a policy of translating into German and Japanese first. German words tend to be longer than other languages (except perhaps Dutch) so translation into German catches problems where text overflows the space allocated for it on the screen, and Japanese catches all the stupid character==byte assumptions that programmers make. I'm not sure why they don't do Arabic early as well to flush out left to right assumptions (also affecting Hebrew) and assumptions that characters have a one to one relationship with glyphs (also affecting Indian and South East Asian scripts).

Re:Shows what competion can do.

[pcolaman]

They primarily speak Portuguese, not Spanish.

Re:Shows what competion can do.

[ColdWetDog]

You come off as an angry 14-year-old who hasn't the faintest clue what's going on.

Maybe he is a 14-year old who hasn't the faintest clue what's going on, you insensitive clod.

Standards-complient or not?

[tomandlu]

I assume yes. Call me naive, but I suspect MS know that they have more to lose by breaking web standards. Basically, they can't get away with that sh*t anymore - at least as far as the web goes. The average user is probably no wiser, but there are enough special interest groups to keep an eye on them in this area.

Re:Standards-complient or not?

[Khuffie]

According to Ars Technica, sites with proper HTML information will display in standards mode, and sites without will not. There's a button at the bottom that allows you to switch between the two. I have to say, I like IE8. It won't make me switch from Opera, but it's much speedier to use than IE7, and I'll probably find myself using it instead of Firefox whenever I come across a website that doesn't work in Opera. (Which is rare, and whenever that happens and I launch Firefox, it prompts me if I want to update, which gets annoying).

Re:Standards-complient or not?

[Metasquares]

I was going to ask what the root of the word "nice" had to do with the study of insects, but I guess that proves your point. :)

Re:Standards-complient or not?

[ShieldW0lf]

Nonsense. IE remains the majority browser. Developers who want to actually produce a product that works correctly for the majority of users target IE first (because Firefox usually does the right thing when dealing with IE-isms, and IE-isms are easier to undo to target Firefox than vice versa).

No, developers use Firefox to do their development. Why? Because of extensions like Web Developer and Firebug and YSlow and Selenium and Firecookie and FirePHP and Venkman. To name a few.

The fact that Firefox is also highly standards compliant is a bonus.

After you've used all these tools to get your application working properly, that's when you check it out in IE and see if there are any problems that need further attention.

As for the whole trustworthiness angle, well, call it FUD if you want. It's easy enough to submit code for independent critical review. When organizations don't choose to do so, the uncertainty and doubt that remains is real and intentionally created. Personally, I don't use MS products any more for anything outside of testing my web apps in IE, and have no intention of ever doing so again. I do not choose to trust them.

Excellent feature...

[HetMes]

..that will definitely be craved by many Slashdot users, and not because of the gift shopping or use of public terminals. Question is how long it will take before Firefox sees its market share diminish because of this feature, and, consequently, how long it will take Firefox to include it in an update.

Re:Oh, I'd like a version

[tomandlu]

You want MS to provide a linux version so that you can either state your intent to never install it, or so that you can sh*t on it? I'm sure they'll get right on that...

Browser privacy

[LiquidCoooled]

I wonder how the browser privacy feature will work regarding external content from sites:

flash files store preferences outside of explorers' reach.
java applets get placed outside of the cache.
movies files play outside of ie.
pdfs might open outside.
word documents listed in word recent files list.

theres many more programs and protocols which would leave tracks.

people expecting privacy mode to actually keep things private are going to be in for a BIG shock.

good luck

Re:Browser privacy

[GeckoAddict]

I wouldn't count on this new feature to do much of anything... an article from FoxNews says the following scary line:

Although casual users cannot see the previous user's search history, authorities such as the police will be able to access it if necessary.

Kind of makes it seem like it's still stored somewhere, and while I don't know how the data is stored, I can't imagine it will take too long to figure out how to view the history of others.
Also interesting is that people at MS apparently nicknamed it 'Porn Mode'.

Extensions are bad?

[Cryophallion]

and brings a lot to the table that Firefox requires extensions for

You say that like it is a bad thing. I prefer the use of extensions for my browser, instead of the bloatware that tends to happen. What if I don't care about privacy? I don't need that installed then. I like that I can choose the features I want, instead of having everything thrown in there.

Also, extensions have a great benefit with regards to updates. they can be updated at any time, and therefore don't have to wait on a new browser update for tweaking things and adding functionality. They also allow me to leave an extension that I don't want to update as is while still being able to update the browser (and possibly its security).

This is not to say that Firefox is not getting large, or that microsoft is not trying to assist people who don't have the savvy to look for extensions. I'm just saying extensions have a lot of benefits, and can be a very important tool.

Re:Extensions are bad?

[mdwh2]

It's not that extensions are bad, it's just more of a hassle if the functionality is not included as standard.

It's one reason I can't be bothered to try switching from Opera. Sure, I've downloaded Firefox, but I don't have to time to try to hunt down all the extensions to replicate Opera's standard functionality, and wonder if each extension is the one I want.

This is even more of an issue if you are trying to persuade a random non-geek user to switch from IE - you can't say "Go to this link", instead you have to say "Go here, then install it, then go here, here and here, and install all those things". For now, Firefox has done well because its standard features are still better than IE (and the extra standard features of Opera do not seem to be known by as many people). But you can't expect an average user to grapple with trying to hunt down extensions, just to replicate what'll be standard behaviour in IE.

As for bloatware, you need to compare real world filesizes. Last time I checked, Opera was still smaller than Firefox (even without any extensions), though I haven't checked the current sizes.

Re:Extensions are bad?

[Cryophallion]

Interesting. Let's take a slightly deeper look, by looking at the most popular add-ons, and see if most non-savvy people would want them:

1.Ad-block plus - Users might like it, but people running the sites and companies would absolutely hate it. Get ready for a huge backlash on enabling this one in the base package.

2. DownloadHelper - Again, users may like it, but the people running the video sites would be fuming. As would people who do simple paid-for web tutorials, who would have everyone able to get their stuff extremely easily. Once again, good size backlash. This also has features that may need to be updated more frequently, such as when embedding code changes or something on the popular sites changes.

3. No-Script - I don't know if this would really help most non-savvy users, as they wouldn't understand why many more popular sites won't work that well, not to mention all the ajax-y things they'd miss.

4. Download-them-all - May be a good thing to implement (along with Download Status bar, a personal favorite). I'm not sure how many people would use its benefits though, but this one is a serious contender.

5. Flashgot (See Download Helper)

6. Firebug - No real use to non-savvy people.

7. Fast-video Download - See Download Helper

8. Cooliris - Cool, but no real functionality. Of course, Compiz, Widgets, Apples, etc all live off of cool, but I don't think this should be standard, especially since it is windows only.

9. IE Tab - Very nice for people who still stubbornly make IE specific sites, but still windows only.

10. Colorful tabs - cute, but not really functional. Might be a nice option though.

So, of the top 10, only one could really have a good argument made for it being in the base package. I actually think Mozilla does a pretty good job finding the middle ground of stuff to keep in the base, and stuff to have as extensions, and that helps keep the energy where they think it should be, instead of focusing on little segments.

I might add that I like extensions also since they can add new functionality before a new version comes out.

And if bandwith download is an issue for you, then perhaps you should not download Firefox in the first place.

Isn't Firefox smaller in download size than IE?

What is really worrying is...

[Pvt_Ryan]

timesonline.co.uk Writes:

Once the setting is chosen, others using the same computer will not be able to see which sites have been accessed. Other browsers have similar functions, but this one is far more prominent. Although casual users cannot see the previous user's search history, authorities such as the police will be able to access it if necessary.

So basically the data still exists, just people who nothing will not be able to see it, I knew we were wrong in all those security model that try and keep the experts out. It's really Joe "average" Blogs we should have been protecting against all this time.. DOH!!!

I'll definitely be surrendering Firefox for IE now..

Re:Press the button and protect your privacy ....

[Apple Acolyte]

If private browsing were on by default, then everyone other than /. geeks would think their browsers were dysfunctional for not saving login cookies and whatnot.

Re:Oh, I'd like a version

[Gavagai80]

Lots of linux users would like to have IE, because we need to test websites in it. I have the wine versions of IE6 and IE7, but they're extremely slow and mostly broken, so a version from Microsoft would be great. And if it turned out to be the better browser, of course, I'd use it regularly.

new features not in Firefox ..

[rs232]

"New features include .. automatic crash recovery .. and browser privacy, a feature that didn't make Firefox 3"

What's tools->clear private data .. 'Always clear my private data when I close Firefox'

and .. why does Firefox prompt me with:

Firefix - Restore Previous Session

Your last Firefox session closed unexpectedly. YOu can restore the tabs and windows from your previous sessions, or start a new session if you think the problem was related to a page you were viewing.

| Restore Session | | Start New Session |

So what?

[Viol8]

The number of hindi speakers is probably 4 times that.

They don't release to the largest markets but the most useful ones for testing.

Besides , lets be honest - the spanish speaking world isn't exactly renowned for its cutting edge expanding IT industry.

Re:Just guessing, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

A large portion of Spanish speakers (e.g. Latin America) live in extreme poverty, so I doubt they'll all be downloading IE8 Beta anytime soon.

But, it's free!