It's no secret that when judged by several popular Web browser speed tests, Internet Explorer 8 doesn't hold up well. Beta versions of IE 8 have been available to the general public for more than a year, and today's release of the stable build didn't include anything revolutionary.
Web slices bring recently updated content to your Favorites bar.
(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)Using the SunSpider JavaScript test, the official IE 8 scored 9849.4 ms on a Windows Vista machine with 2 GB of RAM and a 3.00 Ghz clock. This is significantly slower than most other major browsers. Not surprisingly, Microsoft claims (scroll down to Case Study Videos) that these kind of speed tests aren't relevant to how most people use their browser, and there may be some legitimacy to that.
Setting aside the issue of speed for a moment, some of the features in Internet Explorer bring it up to what we've come to expect from a browser, and some of them forge ahead. Many of these are borrowed from other browsers, and at least in the case of Firefox, the features can be imported using extensions. Indeed, some of Microsoft's bigger innovations like Web slices and Accelerators were replicated via Firefox extensions a while back.
IEAddons.com is Microsoft's answer to Firefox's add-ons site, sort of.
(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)If you're new to IE 8, Web Slices lets you save predefined sections of a Web page for at-a-glance viewing. Instead of going to a traffic Web site for updates, the latest commuting news comes to you. Web slices are not an automatic feature, so you'll need to install them by clicking on the Get more add-ons option on the Favorites bar, going to the IE Add-ons site, or choosing Manage Add-ons under Tools on the menubar.
To install a Web slice, you must click the Add button from IE Add-ons site. That will open up the site in a new window, and as you mouse over it you'll see green boxes appear to indicate a potential Web slice. Click on the box, and the Web slice will be added to your collection, with an option to place it directly on the Favorites bar. Checking the weather or traffic or even headlines becomes as simple as click the drop-down arrow for that slice.
Accelerators are links that cut out the steps needed to blog, tweet, or use Facebook.
(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)Similarly, Accelerators make repetitive tasks one-click behaviors, such as getting a definition for a word. Once you've installed the Accelerator, double-clicking on a word will bring up a blue box. Click the box to see a drop-down list of choices. Once you mouse over your selection, a pop-up window will show you the precise piece of information you've been looking for, whether it's a definition or a blogging window.
InPrivate browsing introduces a cache and history on-off switch, similar to features offered by Google Chrome, Safari, and Firefox. Accessible from the Safety menu or using the CTRL+SHFT+P hot key, it opens a new browsing window with a label at the left of the location bar that indicates you're using InPrivate. There's also InPrivate Filtering, located just below InPrivate browsing, which can be customized to tighten or loosen the noose placed on information sent out when visiting certain sites.
Domain highlighting makes it easier to avoid getting spoofed.
(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)There are also several slight but useful features in IE 8. As you open new tabs, they get color-coded and moved around so that similar sites are grouped together. I found this a bit jarring at first, because I expected new sites to be opened in the same place, but I can understand the logic behind it and why some users might like that kind of tab behavior. Tabs can be configured at the bottom of the General page under Internet Options.
Internet Explorer 8 also has tab sandboxing like the Webkit-based browsers from Google and Apple. You can't rip a tab off into a new window, but when a tab crashes, IE itself won't, and the tabs are configured to either resurrect themselves or open a new page on your default search engine.
There's a greater emphasis on Web standards and security than before. The SmartScreen and cross-site scripting filters throw up a red warning page when you're about to visit an unsafe site. There's also domain highlighting, which grays out the name of the URL you're looking at except for the domain itself. This sounds simple, but effectively draws attention to spoofed site URLs.
Version 8 is the most standards-compliant yet, but in case a page breaks, the Compatibility button should resuscitate it.
(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)There's also a compatibility button so that sites designed specifically for IE 7 and earlier can still be viewed. Placed at the right-hand side of the location bar, clicking it should reload the site you're looking at under the IE 7 rendering engine.
IE 8 does have more problems than mere JavaScript engine speeds. It scores a 20/100 on the Acid3 test, the lowest of the major browsers, and the installation process still requires a reboot. There's no default "smart" location bar that many other browsers have, although you can search your history and most visited pages from it.
Drawbacks aside, there's no reason to not upgrade if you're an old fan of IE, and there's even a few things in IE 8 for new users. Even though there are some nice usability features in IE 8, I think that Internet Explorer has a long way to go to replace the damage that the notoriously insecure IE 6 did to its reputation.
Internet Explorer 8 takes some long-needed strides to bring it up to speed with its competitors. It's more secure, with tab sandboxing and more aggressive malicious site warnings, and introduces some slick new features like Accelerators and Web slices.
Even with better support for Web standards, it's far from perfect. Check out what's hot and what's not in this First Look video.
As Microsoft counts down the final days to when it feels that Internet Explorer 8 is ready for public use, you can take a look at what's coming in this slideshow of IE 8's first Release Candidate.
Click on the image to your left to launch the gallery.
If you've played around with the previous beta versions of Internet Explorer 8, there's not much new in today's IE 8 Release Candidate 1. The feature improvements from IE 7 haven't changed: Web slices, InPrivate browsing, and Microsoft's new add-on system known as Accelerators remain the big-ticket items. Security enhancements include the SmartScreen Filter, which warns you in advance if other users have reported an URL as suspicious.
Users can force-add sites to the Compatibility script in IE 8 RC1.
(Credit: CNET Networks)What has been improved in the RC is stability. Users who experienced persistent and irritating browser crashes should expect to see a much more stable browsing environment. The Compatibility feature has been automated to a large degree, which means that the browser will detect and re-render Web sites designed for IE 7 that wouldn't otherwise load properly in IE 8.
The problem is that high-traffic Web sites that don't cause problems in other browsers still don't play well with IE 8, necessitating this "compatibility" fix. Maybe Internet Explorer can get around to being Web standards compliant in IE 9.
Users can finally force-add a Web site to be re-rendered by the Compatibility script. Under Tools, click on Compatibility View settings to add or remove a site. You can also disable the script by unchecking the box for using updated lists from Microsoft that appears at the bottom of the settings window.
Accelerators are links that cut out the steps needed to blog, tweet, or use Facebook.
(Credit: CNET Networks)I also found that IE 8 felt slower to load, and it's definitely slower to run: IE 8 RC1 clocked a SunSpider JavaScript test at 9,874 ms, compared with Firefox 3.1 beta 2's 3,212 ms. Granted, the release candidate is faster than IE 8 beta 2's 12,395 ms. All of these were tested on a Windows Vista Pentium 4 with 2 GB of RAM.
Despite the time that Microsoft has spent developing IE 8, they've proven to be reluctant to react to market-wide browser changes. Users who notice similarities between how Firefox, Chrome, and Opera look, feel, and operate, will be struck by how dissimilar IE 8 is. The lack of a smart URI bar stood out for me in particular. Although you can search in IE 8 from the location bar, it won't take you directly to a page in IE 8. Search for "CNET Download" in Firefox, and you'll be taken directly to download.com. Search for it in IE 8, and you're given a list of results from your preferred search engine.
The address bar will pull matches from your history and favorites list as you type, but that's still an extra step that I've moved away from.
Opening a new tab was an exercise in boredom served with a layer of frustration, too, as the CTRL+T hot key froze IE 8 and took more than 30 seconds. The e-mail button, which brings your e-mail client to the front or opens it if it's closed, respects your default client choice. However, switching to the privacy browsing feature InPrivate opens a new window based at the top of your screen--regardless of where you've had IE living.
One aspect of InPrivate has changed. You can now turn on InPrivate Blocking on the Menubar under Safety, even when InPrivate hasn't been activated. This allows you to surf with a stricter level of third-party site security. It's not entirely clear what it can or can't block, though. It doesn't seem to block ads, but it can block news tickers.
If you've been using Internet Explorer 8 betas up until now, you'll probably enjoy finally getting a release candidate. Overall, there's nothing stunningly different here, so don't expect a massive shift in browser usage patterns from IE 8.
Microsoft has yet to announce a timeline for the stable release of IE 8, nor is a version currently available for the Windows 7 beta. A full list of changes is available in the IE 8 Release Candidate 1 changelog.
Just over a month after releasing Widgetbox's App Accelerator, a shortcut for turning blogs and other Widgetbox widgets into Facebook apps (review), Widgetbox announced an upgrade that enmeshes its apps more completely into Facebook profiles.
According to Widgetbox, creating a functional Flash widget that lives in and operates from the user's profile page was the top developer request. It was mine, too. I wrote that:
"Most Facebook applications launch in a separate window when you click them, taking interaction off the user's profile page (the Facebook-developed Wall is a notable exception). It is therefore tragironic that my Webware blog, whose sole purpose is to make reading headlines instantaneous, never graces my Facebook profile page, and instead is stationed one click in."
Now, however, users have the option of creating new Widgetbox widget-apps in Flash, which means that they'll fully integrate into the profile rather than run in JavaScript on a rerouted page.
To sweeten the deal, Widgetbox has also dangled the golden carrot of customization. Users can now access two areas in the Facebook app-creator to finesse the app's appearance and to craft the profile's story feed and the invitation for friends to join. These dubiously named "viral settings" offer more control over the app's tone, but require a little bit of actual code development, unlike the previous App Accelerator process that required only copying and pasting links. To lighten the burden, Widgetbox lists the syntax and a menu of values for you to emulate when customizing your news feed. Tailoring the feed and invitations' look and feel brings the experience much closer to that of an organic Facebook developer.
(Credit:
CNET Networks)
Widgetbox today announced App Accelerator, a step-by-step guide and tool for creating Facebook applications from Widgetbox widgets. The blandly named App Accelerator shrewdly connects the community developers of Widgetbox's widget marketplace with Facebook's burgeoning user community. Talk about viral marketing.
The conversion works by adapting Widgetbox's Flash and HTML/JavaScript code for Facebook compatibility. There's a lot of link-swapping involved, and much of App Accelerator's ease-of-use can be attributed to Widgetbox's assumption of several routing URLs.
The checklist guides you through Facebook application creation.
(Credit: CNET Networks)Widgetbox has done its usability homework in creating a friendly, check-listed step-by-step guide that walks users through what might otherwise be a confusing process. Still, I ran into some problems using App Accelerator, including some URL pasting mistakes that rendered my new application useless and significantly delayed this review. This is something I hope Widgetbox and Facebook will both limit in the future with appropriate error sensing and alerts.
Since the proprietary service only converts Widgetbox widgets, I needed to begin by registering and building a widget. I used Widgetbox's Blidget tool (read Webware review) to create a widget of "my" blog (I used Webware.com, of course.)
Next I needed to register as a Facebook developer; easily done through Widgetbox's prominent link. After converting the blog into a widget, I was offered the opportunity to "promote" it on Facebook. Don't be fooled; this isn't App Accelerator's work. Rather, it crashed my Firefox browser, then posted an image of my blidget to my Facebook mini feed, as a video.... Read more
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