Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2

[EduardValencia]

I finally got this to install. After rebooting into safe mode a couple time and seeing what was up, I just extraced the files to a folder, ran the standalone installer, which finally installed some update that IE8 B2 needed to even install, and IE8 installed fine.

So far, way way better than B1 that's for sure. Only problem I have, is the random (and quite often) crashing. Other than that, looks great, runs great and I love the new UI features.

Soemthing must be wrong then,IE8 hasn't crashed here,not even a Tab

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

Microsoft should include a wizard driven dialog which lets the user choose between the three top browsers: IE, Firefox or Opera.

...

You mean IE, Firefox and Safari, right? Opera is the 4th most popular browser.

....

If Bill Gates lifts up his phone and tell Tony chor to beat Firefox and Opera,they are are out of business instantly,like taking a photograph,CLICK!

...

haha, no.

The world has changed in the last decade, the only way to kill Firefox is for Mozilla themselves to kill it, nothing else can do it. (I didn't mention Opera for a reason, mainly that MS could crush them just by thinking about it)

[sanctified Veteran]

Well Firefox copied it's features from all over the place (e.g. yellow info bar from IE)...honestly who cares? both are pretty good browsers!

In the end its not about who is the most original but about who do it better for you.

[donbt09]

Is anyone having problems with cookies? For some reason I can't get it to keep my logins for sites. Inprivate is off and I've put the cookie settings on low and it still doesn't work.

I'm having the same problem at tv.com, gamespot and mp3.com here is a similar bug report at connect

https://connect.microsoft.com/IE/feedback/V...edbackID=364106

[NoneAvail]

Feels snappy, but one thing, when I tried to add the search provider for Google, it wouldn't work, the status bar stated "error on page"

Running it on XP Pro on a virtual machine.

[wellofsouls]

Now after some time of use, the colored tab grouping is indeed a bit weird, especially as when you manually enter a URL for a colored tab, the color still doesn't change. So for example, after you search for microsoft in google, and click links to www.microsoft.com, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft, www.msn.com from the results, all the pages open in yellow tabs. But now select www.msn.com and enter www.mozilla.com in the address bar and go, you now have three yellow tabs related to microsoft, while one yellow tab showing mozilla.com, and any link clicked from mozilla.com will also be yellow tabs. That doesn't make much sense.

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

Now after some time of use, the colored tab grouping is indeed a bit weird, especially as when you manually enter a URL for a colored tab, the color still doesn't change. So for example, after you search for microsoft in google, and click links to www.microsoft.com, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft, www.msn.com from the results, all the pages open in yellow tabs. But now select www.msn.com and enter www.mozilla.com in the address bar and go, you now have three yellow tabs related to microsoft, while one yellow tab showing mozilla.com, and any link clicked from mozilla.com will also be yellow tabs. That doesn't make much sense.

I'm hoping that's a bug, because it doesn't make much sense otherwise.

[excalpius]

Who cares, this is faster, prettier, smarter. The Acid test isn't everything.

Actually the Acid test isn't ANYTHING at all. All of 8 people care about that silly artificial BS test.

[Mikeparkie]

Functionality is really starting to get there, clearly they have been listening to what people want, now they need to really streamline the interface IMO and get it as customisable and slick as FF. But for now i am not going to move away from FF. But i am watching MS closely because their not the biggest software company in the world for no reason.

[splicer707]

Ok splicer cut your bull**** now,if microsoft wants to top Firefox now,they can do it instantly!,this is called strategy,they let the market mature,evolve,the BAM!

Don't remember the IE/Netscape war?

Who beat down the Firefox ancestors: IE

If Bill Gates lifts up his phone and tell Tony chor to beat Firefox and Opera,they are are out of business instantly,like taking a photograph,CLICK!

I think this is a bug,double clik on tab and that Ugly box appears.I hate that box :p

You really believe that? Wow you are deluded. You see if Microsoft even tries any of it's dirty tactics it will be before the DOJ and EU Court fast than you can spell Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. ;)

Bill Gates doesn't run Microsoft anymore. Missed that news? It's Ballmer and Co now.

You mean IE, Firefox and Safari, right? Opera is the 4th most popular browser.

:blush: Uh yes. That's what I meant. Thanks @ The_Decryptor.

[azz0r_wugg]

@ The_Decryptor

Maybe it's time Microsoft gave up on their browser and just donated money to Mozilla to badge Firefox as Microsoft's browser?

IMO Microsoft is becoming less relevant in the browser scene all the time.

...yeah because Microsoft is going to give up its 73% share because some people on a forum think they're irrelvant.

I use Firefox all the time, but I wouldn't advise regular computer users to use it, it uses too much memory for the average computer. Whereas IE is lightweight but fairly featureless.

Having said that, If Mozilla worked on there memory footprint, I'd be all for it. The less browsers out there the better, at the moment it makes my job a nightmare having IE6, IE7, Opera, Safari and Firefox 2, Firefox 3 to test against.

Without adding IE8 + IE 9 every year etc

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

Actually the Acid test isn't ANYTHING at all. All of 8 people care about that silly artificial BS test.

The acid test only means nothing if you don't care about browsers working together.

[splicer707]

...yeah because Microsoft is going to give up its 73% share because some people on a forum think they're irrelvant.

I use Firefox all the time, but I wouldn't advise regular computer users to use it, it uses too much memory for the average computer. Whereas IE is lightweight but fairly featureless.

Having said that, If Mozilla worked on there memory footprint, I'd be all for it. The less browsers out there the better, at the moment it makes my job a nightmare having IE6, IE7, Opera, Safari and Firefox 2, Firefox 3 to test against.

Without adding IE8 + IE 9 every year etc

I don't expect Microsoft to close the building where the IE Team work and evict them. And I didn't mean that Microsoft are irrelevant in the Browser Market.

However, they are becoming less relevant than every before, IMO. Look at the numbers of people switching to Apple - they don't use IE, they use Safari or Firefox mostly, some might use Opera. And then there are the ever growing number of educated users who see the great features and flexibility of Firefox.

What you say about memory or resource usage was very true of Firefox 2.x but I find Firefox 3 far more efficient than Firefox 2.x. Firefox 3 resource usage seems no higher than IE7/IE8 on my PC.

(Y)

[wellofsouls]

Secretly, I think. Microsoft wants to top Firefox. But it's not happening with IE8. ;)

well, I think even the IE guys should be smarter than that. They should know even if that's to happen, it won't happen before IE 11, or something :p

[azz0r_wugg]

What you say about memory or resource usage was very true of Firefox 2.x but I find Firefox 3 far more efficient than Firefox 2.x. Firefox 3 resource usage seems no higher than IE7/IE8 on my PC.

(Y)

Firefox with extensions: 3 tabs: 148MB

IE8 with extensions: 3 tabs: 41MB

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

Firefox with extensions: 3 tabs: 148MB

IE8 with extensions: 3 tabs: 41MB

Firefox with extensions: 9 tabs: 113MB

IE7 with no extensions: 9 tabs: 148MB

It varies with every system.

[wellofsouls]

Firefox with extensions: 3 tabs: 148MB

IE8 with extensions: 3 tabs: 41MB

well, IE8 has a mechanism of running multiple processes for multiple tabs (and an extra master process), so did you count the RAM usage by adding up all those processes, or did you just count the RAM usage of one iexplore process?

Anyway with extensions it's really hard to tell, sometimes when some extensions conflict with each other, or with certain system setup, Firefox can eat up 100% CPU and a lot of RAM for no apparent reason.

Firefox always say extensions are its major strength, but those extensions are also the root of maybe over 70% of Firefox problems...

[deactivated01032015]

As said, RAM usage may vary from system to system.

Firefox with extensions: 3 tabs: 62MB

IE7 with no extensions: 3 tabs: 50MB

[wellofsouls]

Things I like :

1) InPrivate Browsing : A nice handy feature, and it's the first browser to do it right, since Safari's "Private Browsing" totally sucks and ends up pointless. I hope Opera and Firefox can follow up on this, and Safari fix up.

2) Feels snappier than IE7, and MUCH MUCH better than IE8 beta 1 in that case. Cleaner UI too. Now it can actually handles a dozen tabs quite okay, a first for IE in my experience. And it can actually renders most websites okay, unlike beta 1 which breaks over 50% of websites without the Emulate IE7 on. And Compatibility View don't require a browser restart.

3) it can pass the javascript tests much faster. Still about three times slower than Opera, Firefox and Safari, but also about three times faster than before.

4) The Awesome... err... Smart Address Bar. well, I like how it groups the addresses and makes the list expand/collapse.

5) A lot of nice little touches, like the little cross to delete url from address bar dropdown, the "preserve favorite websites history" in delete browsing history, better HTML source viewer/editor, and the visual search when it's supported.

Things that are good but needs tewaking :

1) Colored tab grouping, it's a nice idea, but it definitely needs to work on some more. For example when one enters a new URL address for an existing colored tab, that tab should be de-colored. And some configurable settings.

2) The new tab page, definitely better than a blank page, the ability to use accelerators with clipboard content is definitely a great plus, but I think it can still be much more useful. For example aside from recently closed tabs, maybe it can include the most frequently visited sites? and something like the speed dial?

3) Suggested Sites is a nice idea, but so far it looks like just a bunch of related links. Maybe it can learn and change over the course of browsing in the future?

Things I don't like :

1) the domain highlighting, I'm not a fan of it. but maybe some other people like it?

2) not much else :p

[zape]

Is there a way to disable the color group tabbing thing? Kinda pointless/annoying for me.

BTW wellofsouls you need to update your sig from IE8 beta 1 to IE8 beta 2 ;)

[wellofsouls]

Is there a way to disable the color group tabbing thing? Kinda pointless/annoying for me.

Internet Options -> Tabs Settings -> Enable Tab Groups (requires restarting Internet Explorer)

BTW wellofsouls you need to update your sig from IE8 beta 1 to IE8 beta 2 ;)

yup, done ;)

[mark_st]

the tabs are automatically saved when closing IE, there's no option for it.

the next time you open IE, click the New Tab button, and there's a Reopen Last Browsing Session link, click it and all the tabs open before you last close IE will open in new tabs.

just notice something funny, just after mere days Mozilla Labs posted something about New Tab Concepts, IE8b2 comes out with non-blank new tabs that somewhat realizes the "Contextual New-Tab Actions" idea. Now if IE8b2 was indeed leaked days ago, maybe Mozilla Labs steals their "New Tab Concepts" from IE8b2? :laugh: (this is joking of course :p)

Well, I still like Opera's Speed Dial better, but then IE8's New Tab Page is nice too ;)

Click on new tabs and there is no link...

[HouseMusicRules]

The exact same thing happened to me... anyone else? Wonder if this is a Vista x64 thing.

Installed the beta, and had some issues...

The windows sidebar does not open, keeps crashing (it just opens the bar itself and then crashes).

System: Vista x64, E6600 4Gb RAM

[zhangm Supervisor]

I'm running IE8B2, Vista x64, Sidebar x64 opens up fine - what gadgets are you running?

[Ashoktvm]

The same thing happens to me. I am also ising vista x64. why is it so?