WDI

IE8 Already? I Just Got Used To IE7!

June 11th, 2008 | Posted in Other |
 

 

Microsoft is almost ready to release Internet Explorer 8 (IE8). The Beta version is available now for download here. I got it and played around with it and here is what I see.

It is pretty irritating that it is, again, not recognizing or translating the CSS just like when IE7 came out. The DIVs are all over the place. Can’t these people follow a standard of some sort? Do we, developers, really need to redesign our websites every time the browser manufacturers release a new browser version? I hope this stuff gets fixed when they release this thing. Ok, I got that off my chest, let’s get to the features of the new IE8.

Well, the coolest feature I see, that I will be using a lot is what’s called “Page Activities”. This allows you to Send a part of the page to your blog, define the selected word, map, pass the selection into Google search, send the selection to an email address and translate with Windows Live. All that by selecting a component on a page and select what you want to do with it.

I like the Map “Activity”. Here, in the image below, I am visiting a page with Restaurant listings. This one here shows the name of the restaurant, address and description.

If I wanted to see where, on the map, this address is located, before, I had to highlight the address and go to another page and paste the address into something like Google Maps. Here all I do is highlight the address.

 As you highlight it you will notice a button with a green arrow show up. Click that button and you will get a menu of Activities that you can perform to this selection.

I select Map with Live Maps and a window appears that shows you the location on the map without having to leave the page. Awesome!!

 The other cool feature of IE8 is called “Web Slices”.  This enables users to subscribe to content directly within a web page. A good examlple is eBay. I want to be able to track a specific item. If anything changes on it, like bid or any kind of information, I want to know.

I happen to be in the market for an electric guitar so I do a search on ie8.ebay.com (a special IE8 enabled eBay page) for electric guitars. This is the list that it gives me. As I move my mouse over each item listed, a slight blue or purple border apears around the listing and a purple button shows up to the left of the item.

If you click the button, a confirmation box pops up to make sure you want to subscribe to this content.

Click Add and it adds a button in your favorites or links bar. The wording in this button will turn bold if there has been an update, you can easily see when something changed. Click the littel arrow on the right of the button and a box will display all the information from the item you subscribed for.

 

These are great little features but I really hope the functionality of the day to day browsing will not suffer from it. I hope they fix the CSS and JavaScript issues that are still around.

Have you tried IE8 yet? What did you see, what are the things you liked or disliked about it?

 

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