Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 - First Impressions
It feels fast
I have no data to back this up, but everything feels snappier. Not just script performance but page rendering as well. Opening a new tab is still way too slow. It needs to be near instantaneous.
Bookmarks bar is improved
I’ve always been a big Links toolbar user keeping all my most frequently visited pages quickly accessible. The new Bookmarks bar takes the old Links bar and kicks it up a notch with WebSlices integration.
I never liked how IE7 took up valuable space on the tab strip for the favorites UI. Now that’s been moved to a more logical place on the Bookmarks bar.
Emulate IE 7 mode is handy
Finally a suitable solution to the perpetual issue of not being able to run two different versions of IE concurrently.
New features have potential to be very useful
WebSlices (basically chunks of a web page that you can quickly view from the Bookmarks bar) are neat and I can definitely see some potential uses (the eBay example from the MIX keynote today would definitely be one).
Activities has a lot of potential too although the right click context menu is getting to be a little crowded.
New developer tools are on the right track
They’re not quite FireBug yet, but they’re definitely a step in the right direction. What needs to happen to make it better? Make it exactly like FireBug!
Address bar text coloring is weird
IE8 highlights the current domain and dims the rest of the URL. Not sure that this is helpful for anything. I think this is going to bother the folks at site like ESPN:
Why the permanent horizontal scroll bar?
This is the only curious change I’ve seen and I’m hoping its a bug. The horizontal scroll bar is now permanently visible even when you can’t scroll side to side. I like having the permanent vertical bar to keep my layouts from jumping around but the permanent horizontal bar doesn’t solve any issues that I know of. I’d like to know the reasoning behind this.
Add-on manager is greatly improved
Extensions, search providers and activities are all managed from one place. It’s very well organized.
Few new options
A quick look through the Internet Options didn’t turn up anything that stands out. I’m shocked (and thankful) that most of what they’ve done appears to be under the hood (rendering, script perf, etc) with only a few new features. Let’s hope it stays this way until release.