Microsoft’s new Web browser, Internet Explorer 8, is now available in a beta version meant for ordinary users, and it’s a pretty good piece of software.
Besides the private browsing mode, called InPrivate, which Microsoft has already announced, there are other nifty features. When your cursor moves over, say, an address on a Web site, one of IE 8’s so-called Accelerators drops down a menu bar of different Web mapping services. Click and the address is mapped. No copying and pasting across Web sites.
IE8 has also been designed so that tabbed Web sites are isolated. That means a poorly behaving Web site won’t crash the whole browser, just that tab.
The list goes on, and Microsoft explains all the new features on its Web site.
IE 6, introduced in 2001, was a mess, really opening the door for the open-source project Firefox, which is richly supported by Google. IE 7, analysts say, was a major catch-up effort, while IE 8 is Microsoft’s bid to move ahead of Firefox and Apple’s Safari in performance, features and user experience.
“In things big and small, it is a better experience,” contends Dean Hachamovitch, general manager of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer group.
We’ll see. But Microsoft’s new entry and the revived competition in the browser market brings a sense of deja vu. I think back to the comment made by Marc Andreessen, Netscape’s co-founder, in the heady days of the browser pioneer’s ascent. The browser, he said, could “reduce Windows to a set of poorly debugged device drivers.” Translated: the operating system would be relegated to plumbing, while all the action for users and programmers would be on the browser, riding above the operating system.
On the witness stand in 1998 during Microsoft’s federal antitrust trial, Jim Barksdale, Netscape’s chief executive, tried to dismiss the Andreessen comment as a young man’s flippant joke.
But it was no laughing matter to Microsoft, and that potential threat was the animating force behind the tactics Microsoft used to stifle the Netscape challenge.
Today, the browser challenge — though not Netscape — is alive and well. And it is far more realistic now. The tools for making richer Web-based applications have vastly improved. There is the rise of cloud computing, with its promise of shifting all sorts of computing tasks from e-mail to word processing onto the Web. And there is the proliferation of powerful cellphones that can handle many computing tasks via a mobile browser.
So the browser could become “the universal client,” noted Peter O’Kelly, an independent analyst. And Mr. Andreessen was “just ahead of his time,” Mr. O’Kelly said.
Firefox is now a credible competitor to IE, with its share of the browser market having climbed to 19 percent, according to Net Applications, a research firm. Microsoft’s IE has 73 percent and Apple’s Safari has 6 percent.
IE 8 is Microsoft’s answer to the renewed browser challenge. “There’s competition now and competition does amazing things,” says Matt Rosoff, an analyst for Directions on Microsoft, a research firm.
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Microsoft are including over 50 new features that are NOT compatible with other browsers, in YET ANOTHER criminal attempt to disrupt standards on the internet.
Microsoft “progress” = confusion and pain for all.
— Microsoft are Criminals“We’ll see” indeed. I wonder how long it’ll take normal IE users to notice or care when IE 8 makes its official launch? I’m curious to know what would happen if Microsoft tried to trump Firefox’s newly minted download record.
— KiriTo me, this seems like Microsoft’s (yet again) attempt at trying throw the proverbial enough stuff at the wall – something has to stick. While I applaud the renewed attempt at the “browser” war, it is truly not a war any longer, as Firefox has become the web standard. How do I know this? I know this because corporate PCs are now being standardized with Firefox. Corporate IT departments are realizing that programming in Firefox is just as easy as programming in IE – maybe easier because of the open source language.
— OpenSourceWait a minute; IE has 73% of the browser category? It’s hard to call that a competition; more like, as usual, Microsoft is not satisfied with being the leader, they must dominate and crush into submission any competition.
This is why Microsoft has so many enemies. Instead of leading by example, Microsoft hurts innovation with its desire to dominate.
— Lee BlairSimply not as streamlined, transparent and customer-respectful as Firefox. I am sticking with the Fox!
— John AndersenIt is not clear to me why the assumption is being made that Microsoft is out of the game. It seems wrong to discount them… a mistake, given the competitiveness in the browser market. It should be noted that Netscape 4 was a *terrible* browser, whose own uselessness (buggy, constantly crashed, proprietary “DHTML” api that was badly implemented and did not attract developers) literally destroyed Netscape, the browser company. Firefox was born out of the remnants of Netscape’s browser team, after the now-dead browser’s codebase was open-sourced. The lesson is simple: should Microsoft’s browser suddenly decline to near zero market penetration (unlikely), the resultant void would likely be filled up by even a better browser(s). Perhaps by an inside group of Microserfs who can finally do all the stuff they wanted to do.
— jimbobFirefox looks after everyone. Microsoft just looks
after it self. They don’t support what they make.
IE8 does not support Windows 98 2nd ed., Firefox
does.
Opera is even better than IE8.
Microsoft is fading!
Constitution
— ConstitutionUse opera. Blows those 3 out of the water.
— Nice TieIE will remain king of the browsers as long as it is shipped with Windows. My opinion isn’t simply based on the current WEB metrics showing IE still has nearly 80% of the market share. Another key factor is the automation and embedding features of IE. If you bother to look at the resource DLLs of most major applications, say McAfee for example, you see they do most of their GUI in HTML. What is the rendering engine for that GUI??? An embedded instance of IE, of course. When building enterprise applications for corporate IT you can always assume that 1) they will have windows and 2) that IE will be available. Until MAC desides to free the hardware lock on OSX I don’t see this changing anytime soon.
— JReasons68Nothing from Microsoft matters….
— Roland OnfloreTo the “commentors” so far, my god, do you people just spend your lives laying in wait for anything Microsoft to pounce on? Maybe you should at least pretend to have some reasoned objectivity (even though you clearly don’t) so that we might take you seriously.
— Davered.
If this MS browser is designed with the same diligence as Vista then I hope Microsoft built-in a possibility to downgrade back to the previous IE version after trying the new one out … or even better yet, to upgrade to Firefox 3.0 or Opera.
Vivifiant, Ohio
— Vivifiant.
Pretty good at delivering spyware and exploits as well. Best if used on sites that only accept Microsoft browsers. OS X and Linux versions not available since those operating systems offer no competing browsers.
— DanThe huge corporation I work for won’t even allow us to use FireFox. It’s all IE. Want to hear the best part? We can’t even use IE7. That corporate “upgrade project” hasn’t been undertaken yet. We design software here, but we can’t use any new browsers in order to design it. We do have some boxes with IE7 for testing, but none have FF.
I have “illegally” installed FF on my machine (which I am using now to post this), and I hear about it every time I am forced to call support to get something done on my machine that I should be able to do myself but my credentials don’t allow it. That’s how corporate IT works here.
FF does do more and do it better than IE7. However, the “powers that be” are stuck on IE. It’s like that at all the companies I know of. MS only stays on top because they are on top. Why design for FF, when most people use IE? Then, why use FF when the software is designed for IE? Duh.
I hope IE8 is good, because I’ll eventually be stuck using it to design and test my apps.
— LOL@OpenSourceAre they just copying things off of Mozilla’s book? I read on another article that IE ripped off Firefox 3’s new address bar. IE8 will be competing against Firefox 3.1. Mozilla’s working on Tracemonkey and CSS 3 compatibility while IE 8 is one step behind. The truth is Microsoft probably will trump Firefox’s world record in download but not fairly. Windows Update will automatically push the update to the user (who doesn’t always know better) and they will just click “yes” and “ok” through the installer prompts. To me it’s easier to program and create webpages for FF than to tweak everything for IE.
— GeoI’ll still stick with Firefox.
— FFFanThe real play is the virtual OS that serves up the pages. Microsoft’s trojan horse into the “Cloud OS” is SharePoint. That’s where you should focus your attention.
— O CoelhoIt’d be easy for them to trump FF’s downlad record, although they just make it a critiacal update for windows and walla, its easily beaten it
— trumpingIE 8 - oh God more drama to deal with, in terms of Windows working properly.
With IE7, there are still more patches to be installed than there is for FF3, which have caused some havok to Windows’ business users and, to an extent, home users.
Andreessen may have been right on the future of browsers and Windows but it is still a poor excuse for M$ to have incorporated a browser to a GUI OS.
If M$ had concentrated more on the actual workings of an OS instead of integrating the browser function to the GUI, every version of Windows from ME to Vista would have been better performance platforms.
— NedIE8 looks like a good release. And this comes from a web developer who is as anti Microsoft as I can be. They’ve fixed the biggest CSS layout bugs, and have added some nice features. I’d still never use it, but its good to know that the poor dolts who don’t know any better, or aren’t able to install FireFox will have a somewhat standards compliant browser.
Of course, the real problem is that the headache that is IE6/IE7 will be with us for many many more years, as many corporations will refuse to upgrade to IE8. If Microsoft wanted to earn the goodwill of web developers, they would make IE8 a forced upgrade to every IE6/7 user. The sooner those browsers are a memory, the better.
— Ted Lee@Microsoft are Criminals
— MadClownSo what do you call Firefox’s XUL which only works on Firefox or XPCOM. There not standards and Firefox includes them.
Hah hah! Microsoft uber alles! Keep up that publicity–maybe they’ll up their advertising!
— Odani of the FaithWow, so it’ll be almost as good as Firefox 2x. Nice. No doubt it will be distributed as a ‘critical update’ via windows update.
— MickFirefox may be the corporate standard at some companies, though most large corporations still standardize on Microsoft. I work for a large software-house with THOUSANDS of external clients and EACH and EVERY one of them use Microsoft IE 6 or 7 as the standard.
Now, don’t take this as a Firefox bashing, as it’s not. I truly enjoy using Firefox as a standards based browser (though even Firefox goes against W3C with tags such as javascript’s innerHTML — a Microsoft standard that the Mozilla foundation liked so much that they decided to break standards to include).
No matter what boat you’re in, the major browsers (IE, Firefox, Safari) will be around for a very long time. Support each of them in all web applications.
— Shawn DormanIt’s in BETA!!!
— Andy ParkHow about waiting to see how it performs before dumping on it???