IE 8 Beta 2 Quiet Release

Internet Explorer Beta 2 was released on the 27th of August, no big hype just quietly released to the public domain ( Download here), why so quiet?, makes you ask does the beta community care, well I suppose not a lot really, all the geeks amongst wouldn't be seen dead using IE anyway let alone the beta version. Well as we hear are neither real geeks or mac enthusiasts we decided to download and install.

Now I wish I hadn't bothered, I had hoped that there would be some vast improvement from beta 1, well wrong again. With beta 1 the wannabegeek site rendered with a lot of problems, for those of you who understand a little of CMS you'll understand when I say that module were all over the place with the css just going astray, well its a little better but the ads don't display correctly. I am sure this is all to do with my site code not being up-to scratch but really why should it matter so much.

Other so called features do they live up to billing or even do we really want them, ZD net have done a comparison of IE beta 2 and Firefox 3.0.1

{mosgoogle} 

They say

The bottom line

It’s pretty clear from these basic tests that Internet Explorer 8 has a long way to go if it is to catch up with Firefox 3.0 in terms of JavaScript performance and web standard compliance

However, I think that it is worth pointing out that when it comes to performance, Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 is three times faster than the Internet Explorer 7.

ACID 3 compliance however isn’t much better than that offered by Internet Explorer 7.

IE8b2 report card: C- … Could do better, much better

another review here IE 8 Beta 2 not without its faults

IE 8 seems to have lots of gizmo's but again are they any good

on a new tab we get

Reopen closed tabs
View tabs that you've closed since starting Internet Explorer.

Start InPrivate Browsing
Browse the web without saving your history.

Help prevent the websites you go to from automatically sharing details about your visit with other websites.

Use an Accelerator
Use a web service with text that you've copied from a webpage.

Show Clipboard

Use this text:   http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-10028458-75.html…

(Showing the first 50 of 87 characters in the Clipboard)

Search with Google

whilst the reopen pages is OK ish but start private browsing whats all that about?

 I just get a google toolbar error but I guess it must do something.

Use an accelerator, got me wondering just seems to open a search engine seems just like another way to promote windows live search or am I being just a little cynical.

SmartScreen Filter, don't know what this is either, looks and feel a little like a revamped phissing detector, if so why change its name we all new what it was.

Compatibility view is better than the beta 1 release although a little harder to find its now on the end of the URL space

Reopen last browsing session is good like that feature use it in FF anyway

so all in all from a wannabegeek point of view, Jury is still out not as friendly as FF doesn't render my sites as I like them  9but that could just mean work for me)

Tell me if you like or don't like