IE8 is Looking Good, Really!

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Disclaimer: No, this is not some horrible joke. I’m serious and I wasn’t paid by Microsoft to post this.

Last week I tried out IE8 (Beta 2) and I freakin’ loved it. I’m just really surprised to see how things improved. Like IE8 is pretty much taken to the next level. And you know what? I’m thinking about switching to it (not joking).

Isolated tabs

You may have already heard of this feature. Like the tabs run individually and they’re isolated. So, if something goes wrong only that tab will crash rather than the whole browser. And then IE8 will automatically recover the tab later on. Now that’s pretty smart shit.

Chrome has this and everyone was like going “wow” and everything. But, guess what? IE8 had it first. And one thing I know for sure is that a lot of people are now going to say “well its not that cool”. (IE haters!)

Privacy mode (aka pr0n-mode)

Pr0n mode, that’s what most people call it. I gotta say that its a funny name and describes it properly too. The official name is “InPrivate” but you can just call it pr0n mode if you want. Anyways, I’m not really sure what else you could use this feature for, but it might come in handy. Like when you’re at a public computer for example.

It is fast!

This is the part that really shocked me. I was like “WTF?”. Sites load pretty much in a snap. IE8 beats FF3 at speed. I never tried Chrome (and I don’t plan on), so I can’t compare them. But, still this is like a huge improvement. Good job IE team!

They care about web developers, finally

Oh yeah, that’s right! They care about web developers. Well its about time. IE8 has this built-in feature called “developer tools” that lets you mess with a site’s HTML, CSS, script, disable stuff, outline DIVs and the cookies. There are tons of other features too. These are just the one’s that I felt was important and to give you basic idea of what they have.

Compatibility mode

You’re going to a lot find sites that were designed for old browsers. And those sites probably won’t work well with the newer ones. So, IE8 got this feature to fix that problem. There’s a button near the refresh button which just fixes everything for you. Just click on it and it works like charm. Everything just works fine.

Oh and you can also browse in IE7, IE8 or the IE8 compatibility style. Like the site would work like it would if you were using IE7, for example. You can do this straight from the developer tools.

My own suggestion for a feature

I really like IE8 and there’s a little feature that I would love to see. I wish IE8 was able to run FF plugins since most of IE’s plugins are a piece of shit. FF plugins are simply awesome and they make your life a lot easier. I hope they consider doing this.

Well there are tons of other features in IE8. I didn’t talk about all of them. Check this out for some more info. And one more thing, take IE8 for test-drive! Takes a few minutes to install it. And after you’ve done that let me know if you like it (or hate it), and if you’re thinking about switching over to it.