Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 now available
Just a couple hours ago, IE8 Beta 2 was officially released.
Now, as a user experience guy, I'm pretty excited about all the neat UX improvements. Sure, all the security enhancements (Domain Highlighting, SmartScreen, etc.) are very welcome, as is the Automatic Crash Recovery feature. Okay, that one's really welcome. But, all those aside, the UX stuff is where it's at. In my opinion, this is right up there in impact with the change from Netscape v3 to modern browsers way back when.
Accelerators and Web Slices rock! I can hardly wait until adoption for these features is widespread - and it will be. And anyone who recalls having to fuddle with conditional formatting and swapping between two machines to develop web sites when IE 7 came along will be grateful for the Compatibility View feature. I am especially so, since it's much easier to use than in the Beta 1 release, and is now site-specific, rather than global, doesn't require a browser restart, etc. Visual Search is fantastic - way better than the FireFox variant. No more pop-up dialog for text searching... the "new tab" screen is even functional (finally!)... I could go on.
Okay, the InPrivate Browsing feature is getting all the press (good and bad...), but that'll fade once Joe User gets hold of the real UX improvements in IE 8. Go get it!
