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Guy's Ezine 162 - IE8 Review
My first impression was that IE 8 is just like Internet Explorer 7.
Yet, when I
delved into the Tools and Options there were more items on just about every
menu. Consequently, IE8 was not so much a slog of learning a new system,
more the joy of playing with a new toy. These
new features are non-intrusive, fun and some are even useful.
New Features in Internet Explorer 8
Imagine this situation, you are reading a webpage about Timbuktu, after a
while you become
curious to know just where in the world to find this place. With IE 8, no problem, just
highlight the word 'Timbuktu', (by blocking with the mouse); now a fat blue arrow
in a little box will appear magically. When you click on this little
blue box, up pops a list of 'Accelerators', one of the default options will be
'Map'. Click and the link takes you to a map of Timbuktu in Mali, Africa.
The usefulness of such gismos depends on the text you select, and which
Accelerators you Add-on to your IE 8 browser. Other default options
are connect to your Blog, or your E-mail if you have a Hotmail account. The
whole idea behind Accelerators is to make it fractionally quicker to find
what you are looking for.
Also, rather like changing your search provider from Google to Yahoo!,
so you can customize your Accelerators.
From a developers point of view these Accelerators used to be called 'Smart
Tags'. To digress, for some unfathomable reason I thought Accelerators were simply
applets that populated the predictive list which you get as you start typing
text in the search box. Wrong. After reviewing IE 8's
Accelerators for a while, they now remind me of Vista's Gadgets.
The concept of Web Slices is simple enough, you create a link on the
browser bar, which alerts you when the content of the tagged page changes.
If you think of an RSS feed, but for html pages, then you have an idea of how Web Slices
could assist in subscribing to sites that have interesting updates.
So, what are the killer reasons to tag a Web Slice in your IE 8 Favorites?
One use would be to check on bidding for items on eBay. Another
example would be keeping up-to-date with sports scores.
The main problem in assessing Web Slices in the spring of 2009 is finding websites which have
added html code with the
class="hslice" to their pages. Naturally, the surfer must
also
play their part and
browse with not IE 7 or Mozilla, but IE 8.
Pages that support Web Slices give two clues that the webmaster has done
their bit and added html code; firstly,
on the toolbar you see the orange RSS symbol change to green, see screen
shots above right. Secondly, you get a green marquee around the
section of the page which features updates.
Compatibility Button
My first difficulty with IE 8's new Compatibility View is knowing when it's
on, and when it's off. The color change in that strange green icon is very
slight when you toggle it.
Microsoft provide a list of sites that it recommends for Compatibility View.
The idea is that we the users can choose to download an install a list of
sites which automatically trigger the Compatibility View of IE 8.
So far
Microsoft have a list of 2,500 sites which are compatible with IE 8, these
have no need of any extra rendering and consequently, DON'T display the broken web page
icon. Thus if the site does not display properly click on the green icon. Cynics say that
this will cause more people to switch to Mozilla. Guy says it depends
on whether you like Accelerators and Webslice, and whether Mozilla
implements them any time soon.
Confession: when I came across a site that wasn't displaying properly in IE
8, I forgot all about the compatibility button. Consequently, I just
assumed there was something wrong with that particular page and surfed
elsewhere. I only discovered my (and their) mistake when I visited the
site two days later and remembered this review of IE 8; I pressed the
Compatibility View button on my toolbar and the page displayed correctly.
I suppose the name 'Phishing Filter' could have been misunderstood in IE 7,
thus the new name SmartScreen Filter would help describe its purpose, furthermore,
Microsoft love widgets whose name begins with 'Smart', thus IE 8 has a new buzzword: SmartScreen Filter. This clever code warns us about phishing sites,
and also means that the name of the true website domain is displayed bold in
the browser bar, thus
making it easier to spot imposters. To tell the truth this new display
of the domain name in bold with greyed out file name is a little
disconcerting, and I am struggling to like this new presentation of the URL.
Other Safety Menu Items - InPrivate Browsing
InPrivate browsing is handy for covering your tracks when visiting sites you don't wish
other computer users to know. Officially, this is handy when shopping
for presents. I will leave other uses to your imagination, let me just
say that InPrivate browsing is disabled when parental controls are set.
Sundry Other Newish Features
Microsoft themselves introduce IE8 with the catch phrase, 'Faster, easier,
safer and more private'. Smart search now suggests sites based on your
history and favorites, as well as the words you type. I see this new
feature but I have not once used it. Maybe I'm a Luddite, or maybe
it's not as useful as the hype leads us to believe.
New technology always spawns purposes nobody had previously thought of, thus
we could be in for interesting new gismos.
Another truism is that the old Pareto principle holds good, each person only
uses 20% of the features of any gadget, thus I realize that features which
excite me maybe of only limited interest to you.
Find on this Page
It seemed ironic that in IE 7 finding words on the current page was harder
than finding words on the entire internet. Thanks to a new dialog box
this anomaly is no more, and now in IE 8 it's just as straightforward to find items on
the current page as with an internet search.
Understanding all the new features in IE 8 requires effort and
concentration, however installing IE 8 is the proverbial piece of cake.
The transition from IE 7 to IE 8 certainly exceeded my expectations,
particularly when setup remembered all my old IE 7 customizations. I
was also impressed by having the opportunity to change settings during
install if I wished.
About the only mistake that you could make when installing IE 8 is if you visit Microsoft's site,
but fail to realize there is a different version of IE for each operating system. The
only gripe from my old friend 'Barking Eddie' is was that you have to reboot
after the IE 8 Setup completes.
Review of IE 8
In summary, there are lots of differences between IE 7 and 8 but these
new features are non-intrusive, fun and some are even useful.
Installation is easy and setup retains all your old settings. Once you
have the new version of Internet Explorer look out for interesting sites
which support web slices.
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Will and Guy's Humour
April Fool's Day is around the corner. It's always worth keeping a
lookout for the latest spoofs both in the newspaper and on the T.V. Here
is will and Guy's advice for
April
Fools 2009
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