Just minutes ago Microsoft released its Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2, the latest public available release of its Internet browser.
The Welcomed Features
A small change to notice from the latest Beta to this one, is that, what was known as activities are now known as accelerators... just a matter of wording there.
Although some welcomed big changes in usability features are here to prompt as well:
Colored coded tabs: IE8 takes into account that there are often relationships between new tabs that users open, and the browser can make it a lot easier to figure out which tabs go with which
Visual Search: Web sites can offer rich search results as you type in the Search box, this featured was also known as Power Search under the rumor mill.
InPrivate: this feature is focused on two aspects: disclosure and choice. Disclosure means informing users in plain language about the data collected about them and how it’s used. Choice means putting users in control of their data and giving them tools to protect it.
- InPrivate Browsing lets you control whether or not IE saves your browsing history, cookies, and other data
Delete Browsing History helps you control your browsing history after you’ve visited web sites. - InPrivate Blocking informs you about content that is in a position to observe your browsing history, and allows you to block it
- InPrivate Subscriptions allow you to augment the capability of InPrivate Blocking by subscribing to lists of web sites to block or allow.
The Bitter-sweet One: The Compatibility View
Even though there are great features in this new browser, the incorporation of a more standards compliance execution in its engine makes some sites that were designed with specifics to the characteristics of Internet Explorer 7, 6 and earlier to render differently in IE8.
For this Microsoft has enabled a way for site owners to specify the type of treatment they want their sites to have. Specifically, the type of engine used to render their content, also known as the Compatibility View.
Web site owners have 1 of the 2 choices to enable this view, they either manually add a meta tag to their pages specifying their choice or add a header to their web server publishing their pages, which is, in most cases, out of the reach of them.
For the first way choice though, Artinsoft has released a FREE tool that encapsulates an aggiorning that automates this process; called aggiorno express.
Different to the full version of aggiorno, express editions are free standalone aggiornings that are theme to help you with a specific task, saving you hours of effort that otherwise will cost you getting things done.
After downloading and installing aggiorno express, getting your sites ready for IE8 is as easy as launching the application, selecting the source folder of your web site, deciding where the new web site should be stored, choosing the flag you want to meta tag your pages with and hitting Start!
Keep in mind this should be seen as a temporary solution to your site while you get it ready to shine, then you can use aggiorno express again to remove the tag.
The following are the links to get your things rolling:
P.S. There are some caveats thought that you need to keep in mind while before installing IE8 and the IE8 Team has it in a blog post, I encourage you to read them first.
Thank god it's more standard compliant and who gives a damn about IE6 specific sites....
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