January 27, 2009 by Matt Thomas
If you were to ask Microsoft about the new version of their (for now) market leading web browser, they’d tell you without hesitation that it’s easier to use and safer than ever. Those are the key watchwords this time, safe and easy, but how close to the truth is the Microsoft hype?
When you run the first release candidate (RC1), which was unleashed on the public today, the first thing you notice is that very little seems to have changed – it looks very similar to Internet Explorer 7. However, Microsoft have made a number of changes to the nuts and bolts of the browser that should make life easier.
Many of these come as part of is IE8’s new tabbed browsing feature. The most obvious is that if you accidentally close IE8 you will be able to reopen all your closed tabs the next time you start it, much like Firefox.
However, when it comes to tabs, IE8 doesn’t just mimic Firefox, it also makes some significant improvements on it. The first one being, colour coding – all tabs originating from one particular site will now be the same colour. For example, if you were to go to topclickmedia.co.uk and then open another part of our site on a different tab, those two tabs would be the same colour. You can then move tabs from group to group to, for instance, differentiate your work-streams.
(More tomorrow)
Related posts:
- Security and ease of use: the twin Watchwords of IE8 (Part 2)
- Security and ease of use: the twin Watchwords of IE8 (Part 3)
- Serious IE Security Flaw
- Second Beta of Firefox 3.1 available now
- European Commision reusmes hostilities with Microsoft
- Microsoft to preview IE9… But will it win the browser war for them?
