Browser War :: IE8 (beta-II) on the way to Wipe out Chrome and Mozilla Firefox, Watch Out!

Technology Dump Blog ^ | Friday, December 26, 2008 | Vishnu Ghimire

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Overview
The first beta release of IE8, which was demonstrated at the MIX08 conference, contained many new features, including WebSlices and Activities. In the second beta release, Activities were renamed to Accelerators.

• Added features
  Some of the features and changes for the Beta 2 compared to Beta 1
  InPrivate
  Delete Browsing History
  Search Suggestions
  User Preference Protection
  Caret Browsing
  Accelerators (previously known as Activities)
  Web Slices (previously known as WebSlices)
  Suggested Sites
  Tab Color Grouping
  Automatic Crash Recovery
  SmartScreen Filter (Known as Safety Filter in Beta 1)
  Tab isolation (tabs spread over separate operating system processes)
  
• Removed features
  Inline AutoComplete
  The option to delete files and settings stored by addons or ActiveX controls.
  CSS Expressions are no longer supported in Internet Explorer 8 Standards mode. Accelerators
  ·Accelerators are a contextual feature used to quickly access a service from any webpage. It is common for users to copy and paste content from one webpage to another, and accelerators simplify this process.Accelerators allow users to find information without leaving the current webpage. For example, to determine the location of a specific restaurant, a user will select the restaurant's address, generating an in-place view of the map. Clicking the view will open a full webpage that includes additional information from the mapping service.Browser War
  Mozilla's second alpha of Firefox 3.1 is upping the ante in the next-generation browser battle. So how do the main contenders stack up so far now? One thing's for sure, the Firefox team has taken note of Google's recent Chrome release and worked hard to make sure its offering can hold its own. Mozilla had already claimed its 3.1 version could outperform Chrome when it comes to speed (and most independent tests show it at least tying). Now, the engineers have incorporated Chrome-initiated options such as the ability to drag and drop tabs in and out of browser windows.
  The second alpha release also adds support for the HTML 5 video tag, which gives Web developers expanded options for embedding video within a page. Don't forget, too, that Microsoft's new Internet Explorer 8 beta 2 -- released at the end of August and quickly eclipsed by Chrome's introduction -- is also vying for a piece of the pie.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

So what is your solution for keeping malware off the computer?

[stylin19a]

course, the article does say changes in beta 2 from beta 1

[the long march]

And it will work as well as any of the other IE junk does. Be sure to load it up with Vista to keep you really happy

[MilspecRob]

Funny I’ve been using Chrome for a few weeks and like is speed. Not many other features but it loads very fast.

[LadyPilgrim]

I don’t run Norton and haven’t for a couple of years.

But, I still got emails that they were going to charge my credit card for the next sign up.
I was so frustrated with it, I decided to call the service center.
I talked to a Brett in India. Ha! after 21 minutes on hold.

He evidently erased the card and I am now free of Norton. Whew!

[numberonepal]

Scrolling speed through a page has nothing at all to do with the browser engine. It has more to do with your hand speed than anything else. Different programs have different “lengths” of a single tick on the mouse wheel. “Speed” in a browser is determined by many different things. One of those is how much bandwidth the browser will allow at any one time. FF is by far the superior browser because you can edit such things as this.

[edge10]

And some of the major problems were due to Nvidia’s drivers not a Microsoft created issue.

[library user]

mine crashs daily but comes right back

You must have a lot of this then.

[edge10]

Where is spell check? Oh well 3rd party is still available.

[Red in Blue PA]

I used it when it first came out.....worst browser I ever used....crashed every (100% of the) time.

Would not touch it again if you paid me.

[library user]

So what is your solution for keeping malware off the computer?

Malwarebytes Anti-Malware.

[library user]

There is a virus (a nasty one) associated with GreaseMonkey. Un-install immediately.

Actually it's not GreaseMonkey itself, it's something that masquerades as GreaseMonkey.

[pollywog]

Any of you use Opera?
Just curious...
polly

[library user]

I tried Opera a few years ago and never really got hooked on it, like I did w/ Firefox.

[ETL]

The person I was replying to apparently has the feature on their current IE browser but doesn't want it. I believe my instructions for turning it off were correct for at least most existing versions of IE. I have IE-7 at the moment.

For anyone else interested, the feature is called 'inline AutoComplete'. It sort of reads your mind and starts filling in the rest of the url for you. I too thought it was annoying and unnecessary and turned it off.

Again, to do so, click Tools->Internet Options->Advanced.

Then remove the check mark beside "Use Inline AutoComplete".

[raybbr]

I'm in the IT industry and you wouldn't believe the folks who actually use the mouse to cut and paste text (rather than use Ctrl + X, C, V).

You've got to be kidding. Using the mouse with right clicks to cut, paste and copy is a lot easier. I can drink my tea while doing that.

[RightOnTheLeftCoast]

"What are the thoughts on Mozilla in FR land?"

Previously, I found Mozilla's Netscape browser to be buggy and unusable. I always uninstalled within a few days of installing.

Firefox, on the other hand, is simply stellar. It is my default browser now on my Windows, Linux and Mac machines. Firefox's extensibility is one reason-- I can use Foxmarks to keep all my bookmarks in sync, NoScript to enhance security and privacy, and Zotero to assist me in my research work. But moreover, of all the browsers I use (IE, Firefox, Safari...) it is the most stable when I load up a few dozen tabs. IE is hopeless in that regard; more than a handful of tabs can crash it. And IE is a porous to malware, and much slower than Firefox (or Safari).

Firefox is fast and solid and flexible and easy to use. I highly, highly recommend it.

[zerosix]

What I am using is Mozilla Firefox (not just Mozilla). Was using Netscape and others previously but had lots of problems. None so far with Firefox. Thanks for your comments.

[RightOnTheLeftCoast]

Mozilla is the organization, Firefox is the product. And I'm mystified by all the comments on this thread regarding crashes, links not working, etc. I've been using Firefox since trying version 2 point something a couple years ago. Never a problem; it just keeps getting better and faster. I can't recall a single crash on any of my platforms, and I use browsers heavily in my work. Not to mention my Freeping!

[freedumb2003]

Without that, Microsoft and Aieeee8 are losing the fastest growing personal computer segment. ;-)

Probably not.