Internet Explorer 8 is already out in beta form. We would have added a big “Yipee!,” but openly can scream “Copycat!” instead. IE 8 looks like just Mozilla’s Firefox, but on steroids. It restores crashed website sessions, downloads files while surfing on other tabbed browsers, and is more graphic-intensive.
The big difference that Internet Explorer provides that Firefox doesn’t is the following:
- provides slices or pop-up windows featuring RSS-feed like preferences
- new favorites bar that allows links to files on your desktop
- activities section that features Live Maps and Microsoft Live
- easy-to-find domains (www. and .com are grayed out)
Overall, the interface is glossier and chock-full of buttons and drop-downs. We like it because it’s more like Firefox; however, it fails in that the fluff sometimes gets in the way of a larger viewing surface like Firefox. In the end, we’d wait for IE to have patches or applied the necessary fixes for IE8 or else you’re bound to have a computer crash.
