IE 8 First Impressions
Just finished downloading IE8. The install downloaded with no problems and delays. Nice job. I was expecting to have to wait till later this evening to try and download IE. The installation went fine on my Sony Vaio laptop running Vista Ultimate. Your mileage may vary.
After a reboot (when is this going to be fixed?), I fired up IE8 to see what our Microsoft Overlords have doled out to us. IE 8 will ask you if you want to go with some a default configuration or customize your settings. Some people will get a little confused by certain terms – Accelerators comes to mind. What exactly am I accelerating anyway? Thankfully there are not a lot of setup screens and the process took less than 20 seconds.
The basic interface has not changed that much. Few new buttons here and there. One thing you will notice immediately is the speed of the browser. This is prehaps Microsoft’s fastest web browser to date. It does not feel slugish. Browsing from page to page was very snappy and responsive. The rendering of pages is very clean and crisp. I didn’t notice any layout problems with any page that I browsed. Microsoft does provide a Compatibility view for web pages that are not so XHMTL compliant.
One thing that I’m really excited about is the new Javascript debugger located off the tools menu. I can’t tell you how long I’ve been waiting for decent Javascript debugging in IE. The debugger is a cross between Firebug and the Developer toolbar plugin for FireFox.
With the IE 8 developer tools your able to do:
- Browse DOM objects
- Set breakpoints and step thru your code
- Profile you code
- Validate CSS, HTML, Feeds
- Manage Cookies
- Includes a ruler, color picker
- Outline div’s
- and much, much more
I was skeptical about this relase of IE. It seems pretty solid out of the gate. I won’t switch over from FireFox to IE 8 quite yet as my main browser. Security is the big unknown right now. Not just with IE 8, but with any web brower on the market right now. Regardless, good job Microsoft.
