Lord of the Web

The final stable release of Internet Explorer 8 has been released and now that the new browser has had enough time to feel the world of internet and vice versa, it is now proper to make some comments about the browser.

There are few features in the new browser that makes it cool. The most prominently mentioned ones are the Web Slices and Accelerators. Web Slices is kind of like RSS in new clothes, but that is enough to win me over. I loved Web Slices right from the time when it was introduced in IE8 beta and now that more and more sites have incorporated it, Web Slices had become all the more useful and fun for me. If you say that it just old technology presented differently, suit yourself. I love it!

Coming to Accelerators, they do really speed things up. Am not much into “right clicking and having things done fast”, but for many users this will be a godsend.

While there are, by now, bound to be plugins that mimic Web Slices and Accelerators ( am not a Firefox user. Opera is my choice.) in Firefox, having these features out-of-the-box is great and that is what matters when it comes to the average user who does not bother to get plugins that the techies cannot live without.

Of course there is the InPrivate mode that is used to surf the web incognito. It is a must have feature these days and though many might find it useful for other purposes, it is really a great tool to maintain your privacy.

Coming to the most important ascpect - to me - that makes IE8 all the more cool is the Tab management. Color coded tabs are way too cool. They help me manage the tabs and sub-tabs in an efficient manner. A simple concept (again!) that does wonders.

Microsoft says that they have done a lot of under-the-hood tweaking to improve the performance and security. Performance improvements are seen, but still browsers like Firefox and Chrome are better. The gaping difference that existed before, though, has now become small. IE8 is now almost on par with Firefox 3.0.7, atleast from what I can perceive from using the two browsers. Security, in current scenarios, is all about minimizing the damage and no browser seems to be invulnerable.

The bottomline is that IE8 is much better and is really cool in many ways. It has some distance to go, but a journey well began is half completed. Am hoping that IE9 or Gazelle or whatever will continue with this trend and keep giving us great browsing experience time and again.