I’ve now been trying out Internet Explorer 8 for a couple of days. The browser offers plenty of new features which do just what they claim, but the improvements are hardly revolutionary.
It’s only fair to note that many of the changes are under the hood. The browser promises more stable browsing with enhanced protection against some security risks. I’ve not encountered any crashes, but it would take a longer testing period to know if this really works. And by definition it’s hard to tell whether or not the browser has prevented me falling victim to clickjacking.
Instead my attention has been focused on the various add-ons designed to improve coordination between the browser and web-based services. These fall into three main categories:
Accelerators. The name presumably comes from the idea that it speeds up your web surfing. Simply put, this adds a variety of website related functions to the right-click menu when you are viewing a page.
For example, instead of copying a phrase, opening up Wikipedia and pasting it into the search bar, you can simply right-click it and select the Wikipedia accelerator, which automatically opens the relevant page. There are similar functions available for major sites such as Google, Amazon and eBay.
I found the Accelerators a little confusing to use at first because simply right-clicking on the relevant term only gives a few options such as e-mailing the current page address in Gmail. It turned out most of the Accelerators only kick in when you’ve highlighted the relevant words before right-clicking.
While these features do eliminate a couple of clicks from the process, I can’t say they made enough of a difference to significantly change the feel of internet surfing.
Visual search. These features simply add visual options to the existing search bar. For example, selecting the Amazon visual search gives a drop down menu with thumbnail pictures of the relevant products. There really doesn’t seem an obvious point to this and it seems to be as much about keeping regulators happy (by promoting rival ‘search’ services) than being a useful tool.
Web slices. These are effectively bookmarks for dynamic pages which, when hovered over, give a drop down box with key details from the page. For example, you can add a Web slice for an eBay listing and then hover over it at any time to get the latest top bid and time remaining. Similar Web slices are available for weather sites and social bookmarking sites such as Digg.
I didn’t have much luck assessing other new features in the browser. The Firefox-style smart address bar appeared functional but clearly needs plenty of use before it becomes genuinely helpful. Meanwhile a drop down menu suggesting sites similar to the one you are currently on appeared to be out of action.
Overall, the new features are all decent enough ideas and all improve the browsing experience, albeit to varying degrees and at the cost of extra screen clutter. But they certainly don’t feel like enough of an improvement that anyone happy with a rival browser would have reason to change.
Source:Blorge
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