Microsoft displays new and welcome restraint in its latest browser beta.
I'm not bowled over by Microsoft's new beta of Internet Explorer 8. First of all, it looks almost exactly the same as Internet Explorer 7.0 (IE7), which was arguably one of the most significant updates in the browser's roughly 12-year history. The tabs, address bar, Favorites and Home buttons, and RSS and other links are all in the same places as they were in IE7 and appear little changed. Microsoft says that many of the forward-facing consumer features aren't active in this beta. Maybe they'll make a bigger impression. For now, however, I contend that it would be more accurate to call this release IE 7.5.
That said, all in all, I'm pleased.
Last year, Microsoft overhauled the interfaces in its tent pole products—Office, IE, and Vista. This time around, the company seems content with taking a measured approach, one that's clearly more focused on what's inside the browser than on what's on the outside.
It took me a while to get used to the IE7 interface. I loved the tabs and knew how to work with them, thanks to Firefox. I hated that Home, Refresh, and Stop had been separated, and I had hoped that Microsoft would consider reuniting them. By now, though, I've grown accustomed to IE7's quirks. I've even embraced some, particularly the Favorites panel, which drops down over the left-hand side of your page and allows you to navigate easily through and find all of your stored links, even if they're nested deep inside multiple folders. The RSS button on the main toolbar is a handy feature, but I often wonder if consumers miss it because there's no label.
I decided to hop on the beta bandwagon early, because I was actually having some trouble with IE7. It's been my experience that software updates often automatically fix major problems without much user intervention.
For weeks I'd been running IE7 without add-ons. It's easy to do: You simply right-click on the IE desktop icon and select Start Without Add-ons. This loads IE as fresh and new as the day you first installed it. This action was necessary because IE had been crashing a lot—often when I was scrolling up or down on a Web page, but not always. Sometimes, I just clicked in the wrong place and the browser would freeze. I noted that, at one point, a reader had a similar problem, and our software expert, Neil J. Rubenking, suggested that an add-on-free load might get around the problem.
An add-on-free IE7 worked like a charm for me, except when I wanted to do things like view Flash video. As a result, I began using Firefox as my primary browser. I like Firefox, but it has its own interface quirks, and with enough tabs running, it's as much of a resource hog as IE.
Still, I have a soft spot in my heart for IE (I had used it almost exclusively since giving up Netscape Navigator), so I jumped at the chance to install the IE8 Beta. I has high hopes that the add-on problem would be fixed. After install, however, IE8 crashed faster than IE7. I guess that's progress. Still, it's a beta, so I wasn't all that surprised. After a couple more attempts, I loaded IE8 just as I had IE7—without add-ons. Once I got the browser working, I was able to do what I should have done with IE7. I opened Internet Options, navigated to the Programs tab, and selected Manage Add-ons. Then I disabled different ones until I found the culprit—Skype. With that turned off, IE8 launched without a hitch.
There are a couple of minor interface changes I've noticed in IE8. The Panning Hand, which lets you grab and drag the page up and down, is gone. Help shows up on the main feature bar (IE7 defaults to hiding it behind a main menu bar drop-down). Under Help, you'll find the familiar About IE window, but with a nifty added addition: System Info…. Hit the button and you'll get a complete accounting of your system hardware, components, drivers, Internet settings, Office apps installed, and more. I hope this isn't just another beta feature, because I love it. IE8 also adds an Emulate IE7 button. This may only be a stop-gap beta feature, but in any case, it's kind of laughable, since there are few major differences between versions.
There is one other interesting change that has nothing to do with functionality but could indicate a little bit of a branding shift: The icon next to Microsoft-specific shortcuts, which include Free Hotmail (why not Live mail?) and Windows, is an "M" that looks like the first letter in the Microsoft logo. This is not a new style for Microsoft, but I've never seen the company use the single letter in quite this way. Watch for more branding like this in other Microsoft products.
Web Slices, another new feature in the beta, lets you subscribe to content within a page, though it doesn't appear functional in this beta. It's an intriguing idea with a decent name, but my guess is that few people will use it.
I like that the focus of this update is simplification and shortcuts. Making it possible to access Activities (e-mail, blogging, translating, and, it seems, dozens of others) with a simple right click and with no cutting and pasting is not huge change, but it's a smart one.
Using an early beta that works this well (yes, it has crashed, but such is the price of beta use) and seems so familiar is oddly comforting. I wonder, now, if Microsoft might finally be getting the idea that less is more. If that's the case, it could bode well for Windows 7.
Source: PC Magazine
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