IE8 Beta 2 Available for Download

[Mandrake]

UPDATE: IE8 Beta 2 is out for Windows XP and up. Download it from here.

Here are the system requirements:

System requirements
Computer/Processor

Computer with a 233MHz processor or higher (Pentium processor recommended)

Operating System

Windows Vista 32-bit
Windows Vista 64-bit
Windows XP 32-bit with Service Pack 2 or higher
Windows Server 2003 32-bit
Windows Server 2003 64-bit

Memory

Windows Vista - 512MB
Windows Vista Service Pack (SP1) - 512MB
Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) - 64 MB
Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) - 64 MB
Windows XP Professional x64 Edition - 128 MB
Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2 (SP2) - 64 MB
Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2 ia64 - 128 MB
Windows Server 2008 – 512MB

Drive

CD-ROM drive (if installation is done from a CD-ROM).
(Internet Explorer 8 Beta is only available via download.)
Display

Super VGA (800 x 600) or higher-resolution monitor with 256 colors.

Peripherals

Modem or Internet connection; Microsoft Mouse, Microsoft IntelliMouse, or compatible pointing device.

You can find IE8 beta 1 available for download here. It runs on all versions of Windows from XP and up, with both 32bit and 64bit versions.

I've just installed this myself, but so far I do like it. As part of an expanded setup wizard that appears the first time you run the browser, you can import your Firefox bookmarks and other data, which is quite handy (I'm not sure which other browsers this works for). It'll even detect your Firefox extensions and tell you if there are any similar addons for IE! Microsoft also claims to have made great strides in standards compliance which is also good news.

I'll post more here once I've had a chance to play with this some more.

[/quote]

Edit: De-stickied, 10/26/09 at 14:24.

UserAgent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 6.0; SLCC1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; Media Center PC 5.0; .NET CLR 3.0.04506; InfoPath.2; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)

[Antony]

After years of ‘embracing and extending’ existing standards to morph them into proprietary Microsoft standards, something strange is happening: Microsoft will ensure IE8 renders web content to accepted web standards – by default.

Someone’s put something into the water at Microsoft that’s suddenly caused the company to decide that following standards might just well be the right thing to do, not only for Microsoft, but the rest of the community.
(iTWire)

This is a good news for the web, and probably not a good news for Firefox.

More detail at IEBlog

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X; en-US; rv:1.8.1.12) Gecko/20080201 Firefox/2.0.0.12

[Antony]

Also, one new feature - WebSlices appears to be a Microsoft implement of Safari's Web Clips without a separate runtime environment like Dashboard: "Internet Explorer 8 Users can discover WebSlices within a webpage and add them to the Favorites bar, a dedicated row below the Address bar for easy access to links. Internet Explorer 8 subscribes to the webpage, detects changes in the WebSlice, and notifies the user of updates."

Other features of Internet Explorer 8 include a links bar (similar to Safari's Bookmarks Bar) that has been renamed the "Favorites Bar," an "Automatic Crash Recovery" tool, and an improved anti-phishing filter. (source: AppleInsider)

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X; en-US; rv:1.8.1.12) Gecko/20080201 Firefox/2.0.0.12

[beanboy89]

Interesting how Internet Explorer 8 is still identified as a fourth generation browser.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.8.1.12) Gecko/20080201 SeaMonkey/1.1.8

[Gregor]

Microsoft also claims to have made great strides in standards compliance which is also good news.

I think that this is not entirely true. If we look at the results of the (just published) latest Acid3 test, MS is on the last place.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/525.12 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1 Safari/525.12

[Dr Lobster*]

it's a shame they haven't dome anything with the interface. there is so much wasted space, it's truly a horrible browser. everything seems to awkward.

same mozilla don't to group policy and msi packages for their products so they can be managed in a corporate environment.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.12) Gecko/20080201 Firefox/2.0.0.12

[jjssparkle]

So far, one irritating bug I'm running across is everytime I open Favorites menu I get an error/send error message and IE has to reopen the tab. I also had to uninstall my Web Crawler toolbar; I don't know if it's a memory overload or what going on here, but that's my personal findings thusfar - next trick is I'm going to try and access Microsoft Updates page.

UserAgent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727)

[PaulD]

If you have
IE8 Beta AND ( XP SP3 OR Windows Live Mail OR Visual Studio .Net Version 7 )
then read this.

Vista users also will need to do a manual uninstall.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.16) Gecko/20080702 Firefox/2.0.0.16

[richard mitnick]

So, I just installed IE8 beta2, first on aPIII XP machine, which I use to test things, and this morning on my Vista Business Core 2 Duo wokr computer, a Dell XPS M1710 with 2 gigs of DRAM and a 2.0 gig CPU.

I am running IE8 beta as my default. That is how I do things, run it for a while or until it fails at some "must". I do use Roboform with IE to bring it up to speed with FF.

So far, no problems. It is doing everyting nicely.

I had installed IE8 beta1, just on the XP machine and, I do not remember why, I did not like it. It may be that the machine in question, with 512megs of DRAM and a CPU of .957 gigs may simply be not enough hardware, in spite of MSFT's requirements, which are usually minmial.

>>RSM

UserAgent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 6.0; Trident/4.0; SLCC1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.04506; ImageShack Toolbar 4.3.5)

[James]

I admire your adventurous spirit, Richard, but it's not for me. I'm just too Firefox oriented... so much so that I won't even go back to Opera (which is a kick-ass browser suite). IE 8 probably represents a galactic leap for Microsoft, but I have it all with Firefox. I do, however, enjoy reading about new browsers and reading posts such as yours. Hang in there and keep the information coming our way.

UserAgent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)

[richard mitnick]

James-

Firefox IS my default browser. I will run IE8 only a couple of weeks even if everything goes O.K. I test this way. I set the browser as a default and do everything with it and wait for it to fail in some task. I have some musts. Two of them are: form filling of email addresses in my ISP's web mail; a way to handle my six MyYahoo! accounts without making me type everything in each time. Those are the two biggest.

My feeling is that we will be asked questions, asked for help, etc., and this is the only way for me to get to know what I am addressing.

Two weeks will probably be my limit, then back to the Fox, which remains in place as my default on three other machines.

>>RSM

UserAgent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 6.0; Trident/4.0; SLCC1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.04506; ImageShack Toolbar 4.3.5)

[richard mitnick]

Two problems:

IE8 is not saving or caching email addresses for my ISP's web mail, which both Forefox and Safari do.

Bigger than this, I am a big user of RSS feeds, as are many people. There are a bunch of aggregators. My choice is MyYahoo!, which also affords me webmail. I have six user id's:general news, technical news, crunching, Wall Street Jounal, a fake email for anonimity, and finally my company's email.

IE8 will only allow attachment to RSS in IE. This is too big to ignore.

>>RSM

UserAgent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 6.0; Trident/4.0; SLCC1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.04506; ImageShack Toolbar 4.3.5)

[richard mitnick]

Especially to James-

My trial of IE8 is over. Back to Firefox as my default. IE8 just could not cut it.

>>RSM

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9.0.1) Gecko/2008070208 Firefox/3.0.1 ImageShackToolbar/5.0.0

[richard mitnick]

When I decided to go back to FF as my default, one Vista machine had no problem. I opened Firefox and simply made it the default. I went to some old mail with links and clicked on a couple, they opened in FF.

But, the other Vista machine- Oh Brother!!

No matter how many times I tried to switch it back through the software. IE8 remained the default. I had to go into Defaults from the Start button and force the issue.

Just a word to the wise...

>>RSM

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9.0.1) Gecko/2008070208 Firefox/3.0.1 ImageShackToolbar/5.0.0

[DJGM]

This thread needs the "Sticky" status removed ... IE8 was finalised and released quite some time ago now.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.5pre) Gecko/20091024 SeaMonkey/2.0 Firefox/3.5.x