Internet Explorer 8.0 beta 1 is a 14.4 MB download. lets find out what we have in store from Microsoft in this iteration of its web browser.

Setup:

IE was tested on Dell E1705, 1.8GHz core2duo, 2 GB RAM laptop

click the image to zoom

IE8 beta1 passed the Acid2 test

Installation:

Installation was straight forward with few requirements like it needed Malicious Software removal tool, It automatically downloaded the tool and installed before installing IE. Installation took like 5-7 minutes. after installation i was asked to restart my laptop.

First Run:

When we ran IE 8.0 for the first time it asked me for settings. This part is interesting where we actually have option to choose my favourite search engine, blogging place, social network, maps, define, translate tool, email/webmail , security settings. default for the above are Live search, Windows Live Spaces, Live map, Encarta, Windows Live, Live Hotmail respectively these can chosen in single shot by selecting “Use express settings” option. we opted for “Choosing my own preference”. We had option of skipping this settings for now.

Setting/adding up search engine provider is step 1

Setting my activity provider is step 2

Setting safety filter is step 3

Importing from other browsers and checking for default browser, importing took few seconds and had no issues.

It supported importing from Opera and Firefox and found bookmarks, feeds, extensions from firefox and bookmarks from opera.

Finding IE addons similar to installed firefox extension lands you here

What’s new:

• Emulate IE 7: feature to help users to read pages which does not render properly with IE 8.0
• Activities: feature which enable users to do daily chores easily ex: blogging, finding meaning etc.
• Addon,Seach Provider, Activities Manager
• Favourites bar
• Developer Tools
• Feed discovery and feed reader
• Web Slices - on demand widgets?

Problems found so far:

We were trying feed reader and suddenly IE crashed. Interestingly, nothing happened to windows explorer and tab recovery happened with no success making us click windows application crash window many times. There was another IE window open nothing happened to the window.

Later we restarted IE and it was crashing continuously. but, luckily it worked properly after like 10-15 tries.

We will update this with more info soon