Vista - IE8 Beta1 Launched

As of today Microsoft officially launched IE8 Beta!!

To download IE8 Beta 1
Internet Explorer 8 Beta: Home Page

Virtual PC HD Image - Thanks pdeprez
A hd image containing pre-activated Windows XP/Vista and IE6, IE7 or IE8.
Download details: IE App Compat VHD

Internet Explorer addon
IE7Pro - The Ultimate Add-On for Internet Explorer

Uh, hell no.

dmex, your avatar is spot on. IE=BARF

hahaha yeah it is...

They can keep it, I will stay with my Firefox thank you.

Still needs some IE7Pro Installed before its better than firefox

Everything looks better in IE8 Beta, but good luck with highlighting items on a webpage.

Shawn

It constantly crashes for me. Firefox Beta 3 is superior by far at this point.

Scotteq,

I noticed that on my IE8, the DEP was enabled for it. When I disabled DEP in IE8, it stopped crashing on me. Maybe it will to for you. See the bottom section in this tutorial for DEP and IE7. It's the same procedure.

DEP - Enable or Disable

Shawn

Shawn,

I'm sure you can see the irony of a Microsoft written product running afoul of Microsoft's own security implementation of DEP... I hope the situation amuses you as much as it does me. Cos I laughed.

Thank you very much for the link. I will have to consider whether or not I wish to disable DEP in order to play with IE8. At the moment though, it's a little hard to justify weakening security in order to play with a first release beta for nothing more than personal amusement. Especially when IE/Windows is *the* target for hackers/viruses (or is that "Viri"??). So I'm leaning strongly towards not. If it crashes, then so what: So far it doesn't seem to affect anything else, and at least the auto recovery feature will get a workout.

My thoughts after using 8 for the evening: I can understand it's a beta and ignore the stability/compatibility issues. But for the life of me I still don't understand how it is that "Some Random Kid On The Internet" can create a more attractive, more customizable, and more usable interface with Firefox than professional developers at MSFT can do with Explorer. Why should users still have to go to 3rd party products and/or spend a good chunk of time to force Explorer to have something that could be considered as approaching what FF delivers for free. And with what... 1/3rd less code???? Why does IE still look like a kludgy afterthought when MSFT have put so much effort into cleaning and prettying up the OS for Vista??