Internet Explorer 8 beta

• Average user rating: 2.0 stars out of 22 reviews
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Product summary

CNET editors' take

• Reviewed by: Robert Vamosi
• Reviewed on: 03/06/2008

Screenshots:
Internet Explorer 8 beta 1

Perhaps acknowledging its declining market share among Internet browsers, Microsoft is borrowing several popular features from Firefox and Safari in its release of Internet Explorer 8 beta 1. Although intended primarily for developers, the beta is public and should be used with caution.

We downloaded the 14.4MB file, then waited as Microsoft downloaded any missing Internet Explorer updates, checked for malicious code on our machine, and finally installed the browser. We then had to reboot. Our system crashed during the reboot and had to be manually restarted (but remember, this is a beta).

After restarting Windows, we were not prompted to do anything. Only after clicking on Internet Explorer did we find that Version 7 had been overwritten with Version 8 beta. A first-time-use wizard walked us through configuration and personalization. There's the Express Settings option, which accepts the settings from your previous Internet Explorer installation, and there's Choose My Settings. We chose Choose My Settings, and we were asked to:

1. change default search engine (we kept ours Google)
2. change Activity Providers (see below)
3. enable Safety Filter (yes)
4. make Internet Explorer 8 beta 1 your default (no)
5. import settings from another browser (yes)

Activity Providers, according to Microsoft, are default pages for maps, encyclopedia information, and social networks. Accepting Microsoft's defaults puts you firmly within the Microsoft universe of Windows Live spaces: Blog with Windows Live Spaces, Define with Encarta, Translate with Windows Live, and send with Windows Live Hotmail. We chose not to install any of these. Later we found that Microsoft has partnered with Facebook, eBay, StumbleUpon, Yahoo, Windows Live, and MSN, and provides "activities" associated with each. By choosing StumbleUpon, for example, we found that we can set Internet Explorer to always check StumbleUpon for reviews of a Web page, for related content associated with a Web site, for up-to-the-minute feeds of popular sites, or StumbleUpon itself. If you check for more Activities, you will find a Page Not Found.

See more CNET content tagged:

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Microsoft Windows Live,

Microsoft Windows Live Spaces,

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User reviews

• Average user rating: 2.0 stars out of 22 reviews
• My rating: 0 stars Write review

• Showing 3 of 22 user reviewsSee all 22 user reviews

• 3.5 stars

  3 out of 3 people found this review helpful

  "Not bad needs work!"

  by snharden on March 6, 2008

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• 4.0 stars

  4 out of 7 people found this review helpful

  "Vamosi is wrong again ... shocker"

  by Tyrax on March 6, 2008

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• 3.5 stars

  1 out of 2 people found this review helpful

  "what'wrong here?"

  by anton.vanwamelen on March 8, 2008

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• See all 22 user reviews Write review

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