IE8 Beta 2 is out -- and it's great!

Comment #3

Todd — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 19:08:45 GMT

@tc: As a Vista user I was not aware of that, so thanks for pointing it out. Another thing I forgot to mention in my original post was how great Microsoft is being to 64-bit users. Unlike Firefox, which STILL does not have a 64-bit version, Microsoft has a special install for 64-bit users, which actually installs BOTH a 64-bit and 32-bit version. Hats off to Microsoft for doing that in a BETA release!!

Comment #2

truecritic — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 12:30:02 GMT

Microsoft has also warned potential IE8 Beta 2 users running Windows XP Service Pack 3 that they won't be able to uninstall either the service pack or IE8 under some circumstances. I can't give you a MS link but that is what the article says at: http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9113900&intsrc=hm_list So you might want to revise that last sentence about uninstalling. Probably uninstalls from Vista without a problem.

Comment #1

budward — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 05:55:08 GMT

Thanks for the info, Todd!!

Original Blog Entry: IE8 Beta 2 is out -- and it's great!

Todd — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 05:13:22 GMT

I've been using IE8 exclusively for the past couple of days, and I'm really happy with the product Microsoft has put together!

Importantly (for me at least), Lottery Post has been designed to work well with IE8, so you can using IE8 right now with great success at Lottery Post.

In fact, the experience at Lottery Post using IE8 is decidedly better than using IE7. There are only a few minor display glitches, and you'd have too look very hard to find them.

Performance of JavaScript seems a little better than IE7, but the main performance boost seems to be in the page load-times. Pages definitely seem to come up quicker and render much quicker, which makes the whole experience better.

The text editor is working very well in IE8 too, which is a pleasant surprise.

Compared to the way Firefox 3 acted at this stage in its development, IE8 is much more bug-free, from my testing. The product feels like a Release Candidate, rather than a beta. Again, much better than Firefox when it was in the beta stage.

The download is free for anyone. It is easy to uninstall if it doesn't work out for you.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/beta/