IE8: We are not the Devil anymore

Microsoft in an official release to the public has announced what features (read enhancements) they can expect from the much hyped Internet Explorer 8. This was at the MIX08 conference held at Las Vegas ... you can read about the entire details here (beware, it is encoded with the usual marketing spin). Will list down some of the salient features here -

• Activities - Users can add more extensions to their browser (the way Firefox does already). These activities would enable the users to do more, in short, Microsoft gets a whole new way to bundle their failed products with the new and improved browser
• WebSlices - Users can subscribe to content from within a page. The moment the content is changed, the users will be notified in their Links Bar.
  
• Automatic Crash Recovery - That's reassuring!! This feature is being marketed actively instead of an implicit indication that it was always there. Anyways, how is this adding value over Firefox or Opera for that matter.
  
• Safety Filter (thats Anti-Phishing) - This is to be improved and enhanced, which will block sites known to contain malicious scripts. No comments here. I am actually hoping that this works, people do not realize how important this feature is. And those who do, do not use IE :-)
  
• Compliance - IE8 will now be more compliant to the CSS standards. Finally, some sense, these days too many sites are relying more and more on CSS instead of flash or complex javascripts for glitzing up their websites
  
• AJAX Navigation - Hmmm ... this is a nice touch I must say. In all the AJAX based portals, whenever we click the back button of the browser, the browser goes to the page which was last submitted completely and not the last AJAXed state. Having this might be a blessing for normal users, I know the techies had just learned to live without AJAX navigation
• Integration - IE8 promises ready made integration with Facebook and eBay, et al. So, thats a plus for all facebook and eBay users ... dunno how many of them will actually use it though.
  

All this and a lot more kids! These have been promised to the doe-eyed of Microsoft ... you can almost see the bunch of users in the background using their respective other browsers waiting and watching to see what happens next. I am one of them.

As of now, if you do want to try out the beta, try the IE8 Readiness Toolkit and then proceed for the installation. One word. Apprehension.