In a surprise move at the MIX08 Conference, Microsoft announced that Internet Explorer 8 is now available for download.
The list of enhancements include:
- Facebook Integration — Get status updates directly from your browser
- eBay Integration — You can use their new “webslices” to subscribe to individual portions of a page.
- Live Maps Integration — Highlight text on a page, like an address, then right-click and choose “Live Maps” to see a preview map in a small pop-up window.
- Better support for AJAX pages
I haven’t downloaded yet, but I’m just about to. Once you get it, leave a comment and let us know what you think!
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/ie/ie8/readiness/Install.htm
Not off to a good start. I’ve downloaded the install file twice (for XP) and both times the installer had aborted with a “file corrupt” message…
I’ve now got it installed on a couple of my PCs, and I’m pretty pleased.
One funny note — when trying to run Windows Update from this PC, it tells me that “this requires at least Internet Explorer version 5”. I rebooted, reinstalled, no dice.
Fortunately, there is button in IE8 to “Emulate IE7” and that does the trick.
Let’s just hope that they iron out the kinks really fast and that IE 5.5 and IE 6 are deprecated immediately.
Amen, Jim! I spend way too much time getting pages to work with IE. So far IE 8 isn’t doing all that bad on the acid standards test. Is standards compatibility too much to hope for?
There is hope! A recent SitePoint newsletter shared very promising insights into IE8 treatment of CSS and even claims that IE 8 has moved ahead of competitors in terms of standards compliance. I love Firefox and my 40 plugins, so I have not rushed to install or test IE 8 for myself.