14 DAY TRIAL // Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 was a released aimed almost exclusively at web content developers and designers. It's purpose is to give a taste of the successor of Internet Explorer 7 but also to get websites designed for the previous versions of IE to be readied for the next iteration of the browser. IE8 Beta 2, planned for availability this August is, in contrast, an end user-oriented release, and in this context, the main focus for Microsoft at this point in time is to top what Firefox 3.0 brought to the table. Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 will need to shame Firefox 3.0 in order to breathe new life into Internet Explorer, and to stop what so far appears to be the irremediable erosion of its market share at the benefit of Mozilla's open source browser.
This week, Dean Hachamovitch, General Manager Internet Explorer opened the subject of Internet Explorer 8 and Trustworthy Browsing. Just as was the case with Windows XP, IE has an image problem when it comes down to security. And just as Windows Vista put security at the forefront, it appears that IE8 will do the same. "Trustworthy refers to one of our overall goals: provide the most secure and most reliable browser that respects user choice and keeps users in control of their machine and their information," Hachamovitch said.
Microsoft is essentially promising that IE8 will be more secure, more reliable and will deliver superior privacy protection and support for business practices compared to IE7. This is without a doubt the foundation of any good user experience. However, Microsoft needs to indeed provide only the foundation of IE8 UX with "the most secure and most reliable browser" and not resume itself only to this. On top of privacy, reliability and flexibility, IE8 will have to deliver superior performance, better memory management, additional capabilities that are now mainstream such as crash recovery, and ultimately rich features, but so much more than activities and Web Slices.
Security means "as the user browses the web, the only code that runs on the user's machine is code that the user allows to run". IE7 made a lot of progress on security, starting with Protected Mode and developing IE to be "secure by design, secure by default" as part of the following SDL requirements. "IE7 was the first browser to support Extended Validation certificates to help protect users from deceptive websites, as well as delivering anti-phishing protection, International Domain Name support with protection from deceptive websites, a richer SSL experience and support for stronger SSL cipher algorithms, ActiveX opt-in, and great integration with Parental Controls in Windows Vista," Hachamovitch added.
Much more. The bottom line is that Microsoft should steer clear from parading IE8 for its security, or interoperability or compatibility and should actually deliver an arsenal of features that would recommend IE8 over Firefox 3.0. Like or not but Firefox 3.0 was downloaded over 8 million times in the first 24 hours since release. This is not so much an accomplishment for Mozilla, as it is a slap in the Redmond company's face. With IE8 Microsoft has to be well aware that it needs to top Firefox just to save face, but 8 million downloads in a single day is something that Internet Explorer has never managed to pull off. And IE8 will also fail unless it manages to captures users' imagination unlike any previous version of the browser.
Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 is available for download here.