Review - Chicago (IL) - A little over a month ago we were able to publish
some information and benchmarks on Microsoft’s first Internet Explorer 8 RC1
(IE8) build - that was released to the firm’s closest partners. This week,
however, Microsoft released a public build of the RC1 browser and our initial
question was: If the build number is higher, has the performance also improved?
Let’s find out.
If we look back at the past year and the dramatic improvements in browser technology
we have seen recently, then we still believe Microsoft has been run over by a train,
one the company had no idea was coming. The current market share losses Microsoft
is experiencing can be directly tied to much better browsers released by Mozilla,
Google and Apple - especially when it comes to speed. IE is presently at a substantial
disadvantage, and while Microsoft continuously accelerated IE8 since the first beta
release in March of 2008, the company also realizes its rivals are playing in an
entirely different league.
The first IE8 RC1 was underwhelming (see benchmarks)
and the critical question remains: Can Microsoft accelerate the aging IE code base
enough to stop the market share bleeding. With that thought in mind, we took another
look at IE8 RC1, this time with the public build.
New features
Since the pre-release or partner build of IE 8 RC, there are no major visual changes
or further features beyond those described in our previous review. That is to be
expected because corporate partner pre-releases tend to be pretty close to the final
product. As a reminder though, new features include private browsing and accessibility,
as well as full support for CSS 2.
There were noticeable changes under the hood, however, resulting in perceptible
performance and reliability improvements. JavaScript's speed, general page load
times, and memory footprints all improved to some degree. These observations confirm
related statements in the official IE8 Blog that efforts like these have been made. However,
compatibility issues still remain with popular sites like Facebook, as well as plug-ins
like Skype. CSS 3 compatibility remains embarrassingly low - despite Microsoft’s
initial promises to improve IE in this respect.
Released on January 26, 2009, Internet Explorer RC1 version number 8.0.6001.18372
is an update from the
internal Partner Build we tested a month ago (8.0.6001.18343). The download
is 16.2 MB in size.
Installation
The install file begins by removing previous IE8 versions. This process can take
a few minutes. Microsoft will have to work on the general installation process as
well because a restart is required before the install can proceed. The actual installation
took about five minutes, after which another restart occurs. We are not living in
the 1990s anymore and this install needs to work on today's operating systems without
restarts.
On first restart, the same setup wizard appears asking whether you want to turn
on suggested sites. It then allows you to choose between express settings, which
include items like Search provider: Google, accelerators: Blog, Map, Email with
Windows Live, Translate with Live search and default browser: IE. After that you
can import favorites and feeds from Firefox and / or Safari. And finally, you can
start using the browser.
Compatibility issues
According to the release notes, there are still several known compatibility issues
with the browser.
There are problems such as incompatibility with Intuit TurboTax, the HP Smart Web
Printing software, Google Toolbar, Roxio Drive Letter Access (part of Roxio's CD
Burning suite), older versions of Skype and Realplayer 11 (though fixed by Hotfix
957055 which automatically downloaded after install).
Assistive technology
Even more problematic, users of Assistive technology will notice that Internet Explorer
8 RC1 is incompatible with versions of Job Access With Speech (JAWS) prior to 9.0.2169
and versions of Window-Eyes prior to 7.0.1.
Unreported issues: Facebook and Gmail
While testing the browser under Windows XP, we noticed issues with Facebook and
Gmail. It remains unclear if these issues are due to client (IE8) or server (Facebook
and Google) problems, or a combination of both. For example, it often took several
tries to send Facebook messages, and staying connected to Gmail was difficult. In
Gmail, drafting a message worked but trying to click the send button with a larger
attachment resulted in non-responsiveness of the browser. After restarting the browser,
Gmail seemed to work fine the second time. We will look into this issue a bit closer,
but remember that this is a pre-release version (only a release candidate) and some
hiccups are to be expected.
Read on the next page: Performance results