It's no secret that Microsoft's Internet Explorer has been losing ground to other browsers for years, namely to Firefox.Some estimates have Internet Explorer usage slightly below Firefox (44.8% vs. 45.5% for Firefox) as of the beginning of this year. This user base loss is somewhat astounding when you realize that the same statistics in 2004 showed that 84.7% of web users were using a version of Internet Explorer.
Microsoft is hoping to reverse this trend with the upcoming release of Internet Explorer 8. As of this writing IE8 RC1 (Release Candidate 1) is available for download. Release Candidates are still what is called "beta", meaning it's not considered fully cooked.
So What's New And Exciting In IE8?
There is very little outwardly that is going to make the average browser user excited. Many users won't notice much difference from IE7 at all. Some features like the "Suggested Sites" button that "uses your browsing history to make personalized website suggestions" cause no excitement at all. At least it has a "turn off" button.
The real enhancements are behind the scenes. Microsoft appears to have focused on speed enhancements, privacy concerns, and developer tools. I'm going to skip over the geek stuff that most of you could care less about and lets talk about the changes in IE8 that really affect us:
Speed: Many believe that Internet Explorer has lost ground to other browsers for two reasons, privacy/security problems and the perception that it is bloat-ware that runs slow.
Microsoft has addressed the speed issuein IE8 and in my unscientific analysis (no benchmarks performed) does load pages faster than in IE7. I would say it is comparable in speed to the current release version of Firefox. Unfortunately for IE, Google's Chrome and Firefox's Beta 3.1 seem to be already a step ahead of IE8 in this area. Still, IE7 users will notice an improvement, but it is doubtful proponents of Firefox will rush to jump back to IE because of this speed enhancement.
Privacy: Microsoft is mostly just keeping up with the competition with IE8's new "InPrivate Browsing" feature. This feature is designed to prevent Internet Explorer from storing data about your web browsing session. This includes cookies, temporary files, history and other data as well as preventing your browsing details from being shared with other websites. Much of this feature is catch-up to Chrome's "InCognito Mode", Safari's "Private Browsing" and Firefox's add-in that does a similar function.
IE8 does seem to take it a step further with "InPrivate Blocking" which basically limits the type of web usage tracking done by referral and advertising tracking systems like Google Analytics. This will most likely be welcomed by privacy concerned users but very much disliked by advertisers and companies that benefit from this information, like Google (Coincidence? ... hmmmmm).
Security: IE8 makes some good strides here with enhanced protection from phishing sites and malware. Internet Explorer now has protection from clickjacking, a type of attack that tricks web users into revealing information or opening up their system by clicking on seemingly innocent web page buttons and links. Clickjacking is a problem for all browsers, not just IE, and most have incorporated similar protection. Still, this is good news for IE users and for Internet Explorer's development as a product.
Web Slices & Compatibility Mode: I saved the best for last. In my opinion Microsoft has two basic, but very large, problems to overcome.
- Internet Explorer has historically followed it's own standards, not the standards recognized and published by WC3 as have other browsers(the authority on the subject).
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There is a strong anti-Microsoft sentiment among a large portion of the web browser using public.
Microsoft addresses the first problem quite well with the new IE8 enhancements and the "Compatibility Mode" feature. Because Internet Explorer held such a large user share for so long, web designers have been forced to create pages to the Microsoft standard and hope for the best when displayed on other browsers. Now that IE8 conforms more to the WC3 standard, many existing web designs will not display properly in the IE8 normal mode.
So, Microsoft built in recognition of the old standard if it is being used on a web page. When detected, the user is given a "Compatibility Mode" icon to change the display mode to show the site just as it would be viewed in IE7. This means IE8 can properly display sites developed using the WC3 standard AND existing sites designed to be "best viewed in Internet Explorer 6.0 or better".
Overall, I don't think Firefox users will jump back to Internet Explorer based on the new features and enhancements. Instead, I believe Microsoft added Web Slices to get businesses to push users towards using Internet Explorer 8.
In a nutshell, Web Slices can be used to let interested parties know when specific information changes on a web page through the use of RSS feeds. Simple HTML code needs to be added a webpage and the user takes care of the rest.
As a test, I added a Web Slice in just a few minutes to my website Malibu-Blue.com. Whenever I make a change to the slice, anyone who added my slice to their Favorites will get the updated information very quickly. I don't have to do a thing!
So, what can be done with Web Slices for our businesses?
- We can easily notify our customers of "Specials"
- We can send changing Event notifications to our customers
- Any marketing that you would normally send by email can be summarized on a Web Slice to drive customers to your website to learn more.
Of course for us business owners to take advantage of this technology we will need to encourage our clients and web visitors to use IE8. For many of us, it may be worth it.
The next challenge is to educate our customers on how to subscribe to our Web Slices, since user interaction is a requirement. They have to find the slice and then actually subscribe to it by adding it to their Favorites. This will be an initial frustration with many of our not-so-Internet-savvy customers.
Web Slices do have some limitations, but are a very good start in the right direction for those businesses not already taking advantage of blogs and RSS feeds. It's another tool for getting our message out to clients and potential clients.
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