Daily Debrief: The newest Internet Explorer 8 Video

Daily Debrief: The newest Internet Explorer 8 Video Transcript

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>> Welcome to the CNET News Daily Debrief. I'm here with Rob Vamosi and we're here to talk about something that was just released a few minutes ago which is Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2. So what's new?

>> What's new? Well, it's clear that Microsoft has been paying attention to the competition. They're certainly bringing Internet Explorer up to par with Safari, Opera, and Firefox.

>> But is it enough to be just up to par?

>> No. They've even gone a step further. For example, they've added something called a "Cross Site Scripting" filter which is the first time that you'll be able to use the browser to block malicious code from downloading onto your desktop when viewing a page that is compromised.

>> So security, obviously, is one of the major issues in IE 8. What else are they doing in terms of spam and other things that really bother people?

>> Well, there are protections for that as well. There is also something called "in private" which allows you to have a surfing session that is not cached so, you can visit sites and someone later will not be able to go back and check the history to see where you visited, and protects your privacy.

>> In comparison to the - I guess, the biggest competitor they have which is Mozilla Firefox, you know, are they taking a giant leap or is this much more of a catch up?

>> This is a catch up and some of the tweaks that they are introducing that Firefox doesn't have are color-coded tabs. So, when you open a link in a page and it creates a new tab in your browser, those tabs will be color coded so that later you can go back and see which tabs reference which. So you have them grouped by color. That's kind of a noble concept.

>> Any other things that you can call as being innovative or breakthrough in somewhat?

>> Well, they are adding session restore which is something that we've seen in Firefox for a while.

>> Which is to say that if you kind of lose your place and/or crashes on you, it'll come back and say, "Do you want to restore this session"?

>> Yes, but what is noble with Internet Explorer is that they are confining it to a specific tab. So if you go to a page and it breaks the browser, only that tab closes, the rest of the browser stays up and running.

>> Oh, that's nice.

>> It more or less isolates that page and then another thing that they've added is a better add-on manager. So, you can actually go back and say, "Why did this break? Why did that tab shutdown on me? Oh, look this is not enabled. This is not functioning correctly, or I need an update to a particular add-on". So, it's a bit more granularity than maybe most users will be comfortable with but it will make it easier to retain your session.

>> Now, is there anything new for developers? Obviously, plug-ins is a big deal on the Firefox side--

>> Right.

>> Is IE stepping up there too?

>> Not so much. This release is more for the consumer. They've announced that they want to do more fun in stuff. They want to put more flash in the face of the consumer.

>> Flash or Silverlight?

>> Well, [laughs] Silverlight. But they want to put more bells and whistles so that the consumer feels comfortable using Internet Explorer.

>> So this is Beta 2, does this mean that we have many more cycles of Beta to go before it becomes an official release?

>> The official release is still slated for some time in November of this year. So, whether they do a Beta 3, it will depend on the feedback that they receive on Beta 2.

>> And of course it's a free upgrade to anyone who chooses to download it?

>> Yes, and if you don't like IE 8 after you've loaded it, there is IE 7 emulation mode that you can go in to.

>> Great. Well, thanks Rob.

>> Okay.

>> I've been speaking with Rob Vamosi for the CNET News Daily Debrief. I'm Dan Farber. Thanks for watching. [ Music ]