I installed IE 8 2 weeks ago after the RTW. I had been using the beta of Windows 7 so I was familiar with the web slices and accelerators. Overall I have been very pleased with the speed and stability of IE.
Installation Problem
On my work laptop I got an error at the end of installation and only 2 web slices were created. On both of them I get the notification that the web slice has changed but when I try to view it in the small preview window I get a HTML error.
I can click on the link at the bottom and get to the page so I am not sure what is wrong. One of these days I will reinstall to see if I can fix the problem but it is a minor annoyance.
Enhanced Security
While listening to a podcast I heard about InPrivate filtering and InPrivate browsing. InPrivate browsing (often called porno mode) has gotten a lot of press but I hadn’t heard of InPrivate filtering.
InPrivate filtering is a feature where you can have IE automatically block the same script when it sees it coming from different URLs. I turned it on and cranked the number of occurrences down to 3. Almost immediately it showed me in the settings several Google Analytics scripts and some others. I blocked them all. After that I started seeing strange errors on pages that had worked and Windows Live Family Safety stopped working. As I was busy I ended up turning it off for a day or two. After I had a chance to look at it some more I found that there were a lot of scripts from wlxrs.com. This appears to be the domain that Windows Live Family Safety uses to authorize web sites. I changed the settings to let me decide what to block and what to allow and have been very pleased with the feature since then.
While I was looking at InPrivate filtering I decided to do some more research into InPrivate browsing as I have teenagers that live at home and don’t want them to be off viewing inappropriate sites. I couldn’t find the option for InPrivate browsing on my work laptop. I figured it was a side effect of the installation error I mentioned earlier so I went to my home machine and looked for it there. I couldn’t find it either so I thought maybe it had been cut. I looked around the web and there were many references to the feature in the release version. I searched and checked blogs. I finally stumbled upon the answer. I was doing some Azure development and had turned off Windows Life Family Safety because the development URLs are never allowed by default and I didn’t want to have to approve it (lazy I know but in this case useful). I noticed that InPrivate browsing had “magically” appeared again. I did some more testing and found that Windows Live Family Safety disables InPrivate browsing. I like that because it means that I don’t have to worry about teenagers turning on InPrivate browsing and going to banned sites. Also since I have Windows Live Family Safety set to log access I can see where they have been going and where they have been blocked from going.
Fewer Browser Windows
In my testing of IE 8 on Windows 7 I hadn’t attempted to access our intranet or SharePoint site so I was quite surprised when I opened a SharePoint site and it replaced the browser tab and opened in the same browser window as my other tabs. Previously the different security zones (Internet and Trusted Sites respectively) meant that any time I opened a page that crossed security zones it would open in an IE window that was in that zone. I regularly had 2 windows open and would use favorites to open pages knowing that it would cross zones and open the tab in the other window without changing the current tab. I have had to “unlearn” that habit since all tabs now open in the same IE window and will gladly overwrite the previous contents.
General Impressions
As I stated earlier I have been pleased with the stability and speed of IE 8. I haven’t had a chance to try out some of the features like automatic recovery as I have never had a tab crash on me either in the betas or in the release. (Knocking on wood to avoid having all my tabs crash for the next week or two.) I have used IE as my primary browser for years and am pleased with this latest version.