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So I've been running Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 for a few days now. Overall it's much much better than Internet Explorer 7.

Download is about 15megs, installation is nice and quick. One reboot does it. And what a difference. You will need to uninstall Microsoft Developer Toolbar if you got it installed now.

A couple of notes:
- I love integrated developer tools (lots of stuff copied from Firebug). However the UI is quite unpolished. The tabs look rather huge. CSS editor only allows edit, delete or enable/disable. It's also very very buggy and quirky. No idea how to add new CSS styles. No right click menus. Had to edit style names and values. You can set a value to an empty string and then you can't edit the value again. When editing the style name and scrolling the mouse wheel the page scrolls but the edit box just sits there. Also clicking around in the edit mode is buggy too. I also miss the right click menu. When going to CSS tab it shows up as a huge and unmanageable tree. I actually love how Firebug shows CSS as text with comments. IE8 shows a tree with checkboxes. I do love the current rendering mode and browser settings right in the menu bar of developer tools. It does reload the page if you change the settings, but it makes things a lot easier to test. With one menu click you can test things with IE7 vs IE8 rendering and standards vs quirks mode.
- I love the new address bar search. It's very very neat and makes things so much easier to find. I know Firefox uses it's own system but there's no clear separation between groups/categories of matches in Firefox. IE8 actually makes it so much cleaner.
- I love the colorful tabs. Makes things so much easier to follow. Esp if you need to know which tabs relate to other pages. And I do tend to open up a ton of tabs.
- InPrivate mode - this one is becoming rather popular lately. Took a quick spin and looks quite neat. Need to run some more tests. It opens a separate window that has InPrivate label next to the address bar.
- And the last and most important: standards mode rendering. - I haven't had much time to test this one out, but no real problems with rendering pages either. Also I would like to say that it's too early for the final verdict since I only been using it for a few days now. I know I am not going back to IE7 though.

So, there you have a quick review...  I'll try to test and stress it a bit more over the next few weeks and do a more detailed write up. I do have to say that it's very stable for me. I had one crash and IE8 managed to restore the tab exactly where things should have been before the crash.

UPDATE: Actually after playing a bit with it I am changing my mind about recommending it to web developers. It seems that JavaScript debugger that's built into Developer Tools is a bit buggy and quirky. Also I can't launch the external debugger that worked in IE6 and 7. I checked my settings and tried a few different options. I can not debug JavaScript using MSE.EXE. I can't even open MSE.EXE or any external debugger from IE8 Beta 2. Be warned!


Gena01