IE8: WIIFM?

“This White Paper is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES,

EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, AS TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS DOCUMENT.”

Okay, so everything it’s telling us may or may not be accurate and Microsoft isn’t comfortable standing behind what they’re promising. Yet, let’s presume that Microsoft has something meaningful to give you in this product brochure and move forward.

1. Accelerators. These are plugins that allow you to right-click on objects in the browser and, say, print out a map, or, publish something into a blog. It allows for context-menu (right-click-driven) functionality in the browser.

2. Vendor-integrated Search Bar. A quick way to lookup books and other items, then, compare prices side-by-side from partner vendors. Without having to open multiple tabs to view different web pages and multiple searches.

3. Disaster Recovery/Sandbox. Like IE7, IE8 is operating in its own “sandbox” or a dedicated memory space, but I understand each tab is now it’s own sandbox making for a more stable browsing experience in IE8. If one tab times out, it doesn’t affect the whole browser.

4. Restore Closed Tabs. And IE8 allows you to restore a closed tab. What it does is, when you open a new tab, a list of previous tabs that you had open during the same browser session is shown. Clever.

5. Data URI’s: This is a technical detail but IE8 provides native support for web developers to link external items inside of a webpage as hyperlinks. This, I understand, has been long-awaited by the developer community.

6. New GPO’s: New Group Policy Objects to help support and deploy IE8 in an Active Directory. IE8’s Deployment Guide is quite comprehensive for the system administrator.

7. New Security Features: IE8 provides better anti-phishing technology with what it calls a SmartScreen filter, and it highlights the address bar like a traffic light (red, yellow, or green) if you’re at suspect or clean websites. Microsoft has also included “clickjacking” protection to improve privacy protections for the end user.

But what about speed, memory consumption, and performance?

In a September 2008 test, Lifehacker compared FireFox, IE8 beta 2, and Chrome 2 side-by-side to demonstrate IE8 took twice as long to perform comparable actions with Javascript as FireFox or Chrome; IE8 actually stalled on cascading style sheets (CSS) tests that FireFox and Chrome performed in 1/2 the time. The tests also revealed that IE8 consistently had a higher memory footprint than the other two competing browsers, and started slower than its competitors. Microsoft will suggest that speed doesn’t matter – just because a car does 220 mph doesn’t mean that it should go that fast; really, they say this in the white paper.  Yet, regardless, some of my readers may actually want to move as quickly as possible through websites and online applications – I know I do, and that’s why I’m really liking Chrome.

So what about market penetration?

As of Q4 2008, IE had about 68% of the browser market, Firefox 21%, Safari 8%, and Chrome around 2%. The analysis that I’ve read shows Chrome surging ahead in 2009 and forcing IE under 50-percent market penetration. Chrome is still in development and acquiring more extensibility in May 2009, which will allow for greater plug-in capability and external development – much like Firefox has enjoyed.

And then there’s the future.

It is rumored that IE8 will be the end of the line for the IE browser engine and they’re likely to either acquire Gazelle or use WebKit in future editions (the same engine that drives Chrome and Safari).  So IE is going to radically change. Yet not all is pretty in the land of Mozilla: Google subsidizes Mozilla’s annual budget by 83% and it’s likely they’ll not be convinced to renew this commitment in 2011, which leaves FireFox’s future in the proverbial lurch. If Chrome is to become the new Internet darling that everyone anticipates it is, and if it can attract 3rd party developer support and extension support like FireFox, it’s very likely that Chrome will skyrocket past Safari installations and perhaps even come close to FireFox in 2009, perhaps even pushing FireFox into a greater niche in 2011 and beyond.

The IE8 Resource Kit

It does turn out that IE8’s IEAK (Internet Explorer Administrator’s Kit) adds over 100 new controls for Group Policies giving more options to system administrators to manage and deploy IE8 to client workstations.  This detail is important to the system administrator in your life.

What this means to your small business?

I think an IE8 deployment will offer no substantial value in terms of performance. If you are looking to find a faster web experience, I do not believe that IE8 will offer that.

I do believe there may be value in the extra security: the anti-phishing and privacy tools will aid the user in making better and more consistent/informed decisions online.

Also, IE8 has some compelling new features that some users will appreciate with Accelerators and the enhanced search functionality (particularly if they’re fans of MSN, Microsoft’s Instant Messenger, or Yahoo!).

I will say that I’ve installed the product into XP Pro and Vista Ultimate without a hitch.

Now, if you’re on IE6, you should definately upgrade to IE8 because of known security issues with that browser. IE6 is a known security risk.

Meanwhile, if you’ve been sold on the idea of “security through obscurity” with FireFox, it’s time to dispell that myth. FireFox has as many holes as IE but here’s the worst part: Firefox is likely to loose its financial support in the coming months and more development efforts will likely shift over to Chrome. Thus, where Microsoft can support its browser, users will need to wait longer for Mozilla to patch theirs, thus introducing an even greater security risk. Bottom line: you aren’t any more safer with FireFox than IE but Microsoft isn’t losing its funding any time soon. That’s the difference.

Finally, if you’re not familiar with Chrome, maybe you should try it out and see if it works with your existing application base. Now’s the time to see if there’ll be any transition issues from an IE-x platform to Chrome, and to see whether or not you’re stuck using IE.

If anything, the next couple of years will introduce some new vitality into the browser wars that we haven’t seen since the late 1990’s. Myself, I’m looking forward to new innovation and change, especially in redefining what a browser is.

R