After some times, finally decide to install IE 8 Beta 2... Abit reluctant to install it at first, due to the fact that once you install it, you cant remove it under XP sp 3... Then I thought that I will always have my mozilla anyway,nd a so I installed it...

As a developer, a web browser is very important thing to have. With many browsers out there, including the recent release of google chrome, choosing the "best" browser can be a difficult task. No doubt that mozilla has been the standard browser for many people these days, and It's still my favourite browser. My biggest question everytime Im trying a new browser would be: "Will this browser be as good as mozilla?".

There are many new features added to IE8, which can be found here, but Im mainly interested with tab grouping feature. I usually have dozens of tabs open in my mozilla, and it gets very hard to find a specific tab. With tab grouping, you can group tabs into one logical unit, and those tabs will be coloured. When you open a link to a new tab, it will automatically group the new tab with the old one. I find this very usefull, because you'll be able to keep track of your tabs. Moreover, it gets easier to find a specific tab, because when you group a tab, it will create a seperator on your tab list. I honestly love this tab grouping feature.

Another enhancement on the tab control is now IE will create a new process per tab (similar feature as in google chorme). One big difference of this feature with google chrome is that, when a process crashes, rather than showing a sad face as in google chrome, IE will try to reload the tab few times, and ultimately shows an error page if its unable to reload it. Now it also offers the functionality to reload the tabs opened on the last session when you launch IE.

One of the best news of IE 8 is that IE finally decides to ditch its text searching mechanism (god, I hate that text search dialog box). In IE 8 it will have a similar search mechanism as Mozilla, with the toolbar and stuff. Not sure if it has "search as you type" feature though.

In terms of performance, im finding that it feels faster when rendering web pages. BUT its tab performance was VERY slugish. Everytime you open up a new tab, it takes IE a bit of time to fire up a new process for the tab. its not overly long, but its noticeable (like half a sec). I have to say in terms of stability, I don't think its stable yet. Well thats why its still in BETA.

All in all, I think that IE 8 is a very promising browser. If the release version doesnt have the stability issue and tab performance issue, I might just jump ship to IE 8... Of course that would depend on my impression of google chrome (haven't tried it yet).