Last week I took the plunge and downloaded Internet Explorer 8. I have to admit, it’s a lot better than I expected. I now have three browsers on my PC: Internet Explorer, Firefox and Chrome. Microsoft had put together a comparison chart of Internet Explorer 8 v FireFox and Chrome. Not sure I agree with everything but it made me re-think IE as a browser.

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Security

Internet Explorer 8 claims to have better phishing and malware protection.

Privacy

InPrivate Browsing and InPrivate Filtering help Internet Explorer 8 claim privacy victory.

Ease of Use

Features like Accelerators, Web Slices and Visual Search Suggestions make Internet Explorer 8 easier to use.

Web Standards

It’s a tie. Internet Explorer 8 passes more of the World Wide Web Consortium’s CSS 2.1 test cases than any other browser, but Firefox 3 has more support for some evolving standards.

Developer Tools

Debatable. With Internet Explorer 8, there’s no need to install tools separately, and it offers better features like JavaScript profiling.

Reliability

Internet Explorer 8 has both tab isolation and crash recovery features; Firefox and Chrome have one or the other.

Customizability

Sure, Firefox may win in sheer number of add-ons, but many of the customizations you’d want to download for Firefox are already part of Internet Explorer 8.

Compatibility

Internet Explorer 8 is more compatible with more sites on the Internet than any other browser.

Manageability

Neither Firefox nor Chrome provide guidance or enterprise tools.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer

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Regards,

Ivan

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