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Microsoft Asks for IE8 Suggestions

By BetaNews Staff, BetaNews

January 29, 2007, 2:45 PM

Microsoft is asking a handful of beta testers what they'd like to see in its next Web browser, Internet Explorer 8, which is due out in late 2008 or early 2009. The survey was posted to the company's Connect beta site and largely focuses on RSS feeds, reported Mary Jo Foley.

Microsoft included built-in RSS, or Web feed, support in IE7 for the first time. The company asked users how often they read feeds, and what other applications they use to do so. It also hinted at supporting blog comments in a feed, and better offline feed reading. Other questions centered around Favorites and navigation. What new features would you like to see in IE8?

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By Pushbutton

edited Oct 4, 2008 - 12:18 PM

Just downloaded IE8 last night and like it so far... a leap forward from IE7 which I hated!

One functionality that I miss when compared to the Maxthon overlay on IE6 is that it does not have the "favorites" menu which snaps back into the left margin vs occuping a few inches of the screen all the time. That would be a GREAT add!

Score: 0

By alupkaman

posted Aug 31, 2008 - 11:17 AM

Oh, and basic integrated spell check for submitting to posts like this would be great. I really expected this about Ten years ago.

Score: 0

By alupkaman

edited Aug 31, 2008 - 10:38 AM

I often live/work overseas where the internet is not so reliable. A download manager like Firefox3 is essential. Also, why in this day and age am I stuck with a theme that doesn't even match my Vista theme. Give me the download manager AND let me customize the appearance like my current firefox and I'll consider switching. I really like MS. But there's no way I can switch back to IE without these basic features, which are old news in other browsers.

Score: 0

By Justingraziano

edited Apr 1, 2007 - 7:02 PM

IE7 is great and since Safari 3 will be out soon, so there will be plenty of things to steal from it. And screw Firefox, that over rated pile of trash. Sure its better then IE6 but, IE7 is 100000 times better and IE7 isnt 3rd party.

Score: 0

By Ben100014

edited Feb 25, 2007 - 5:28 PM

I agree with treworld. Fix the bugs instead of spending a decade on a new browser.

Score: 0

By themini619

edited Feb 25, 2007 - 12:49 PM

i think that internet explorer 8 should be called "windows live browser" to fit in with all its #live# brand of products ;)

Score: 0

By normangerman

posted Jan 31, 2007 - 10:21 AM

A download manager

Score: 0

By wincement

posted Jan 31, 2007 - 10:56 AM

AMEN! The first original suggestion I've seen on this story.

I'm ashamed I didn't think to post it first. That's the first thing I said when I tried IE7: "Where's the download manager!?"

Score: 0

By treworld

posted Jan 30, 2007 - 10:31 PM

Oooooh Oooooh! I have a suggestion!!!

HOW ABOUT FIXING THE DAMN BUGS IN IE6 AND IE7 FIRST???

Score: 0

By dan-0

posted Jan 30, 2007 - 2:08 PM

How about when you have 2 tabs open, being able to drag one tab into a separate ie window? how about merging one window into the other? drag your gadgets in vista to the ie window so you can see it in the open free space?

Score: 0

By AlanRivaldo

posted Jan 30, 2007 - 11:29 AM

2 more years until the next version?

Score: 0

By Aires

edited Jan 30, 2007 - 9:28 AM

Q: What would you like to see in our next Web browser, Internet Explorer 8?

A: Take a very good look at Firefox (and plugins) and also Opera and steal their best ideas. Create plugin support for IE8 so that Firefox plugins can work with IE. And then remove IE from the core of Windows completely. Basically make IE8 a new standalone browser.

Score: 0

By smarterthanyou

posted Jan 31, 2007 - 5:35 AM

The whole reason that plugin support was removed from IE, starting with version 5.01 if I'm not mistaken, is because ActiveX controls were better (or at least that's what Microsoft thinks).

Score: 0

By mheavin

posted Jan 30, 2007 - 9:02 AM

1. Provide user-created add-on support (ala Firefox)

2. Follow protocol standards.

3. Most importantly...decouple it from the operating system and make it a standalone app.

Score: 0

By splatted

edited Jan 30, 2007 - 8:08 AM

built-in adblocker - 'nuff said

Score: 0

By wincement

posted Jan 30, 2007 - 11:28 AM

Come on... Think for a second. Microsoft would get in huge trouble for that. They'd be sued in a heartbeat. Only FF addons can get away with that.

Score: 0

By extremely well

posted Jan 30, 2007 - 2:20 PM

I wouldn't say only FF extensions can filter ads... Maxthon does it very well and there's always the standalone Ad Muncher

Score: 0

By wincement

posted Jan 30, 2007 - 7:16 PM

I know there are others. The point is, they're all third parties or applications with a tiny userbase. If any one of them got popular enough, they'd be sued by some ad agency in a heartbeat.

Score: 0

By ryancrawcour

posted Jan 30, 2007 - 8:07 AM

a decent interface for managing for favorites and for adding a page to favorites. The current interface is apalling if you have your stuff neatly managed into folders. take a leaf from the FireFox tree here for sure, their interface is simple and easy to use.

Score: 0

By ds0934

posted Jan 30, 2007 - 8:05 AM

Seriously? They should simply look REAL hard at Opera and FF and then look at the support/wishlist forums for those products. Start there. Forget even trying to enhance IE7. Start over.

Score: 0

By bsf

posted Jan 30, 2007 - 7:35 AM

maybe they can make IE8 into something just a "base browser" where they'd include like there's two "skins", a "simple clean" skin and a more "modern" skin installed, and people can easily code "skins".
where skins meaning, not just what you see, but the browser itself, like maxthon.
at least it'll increase its competition against firefox, which is pretty wide used now...

Score: 0

By johnholmeslives

edited Jan 30, 2007 - 9:50 AM

I agree, skin support would be excellent addition.

Score: 0

By ds0934

posted Jan 30, 2007 - 8:04 AM

MS would probably release two versions: basic-home-edition and ultimate-premium-extras-edition. The first would have no customization capabilities. The second would, but but would cost. And it would only allow MS add-ons, and they would be DRM locked so you couldn't share them.

Score: 0

By bsf

posted Jan 30, 2007 - 11:18 PM

they probably got a lot of ideas there in MS considering how many people they got working on these stuffs.

Just hope the guys who decide what goes on there, and what doesn't have some good sense.

Score: 0

By c4p0ne

posted Jan 30, 2007 - 4:39 AM

Rename it "iCrap" v8.0

Score: 0

By googun

edited Jan 30, 2007 - 3:55 AM

Do something about code complaince with standards. I'm really tired of having to test my web-based material on multiple browsers.
Oh, and rename it IE 360.

Score: 0

By DaveBG

posted Jan 30, 2007 - 12:15 AM

Have them download a copy of Firefox. Tabbed windows, and about 50 other cool features not found on IE, there's a list of 100 features somewhere.

Score: 0

By extremely well

edited Jan 29, 2007 - 10:14 PM

Well, I'll only mention things I'd like to see in IE8 that CANNOT be done by Maxthon, my favorite browser.
1. Ability to kill a stuck plugin or make it modular enough so a buggy Flash player doesn't take the entire browser down (common problem). Also I'm sure many techies have noted that some buggy add-ons (sometimes security software related) cause IE to freeze on startup.
2. built-in support for some p2p protocol that will RELIEVE load off web servers by serving the content off CURRENT visitors to your page. This will allow extremely high quality media files to be shared on webpages that can't afford high traffic cost.
3. tight-integration with Word, so each textarea tag could gain spellcheck and other features of Word, as well as perhaps a per-site conversion of BOLD-UNDERLINE-SIZE tags to the current site's tag system (each forum system has their own convensions but a user normally participates in just a few major ones frequently). And a critically needed feature - each textarea's data automatically saved somewhere since we all know the sadness of clicking on "submit" only to receive some kind of network/remote/local-system error losing our hard work.
4. ability to on-the-fly render sites with IE6/IE7/IE8 engines for the occasional incompatibility.
5. ability to mark multiple links to pics/music/videos from all over the page, and start viewing the first one in the standard Windows Media Player while the rest are queued for viewing next. This will allow people to just dump their latest family pics/vids on some cheap web hosting company via FTP and they'll know the visitors will be able to see the stuff in a presentable manner. (not clicking one image, then back, then next, etc). Alternatively, somehow on-the-fly convert a dump of files (mp3's, pics, vids) on a weblink into a beautifully presentable album, WITHOUT having to predownload all images first locally... Provide features such as Flickr or Yahoo Photos. This goes hand in hand with #2.
6. easy interface for cleaning unwanted cookies, but keeping wanted ones!
7. better search within page - show a list of matched lines in a window so you can quickly jump to the occurance of interest - by double clicking that occurance. Similar to the feature "list lines containing string" of the famous UltraEdit text editor.

Score: 0

By Tenoq

posted Jan 29, 2007 - 9:50 PM

1. Standards compliance.
2. Speed/efficiency/got memory footprint? :P
3. Decent plug-in support.

Score: 0

By 33Nick

posted Jan 29, 2007 - 9:37 PM

Well, let me count the ways...

SECURITY
Ease of use
Play well with Firefox
And something you have a hard time doing, be sleek, fast and efficient.

Ahh, hopeless!

Score: 0

By   

edited Jan 29, 2007 - 9:21 PM

I say forget it!!!

IE7 is garbage -- I cant imagine what 8 would be like!

Score: 0

By ds0934

posted Jan 30, 2007 - 8:02 AM

...just like IE7 but with a 1 added to it. :)

Score: 0

By jsiii

posted Jan 30, 2007 - 3:49 AM

Agreed. MS should throw IE away. It is the weakest browser there is, yet most people use it because it is default.

At least they should adopt some rendering engine that actually works.

Anyway, I am afraid that after release of IE8 you will have to optimize web pages for: IE6, IE7, IE8 and Other Browsers... I wish its release is as delayed as possible.

Score: 0

By cmon3077

posted Jan 29, 2007 - 8:26 PM

they could make it so u dont have to validate. untill then i will use ace explorer.

Score: 0

By billweh

posted Jan 29, 2007 - 7:25 PM

I want:

1. A real Bookmark Manager that will also do a check on links to validate them after time.

2. IE 7's interface blows chunks - let me customize it more to my liking - I really like Maxthon - I won't upgrade to 2.0 because they copied the IE7 interface and ruined a great product.

3. Ability to use FireFox plug-ins (some of those just ROCK!)

4. Full CSS compliance, HTML compliance (but don't break anything that already works) - maybe require a meta tag or something at the top of your page if it should render per the fully compliant spec?

5. Snippet collector - let me grab a section of the page, and then save it like NetSnippets does - or better yet, buy them out and include it. Or Surfulator - all awesome tools.

6. Fix the RSS reader - I finally gave up trying to get the RSS feeds to add to IE - it seemed like everyone I tried to add failed (including BetaNews).

7. Speed, Speed, Speed - right now I like how fast it renders - could always be better.

8. Easier to write plug-ins and sidebars.

MS ROCKS!

Score: 0

By NULLedge

posted Jan 29, 2007 - 9:06 PM

you just named 8 things to the contrary.

Score: 0

By PhrostByte

posted Jan 29, 2007 - 6:32 PM

Here's a suggestion... redirect the link to getfirefox.com

Score: 0

By TomeOne

posted Jan 29, 2007 - 5:37 PM

How about being standards compliant? Hmm? ;)

Score: 0

By ryancrawcour

posted Jan 30, 2007 - 8:11 AM

i am interested to see everybody lambasting MS for poor standards compliance, yet FF is no better!

in fact as far as i am aware there is only one browser out there that can claim to be standards compliant; and that is Opera.

Score: 0

By Skyfrog

posted Jan 29, 2007 - 5:33 PM

Fix the retarded IE7 interface and change it back to something normal, and let people customize it to their liking.

Score: 0

By drumcat

posted Jan 29, 2007 - 5:24 PM

Very simply, render according to standards.

Score: 0

By godzila

posted Jan 29, 2007 - 4:55 PM

microsoft noob monopolly

Score: 0

By crashoverride

posted Jan 29, 2007 - 4:14 PM

I got at least one thing they can do....make it freaking faster. I mean seriously I can piss faster than IE7 can render a page.

Score: 0

By frankwick

posted Jan 29, 2007 - 5:29 PM

My IE7 loads faster than FF2. I still use FF 75% of the time though because it is what I am used to.

Score: 0

By bourgeoisdude

posted Jan 29, 2007 - 5:25 PM

Better go to the doctor then, because if you can pee that fast something is dreadfully wrong.

Seriously thogh, ever consider the fact that it may not be IE7 that's making it slow? Mine works faster than IE6 did, and many folks could tell you IE7 for them loaded much faster than Firefox (as well as others saying FireFox is faster than IE7).

Score: 0

By crashoverride

posted Jan 29, 2007 - 9:50 PM

Well I didn't mean in a literal way, it was more a figure of speech. IE7 is faster than 6 but still slower than FF.

Score: 0

By naylor83

posted Jan 29, 2007 - 4:20 PM

Lol

Score: 0

By imafurby

posted Jan 29, 2007 - 4:00 PM

Less is more... that's all.

Score: 0

By molumen

posted Jan 29, 2007 - 3:53 PM

It would be awesome to see Opera and MS make a deal, and use Opera's rendering engine in the new IE8 browser. Most of the old anoying bugs will be history. I don't say Opera has no bugs but it is one of the most stable and performant browsers available today. Also, SVG support is very developed so having SVG support in the new IE8 would be cool too.
I'm sure it is less expensive for MS to make such a deal rather than developing a better new browser.

Score: 0

By ds0934

edited Jan 29, 2007 - 3:40 PM

Why not just do what Sun did and jump right to IE10 or IE11 (in honor of Spinal Tap). Is anyone really counting versions anyway?

Better yet: continue on with the current trend...

"Microsoft Internet Explorer Live 2007 Ultimate Premium Enterprise Extras Edition" (or just MSIELUPEEE-07 for short).

Score: 0

By baki_princ

posted Jan 29, 2007 - 3:24 PM

Acquire Opera! That`s only way! IE7 sucks!

Score: 0

By uberfly

posted Jan 29, 2007 - 4:46 PM

NOOOO! MS would acquire Opera, disable half of its features and release a turd.

Score: 0

By ds0934

posted Jan 29, 2007 - 3:35 PM

I could live with that. Especially since (a) it would narrow the field of friggin browsers from 1000 to 999, and (b) would already work on mobile devices better than what they already have. Seems dumb to continue reinventing what's already been done.

Score: 0

By Maymne

posted Jan 29, 2007 - 3:24 PM

Ohhh... If they REALLY wanted to steal the FF users, how about (since MS loves to try to throw in features that sort of work) making it so that you can use Firefox extensions in IE8? :)

Score: 0

By midnighter_9999

posted Jan 29, 2007 - 3:13 PM

1.Follow Firefox's & Opera's Development!
2.Read Point 1 Again
3.Read Point 1 Again
....
:-P

Score: 0

By ds0934

posted Jan 29, 2007 - 3:11 PM

Personally, I'm sick of browsers. I'm not going to use any of them from now on. :)

Score: 0

By uberfly

posted Jan 29, 2007 - 4:48 PM

There's always Lynx ;)
http://lynx.browser.org/

Score: 0

By Paul Skinner

posted Jan 29, 2007 - 3:17 PM

Are you sure you don't want to roll out your Amiga with all its lovely internet capabilities?

Score: 0

By ds0934

posted Jan 29, 2007 - 3:22 PM

I'd reply, but I'm committed to not using a browser anymore.

Score: 0

By Maymne

posted Jan 29, 2007 - 3:10 PM

I want them to finally fix my dropdown lists bug that they seem unable to fix in IE7. When there's a dropdown list, and you select your choice using the keyboard letter for the entry, IE7 has problems matching the selected entry with the displayed entry. What I mean is that some places, I type up a post, set up all my selections, and IE7 calmly sends something completely different. :) Verified the bug in every IE7 from beta1 to final release, on multiple computers, and MS seems to want to believe it doesn't exist. Oh well, I'll just be happy that Firefox 2 works... Just wish I could change Vista's browser back to IE6 so it would work too.

Score: 0

By ds0934

posted Jan 29, 2007 - 3:09 PM

1. Add "1" to the version number
2. post the "beta editions" 1, 2, 3...
3. post the "community technology preview editions" 1, 2, 3...
4. post the "pre-release candidates" 1, 2, 3
5. post the "release candidates" 1, 2
6. post the RTM/RTP version
7. browse over to the Firefox site and notice they'll be on version 4 by then.

Score: 0

By Das mod

posted Jan 29, 2007 - 3:06 PM

suggestion box

1.- dont do it ( let firefox take over )

Score: 0

By iamtux

posted Jan 29, 2007 - 3:03 PM

First of all, for the love of all that is holy, better standards compliance!

Score: 0

By Paul Skinner

posted Jan 29, 2007 - 3:16 PM

Hahaha, but all the badly made FrontPage sites wouldn't work anymore. They can't have all those wannabe website makers upset now can they.

Score: 0

By bourgeoisdude

posted Jan 29, 2007 - 3:00 PM

Funny this will receive more than 100 comments I'll bet, yet it is not really a huge deal or something.

All people see in this article is either "IE" or "Firefox" or "Opera" and I know there will be a new set of immature arguments such as "My browser is better than yours!" "No, MY browser is better!" "Oh yeah?..."

Too predictable to even be funny anymore :)

Score: 0

By Maymne

posted Jan 29, 2007 - 3:12 PM

I'd just be happy if it worked. :) Them ignoring my pet bugs makes me avoid IE as much as I can. I personally don't care much what I use (except that I like the FF extensions, but if/when IE had good free add-ons that will be irrelevant) except that it just has to work... Right now, the only thing I really NEED to use IE for, IE7 doesn't work right.

Score: 0

By ds0934

posted Jan 29, 2007 - 3:10 PM

but, my browser IS better than yours. :)

Score: 0

By daq

posted Jan 29, 2007 - 3:50 PM

What happened to not using a browser? Are you sending html through telnet? U better be.

Score: 0

By ds0934

posted Jan 30, 2007 - 8:03 AM

I had a relapse and fell off the wagon.

Score: 0

By Grazer

posted Jan 29, 2007 - 8:41 PM

You might wanna check post times.

Score: 0

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