Internet Explorer 8 released today: Extensive hands-on report

The search box in the top right-hand corner of IE 8 now delivers real-time search results. Providers need to write their search plugins to support this, but it means as you type a Wikipedia search, suggestions appear in real-time underneath, complete with thumbnail images, rather than just plain text. It's a small but useful feature.

Tabbed browsing has been cranked up a small notch too. Tabs are automatically colour-coded and grouped together, so you know which tabs are related to each other. While this seems like it should be really useful, we didn't find it helped us at all. If we click an advert in a Web site, why would we want the tab it opens to appear to be related to the Web page it was opened from? It's pointless.

A far more useful implementation would be manual colour coding based on domains. So, all Google search sites -- Web search, image search, product search -- all showed up as blue tabs, while your Web site's blog homepage, forum and admin pages show up as green.

Conclusion

These new security features show some promise. Internet Explorer is the most popular browser because it ships with Windows, thrust straight into the hands of Internet n00bs and inexperienced online bankers when they unbox their first PC. It's crucial that security is put before cute features such as coloured tabs and other disposable perks, and that's what Microsoft seems to have done, intentionally or otherwise.

In the real-world, however, for more experienced users -- such as in the CNET UK offices, where it's been used exclusively for several days -- we found usability, speed and features to be less inspiring than we'd have liked when compared to Firefox, Chrome or Opera, and we doubt we'll be sticking with it after our tests.

If IE 7 had shipped with the features of IE 8, we'd be less dismissive, despite its solidity as a browser. It's easily the best version to date, and that's worth an applause, but in terms of dragging people away from the perks of Firefox, it feels like too little, too late.

You can download it after 4pm this afternoon from microsoft.com/ie8.