Washington Post: Microsoft IE8 will face difficulties in competing for users

Difficulty in competing for users

After a few months of tests in the Public Beta and nearly the final version provided by Microsoft's Public Relations Department, IE8 seems to be a popular IE upgrade. So far, the vast majority of users still use IE to surf the Internet. Although Internet Explorer has been upgraded to Internet Explorer 8, it is impossible for Microsoft to entertain users in browsers such as Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Google Chrome, and Apple Safari. Three weeks ago, Apple released the Safari 4 preview.

You can log on to Microsoft com/ieto download microsoft's new browser for Windows XP and Vista for free. IE8 suffered a setback in part because it tried to achieve too many goals. As the default browser for Windows, it will be released in the form of automatic upgrade next month. IE 8 must make it easy for new users. To win users who use other browsers, IE 8 must have the capabilities that match them. Since many enterprises develop copyrighted private software based on the old version of IE, Microsoft has the responsibility to make a commitment to ensure that the upgraded version will not be incompatible with any network application software.

Commendable tab browsing Method

In IE 8, Tab browsing is the most commendable. In this convenient way, you can open and browse multiple web pages in a window. However, if you use a new tab to open too many connections on too many web pages, you will be easily lost (when writing this section, the author's Firefox has opened 21 tabs ). To help users lock the tabs they need, IE 8 uses different colors to mark the tabs on each page and open connections.

In addition, each tab runs with an independent processing task. That is to say, an incorrect webpage will not crash the entire browser. When I use IE 8, an error occurs on a webpage. IE 8 informs that the error is related to the Adobe Flash plug-in. It is recommended to download the latest version of Flash and then ask the reader to browse the webpage again. If you open a blank tab, you can find a shortcut to the recently browsed web page. in IE 8's "private browsing" mode, no online surfing record is retained.

Introducing new tab browsing methods is undoubtedly a smart way to attract users. Although the loading speed of IE 8 is slightly faster than that of IE 7, it is slower than that of competing browsers. When you right-click the link and choose to open it in the new tab, you can use an accelerator sub-menu to enjoy a complete set of network services. For example, you can select a street address and then select the Map with Live Search accelerator for the street Map. However, additional menu items also make the screen a little crowded.

Microsoft eventually made IE management easier. You can click the red "x" on the left to cancel the toolbar that you do not need. In addition, the browser extension of IE 8 can report the time required for each loading. Unfortunately, some more popular IE extensions are also threatened by viruses and spyware attacks.

Disappointing "failure"

Compared with IE 7, IE 8 has improved its ability to defend against these threats, but some of its latest strategies may be as annoying as Windows Vista's "User Account Control. ("User Account Control" is a Nag window. Although users see this window, they often ignore it .) For example, Internet Explorer 8 does not need to warn users that an unreadable message is being opened on Google's Gmail website, which may "compromise the security of the entire web page ", alternatively, you can block "Cross-Site Scripting" and interfere with The function of Adding links to The Post blog interface. The worst part of IE 8 is Microsoft's attempt to support websites written based on the earlier version of IE, so as to ignore Internet standards.

Like IE 7, IE 8 also provides a compatibility browsing mode. However, if you upgrade to IE 8, you will encounter more websites that require such help-IE 8 will indicate these websites through a broken-page icon on the toolbar. This flaw in Internet Explorer 8 has interrupted the surfing process again and again. Without a doubt, a browser mistakenly believes that many web pages, including the homepage of the main rival IE, need to be repaired, will inevitably make users bored.

In addition, this compatibility mode makes the IE 8 interface more messy: The two menus provide the same command to adjust this mode. The compatibility mode will inevitably add "annoying columns", just like the menu items in the "Developer Tools" submenu and "Private filtering" privacy settings, the former should be hidden by default, and the latter should be attributed to the IE 8 Internet option window, but will eventually be "absent ".

Compared with IE 6 with poor performance and low security, IE 8 is naturally a better browser. It is reported that more than 1/5 of network users are discouraged from the outdated IE browsers. If they ignore IE 8 like they ignore IE 7, change the browser or continue to use Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera and other browsers-most of the upgrade frequency is higher than IE-Microsoft's potential user resources will be exhausted. If you cannot increase your influence in the browser market competition, Microsoft, once proud to bind Internet Explorer to the operating system, may have to consider transferring the browser business to other companies.

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