Immediately, I was greeted by a welcome splash screen which prompted me to select the express settings or choose my own settings.

After a system reboot, I could jump in and access Internet Explorer 8 Beta. I began by installing the 14.4MB program file. I tend to have multiple windows or tabs open at once, and nothing is worse than trying to have to figure out where, exactly, you were on various Web sites.Īccording to Microsoft, ACR can recover browser tabs to 'prevent the loss of work and productivity in the unlikely event of the browser crashing or hanging.' Unfortunately, I experienced plenty of browser crashes and hanging in my use of the IE8 beta, as installed on Windows XP with Service Pack 2 with Google and Yahoo Toolbars installed. One can find many things to like about Firefox, but for me, I routinely come back to that browser's super-handy ability to resume a browsing session. As a regular user of both Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox, I applaud the inclusion of ACR. Microsoft touts many new features in the IE8 beta-among them, Automatic Crash Recovery (ACR). Stay tuned for further reports the more we at PC World use IE8-I'm personally looking forward to giving WebSlices a spin. My colleague, Harry McCracken, has also installed the IE8 beta, and his only crashes came when he, too, iinstalled the Google Toolbar. So far, I think I've identified an incompatibility between my Google and Yahoo Toolbars and IE8 that's my working hypothesis for now, at least.

Prior to installing the IE8 beta, I had Internet Explorer 7 happily running along. I forged ahead and installed the beta-and I experienced more browser crashes during my hands-on than ever before. You might want to proceed with caution before trying IE8, though.

This beta is aimed squarely at Web site developers, but on Microsoft's IE8 blog, the company encourages anyone to try it out. — - Microsoft released Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 today, available via a download page.

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