I could have posted about the release of Internet Explorer 8 BETA 1 right away after it was launched but i decided to wait till now and include with the overview a few user reviews.

First of all the beta release is for web developers and designers only, and of course to those who want to check it out and play with it a little.

You can install it and uninstall it without a problem and you will get your system back to the state before the install

You can visit the official IE8 Beta page by clicking HERE.

As you can see in the image below the download size of the installer is 14.4 MB. Don’t worry the guys from Microsoft didn’t pack IE8 up in a such small installer. The installer will download the required files from the internet

Microsoft download servers are great(yes yes, they are better than rapidshare) i downloaded the installer in less than a minute.

The installer will check your Hard drive for malicious software(adware/spyware/viruses) and only after that will proceed with the installation of ie8.

The whole Download and installation time is about 8-10 minutes(depending on your PC and internet connection. I got 4mb/s internet connection and i pay 9$/mo, lucky me eh?)

If you have an old PC don’t install IE8, respect the system requirements:

Although the system requirements are low(233mhz/64RAM) i wouldn’t suggest installing it unless if you have at least 128 RAM and a 500MHZ Computer(you might experience system crashes - i tried it on my 250MHZ PC, the OS crashed every time i opened up more than 2 tabs).

At the end of the install you will get the well known Restart Your PC message.

After i press restart later a message pops up saying that its highly recommended to restart my pc. This message is just stupid. If i already chose not to reboot my PC then i stick by it(i had photoshop/firefox/and some other applications open)

As promised here are a few reviews:

Dever’s review:

- I really liked that it let me choose my default search provider even though by default it’s Live search.

- Compared with firefox the IE8 Addon manager sucks big time. I don’t think it will look

like this in the final version of IE8. On the other hand i really liked the feed viewer which looks cooler than firefox’s.

- The most interesting features are the tools for web developers: Overview and Debugging.

- Uninstalling it requires the classic system reboot. At least everything went fine and without problems.

BETng4U’s review:

- By showing the main URL with a darker color the user knows if he accessed a pissing page or a valid one. I think this is a great idea and in my opinion better than IE7’s pishing filter.

Other things that i enjoyed

- javascript console
- multi-tabs view (if i’m correct it was first implemented by opera)
- CSS3 (ex img link)
- IE develeper toolbar can display an element’s properties
- there’s an Emulate IE7 button, but i think the button will disappear after Beta testing will end.
- all in all, you can say what you want but this BETA is an important step for Microsoft.

Places where you can find more reviews:

John Resig’s blog  -  JavaScript in Internet Explorer 8

Roger Johansson’s blog -  First impressions of Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1