Internet Explorer 8 RC, at last a fighter!

It has been some time since I have been using Internet Explore 8 Release Candidate 1, and I have found it very satisfactory in terms of performance. For ages, I always felt that Internet Explorer was a lighter browser compared to the foxes and Operas. But, the real downfall of IE happened with other browsers coming with tabs. Buy somehow Microsoft ignored the importance of tabs, for so long, I remember the first IE tabs, coming with the help of Yahoo! toolbar. But it was very messy nevertheless. Then IE came on with its own tabs. But, still they were very buggy. I remember even in IE 8 beta (even in my Windows 7 version of IE 8) whenever I open a new tab, the browser freezes for a few seconds (sometimes minutes) until the new tab is loaded. This is very irritating, since, we use tabs so that we don't have to wait until the page loads, we can carry on with the current tab.
But things have changed with the Release Candidate 1. Tabs are as fast as it is in any other browser, the tabs opened from a parent tab always group together with a same highlight color, for easy identification.
The address bar is much more than just a mere address bar. As you type, it shows relevant information, grouped and organized in a neat way, with domain highlighting etc.
The in-Private mode and in-Private filter lets you browse without leaving traces on the system. Something that comes handy to keep your browsing personal when you are using your dad's laptop. It also has a crash recovery system, which restores all the tabs back in case your browser has a crash. The compatibility mode is still there and it would be used for most of the sites you browse, unless you are frequent visitor to the Microsoft websites.
The browsers rendering is much better, with anti-aliasing of fonts and sharper rendering of images. Even other apps like Outlook which make use of the IE engine take advantage of this.
It also has a few other bells-n-whistles like the web slices, accelerators, add-in manager, etc which I have not yet used fully.
The only sad part apart from the compatibility mode is that IE 8 RC1 is still not available for Windows 7, I even tried downloading the Vista version and installing which did not work. I hope the wait would end soon.
Summing it up, IE 8.0 RC1 is light as Chrome, feature rich as firefox, at the same time clearer and sharper a faster than any other browser. I think IE 8 for the final release. And I believe it can give a really good fight this time. And, maybe, win too :)

Rating :4.5/5
I am not exaggarating on the rating, I could not find any flaw with it. Not even a single crash as well.
codevalley

Google Chrome, reinventing the wheel?

Just over a week after Microsoft Internet Explorer  Beta 2, Google has come up with its own new offering christened Chrome. The whole release episode itself was in a bizzare fashion. A day before the release, the whole internet talk about some leaked Google comic book talking about the new Chrome browser, and just a few hours later Google announce that they aill release the beta the very next day.

Along with million others, I also waited to get my copy of my Chrome, once it was available for download. Though it looks lightweight and simple, the initial impression was that I was working with some lite version of a browser. No menus, only a few buttons. Even the settings tab had a very limited options. As I went on adding more tabs, I noticed that the browsing controls are embedded in every tab. Also if you have multiple windows, you can drag tabs from one window to another. The browser also rendered the pages properly, and the fears which developers had that they have to test compatibility with one more browser could be thrown away.

Another interesting thing I found was each tab had a process running in the tast manager. So, if some website misbehaves you can close them. Also Google had also announced that this browser would follow a secure sandbox model, no tab can access content of others. 

All looks fine. But there seems to be a lack of pull which we have for firefox because of no plugins themes, etc. Using the browswer five minutes, you feel like you have seen it all. Also, Internet Explorer Beta 2 is really proving good. When compared, IE consumes the least CPU, followed by Chrome and then Firefox. I will post the IE review soon.

Though initially I was against the idea of Google capturing another frontier by bringing its browser, this really looks good in terms of useability and simplicity. Now, one person holds your search history, browsing history, mails, and what not?

Google Chrome