It's an awfully charming video by one of the greatest musicians of all time. This 63-year old mega-millionaire is downright folksy when talking about web browsers.

Hey Dolly, if you like IE8 - you should let Google's Chrome sweep you off your feet! Not a lot of features, but it's super fast for a fast-thinking woman like you. Is it customization you're looking for? We know you've seen a whole lot of things all around the world - but have you seen Firefox yet?

Dolly Parton? How are you going to top that, Mozilla?

Thanks to James Governor for finding the above video.

Most users who have a choice would probably switch away from IE6 in a heartbeat, but if the stats for YouTube are anything like what Digg found in regards to phasing out support for IE6, then most YouTube users who are actually still using IE6 do so from work. Digg found that 90% of its IE6 users were using this antiquated browser at work, where they probably have no other option. About 80% of those who responded to Digg's survey couldn't change to another browser because they had no administrator access to their computer, weren't allowed to upgrade, or simply couldn't upgrade because they were still running Windows 2000, ME, or 98. About 17% of Digg's users simply didn't feel the need to upgrade and 7% said they preferred IE6 to other browsers (we wonder how many of these people were serious, though).

Of course, it is also important to note that Google also uses messages like "Gmail runs better in Chrome" to push its own browser regularly and regularly runs ads for Chrome on YouTube.

Image Credit: Ajaxian.

Featuring one-time Lois and Clark actor Dean Cain, the ads are uncharacteristically hip and discuss such real-world Internet problems as the fear of missing something (a.k.a. insomnia by social media) and the fear of your S.O. finding your porn cache. However, at least one of the videos was just too cool for Microsoft. After becoming strangely popular and talked-about online, the video was renounced by the software mega-company and pulled from the promotional website. Somewhere tonight, a creative director weeps.

The spot itself features a young lady spewing copious amounts of what used to be breakfast on a young man. She'd borrowed his laptop and evidently stumbled upon some hideous new Rule 34 form of online entertainment. The ad serves to highlight IE8's sneaky no-history InPrivate browsing feature.

The ads are, as a group, delightfully off-brand. They're too cool for Microsoft, which has generally dwelt somewhere between stodgy and cutesy in terms of marketing.

Better still, they show that Microsoft just might be listening to what users really need: Web Slices to get quick views of personally important sites without wasting unnecessary time browsing between full-on tabs; sharing accelerators for sending along lolcats or other media with a single right-click; and yes, a way to keep the missus from finding out about your love affair with Suicide Girls.

The features are nifty in themselves. We'd totally use them if we weren't already committed to Chrome and Firefox.

According to the IE Addons Gallery page, "This special version of Internet Explorer 8 comes loaded with fresh OneRiot goodies, putting the real-time web directly into your browser."

For users who have already installed IE8, Microsoft also offers three real-time add-on packages, which add the same OneRiot components contained in the fully optimized browser. Add-ons include OneRiot's real-time search results, top videos, and top shared items of the day.

Here's a composite screenshot of the webslices, featuring top shared results and top videos:

Users will notice the OneRiot search bar in the top right of the browser; the add-ons also give users the option of selecting OneRiot as the default search engine. OneRiot search results are indexed based on an algorithm that weighs the number of social media shares each link receives as well as the authority of the sharer, among other factors. OneRiot results are intended to be highly recent as well as highly relevant and include the exact number of shares along with the context of the share.

Source: StatCounter Global Stats - Browser Version Market Share

The fact that as of today almost 23% of all Internet surfers are still using IE6, however, leads us to believe that it will take a while before a larger number of IE7 and IE6 users will switch to IE8. While it's a major update, IE8 does not include a lot of new 'must-have' features for most users who just use their browser to get around on the net, and who probably don't care much about accelerators and web slices.

We described most of IE8's new features in previous posts about the beta and release candidates, so here is just a short reminder of some of the most interesting new additions to IE8:

• Accelerators (think addons that make things like mapping addresses or initiating a blog post easier)
• Web Slices (make information from sites available directly in your bookmarks)
• InPrivate browsing (similar to the 'incognito' mode in Chrome or the 'private browsing' feature in Safari 4)
• Built-in clickjacking prevention
• Built-in phishing prevention
• Crash recovery (similar to Chrome; when a tab crashes, it won't take down the whole browser and the content is automatically restored and reloaded)

Speed and Security

Of course, Microsoft has also stepped up its efforts to keep users secure (pdf), and IE8 also feels a lot faster than Microsoft's earlier browsers. Microsoft famously argued that its browser has been optimized to render the most popular pages on the Internet faster than any other browser, and that JavaScript performance, which is what all the other browser developers are focused on right now, is only a small part of the puzzle. To us, however, IE8 still didn't feel very fast, especially when compared to Google's Chrome.

Best New Features: Accelerators and Web Slices

In our opinion, the two features that stand out in the new version of IE8 (besides the obvious, like speed and better security) are accelerators and web slices. One web slice we especially liked was the OneRiot slice, which gives you a quick overview of the most popular videos on the Internet right now.

In its press release, though, Microsoft argues that performing simple tasks like mapping an address takes 7 steps in Firefox, but only 3 in IE8. Of course, that is only true if you don't install the Map This addon for Firefox. And that, of course, is a large part of Microsoft's problem. Thanks to the large number of Firefox addons and other tools like Greasemonkey, you can easily replicate most of the new features from IE8 in Firefox.

Verdict

Overall, IE8 is not a bad browser, and most mainstream users who are still using IE7 will feel right at home. The problem for Microsoft, however, is that a lot of users have already moved to other browsers like Firefox, Safari, Opera, and Chrome, and IE8 doesn't really offer these users anything new or innovative. Of course, IE7 is the world's most often used browser, so this upgrade, as Om Malik rightly points out, will indeed be a welcome upgrade for millions of Windows users, and might just stop a lot of them from looking for alternatives in the near term. If you are already using another browser, however, IE8 will just look like more of the same and we can't really see a compelling reason for why you would want to switch back to Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

This appears to be a major step by the company in addressing the long standing anti-trust complaints of bundling their applications with Windows, and may account in part for the recent scaling back by the European Union in its monitoring of the software giant.

In a post on the Engineering Windows 7 blog Friday, Mayo explained: "In addition to the features that were already available to turn on or off in Windows Vista, we've added the following features to the list in Windows 7:"

• Windows Media Player
• Windows Media Center
• Windows DVD Maker
• Internet Explorer 8
• Windows Search
• Handwriting Recognition (through the Tablet PC Components option)
• Windows Gadget Platform
• Fax and Scan
• XPS Viewer and Services (including the Virtual Print Driver)

Important to recognize is that while these applications can be turned off, meaning they are not loaded by the operating system or available for use, the files remain present on the hard disk in a staging area so that they can be easily turned back on again without the need to use installation media. This ability to turn applications on and off is available at both setup and post setup.

As we pointed out earlier this year, IE8 is definitely an important milestone, and this new policy of allowing their bundled applications to be turned off seems to be the right step by Microsoft in creating a more level playing field for third parties on the Windows platform.

Here is his comment:

"Good news: Passes Acid2 (translation: great CSS 2.1 support, including things like display:table), defaults to standards mode (both previously announced).

Bad news: Still no support for application/xhtml+xml, not even close on Acid3 (Opera 9.5 9755 passes 61), not good support for CSS3 selectors (granted that's not officially a final spec, but Opera 9.5 9755 gets 100%).

I'm dubious about some of the new features... interesting how Microsoft seems to continually rely on tying together their spectrum of offerings. IE8 includes convenient shortcuts to other web sites for various info... and many of those sites just happen to be Microsoft sites. I don't blame them for linking to their own services, but ironic that Microsoft is essentially "bundling" again.

Some of the new features seem similar to things like gadgets in iGoogle... this release is as much about Google as Firefox. Very happy to see that the WebSlices setup does not introduce proprietary tags and even uses the hAtom microformat.

I'm sure many users will find things like activites and WebSlices handy, but it still seems to me that Microsoft is way behind the curve on features innovation with web browsers. Many of these features have long been available via plug-ins. However, I'm glad to finally see features like session recovery.

All in all, this release is good news. It definitely demonstrates the IE team is serious about web standards now, and it signals we'll be seeing IE updates more frequently. IE8 is still behind other browsers in many ways, but kudos to the IE team for the progress they've made - it's going to help developers and users a bunch."

I'm sure there are more features to be discovered, but the ones that were highlighted just now in the demo at MIX08 included the following:

Standards Compliance: There were hints that IE8 would be a remarkable offering on the IE Blog as they released tidbits about the browser's capabilities. For example, the announcement of IE8's passing of the Acid2 test (a test for standards compliance) marked a milestone in IE8's development. The standards mode was originally going to be turned off by default letting web developers code for it by including a "meta" tag to make use of IE8's new standards compliant mode. Later, Microsoft came to their senses and made the default the standards-compliant mode. Meanwhile, Firefox also claims to have passed the Acid 2 test, but an open bug on bugzilla.mozilla.org seems to say otherwise. (our coverage). One commenter on the thread notes, "So, we essentially do pass the test. However, in some situations, it might still fail, that's why this bug is open."

Facebook Integration: Yes, seriously! With a Flock-like feature as an unexpected surprise, Microsoft capitalized on their partnership with the popular social networking site, Facebook, to allow IE8 users the ability to get status updates from Facebook right from their browser toolbar.

eBay Integration: Like Facebook, this feature also uses IE8's new technology, called "WebSlices", which introduces a new way to get updates from other sites via the browser itself, without having to visit the web site. With WebSlices, IE8 beta users can subscribe to portions of a page that
update dynamically, in order to receive updates from that page as content
changes. EBay will offer webslices, too, letting you track your auctions from the browser toolbar. Basically, WebSlices look like Favorites on your Links toolbar but they have a little arrow next to them - clicking on this arrow will show you a small window of live web content.

Live Maps Integration: Another WebSlice was integration with Live Maps. It appeared that you could even highlight text on a page, like an address, and then right-click and choose Live Maps from the context menu to get a WebSlice preview of that location on a map in a small pop-up window. How convenient!

Integration with Me.dium: Me.dium integration will be supported in IE8 via WebSlices. Me.dium will now help web surfers discover and view WebSlices directly from the sidebar. The Me.dium sidebar will alert users to the presence of WebSlices on any page – and even allows users to read each WebSlice, without leaving the Sidebar. In addition, Me.dium will make real-time recommendations for other WebSlices on other relevant web pages and provides direct links to them based on the real time activity of other Me.dium users.

Me.dium Activities in Action

Working with AJAX Pages: IE8 will offer better functionality when it comes to AJAX web pages. The example showed a page where you could zoom in using AJAX technology. Previously, hit the IE "Back" button would take you back to the last page you were on. Now, "Back" will zoom you out.

We can now find out what other features IE8 has to offer, since the beta is now publicly available for download. To get IE8, you can download it from here: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/ie/ie8/readiness/Install.htm.

Neither the current official, non-beta release of Internet Explorer nor the current official non-beta release of Firefox properly renders the Acid2 test. Though some beta testers for Firefox have reported that FF 3 Beta 2 choked on the Acid2, there are other reports that it renders correctly (I haven't switched to Firefox 3 yet for reasons I've already posted here).

For their part, the IE8 team downplayed the significance of their internal build supposedly passing the Acid2 test. Instead, Microsoft General Manager Dean Hachamovitch used it as an opportunity to highlight how far the IE team still has to go to reach their goals. He also seemed to be hinting at the team's intention to reserve the right to pick and choose which standards they mean to follow.

"When we look at the long lists of standards (even from just one standards body, like the W3C), which standards are the most important for us to support? The web has many kinds of standards -- true industry standards, like those from the W3C, de facto standards, unilateral standards, open standards, and more," he wrote. "The key goal (for the Web Standards Project as well as many other groups and individuals) is interoperability. As a developer, I’d prefer to not have to write the same site multiple times for different browsers. Standards are a (critical!) means to this end, and we focus on the standards that will help actual, real-world interoperability the most. As a consumer and a developer, I expect stuff to just work, and I also expect backwards compatibility. ... While supporting the features tested in Acid2 is important for many reasons, it is just one of several milestones for the interoperability, standards compliance, and backwards compatibility that we’re committed to for this release."