IE8 Beta 1 was released this MIX! The current beta of IE 8 is cosmetically similar to IE 7, lacks a spell checker. On the other hand, it does come with some developer tools to view HTML/CSS/JavaScript with the ability to trace the JavaScript Stack. No live editing of code yet. How would you change IE 8? Go ahead and leave your comments...

Here are my thoughts/observations/ideas/rants/.../etc:

 * Domain Name highlighting is a good addition
 * Visually Identical to IE 7
  * Renders ACID 2 nice and well
 * Gets a 17/100 on ACID 3
 * No spell check (yet)??
 * Lack of easy interface customization
 * No compelling new features
 * Channel 8 is quirky on IE 8

What i'd like to see in the final release:

 * Auto detect best rendering solution based on script/css errors
 * Manual switch rendering modes without the need to restart browser
  * Easy customization of Interface including changing position/size/color/icon of all UI Elements
 * Developer Tool with capacity to modify code
 * Spell Check please
 * Better ACID 3 scores
 * A product with a more continuous development cycle with decent feature updates and refreshes
 * A good offline browser engine for AJAX sites (similar to Google Gears)

I read this article on the wired today about a blind teenage cracker who is specializes in phone phreaking and did a lot of damage.. I think the kid should have remained hacker and stayed away from the dark side. It's acceptable to speak to the pope but wasting government money is something else.

Anyways, in case you hackers happen to read this, you got my respect.. and feel free to inform me about any vulnerabilities in my site.. thank.

Microsoft Windows Vista SP1 officially RTM'd on Feb 4, 2008 . The RTM build was nothing but RC Refresh 2 code ; so some of them testers already had the RTM before they knew it. The testing part was really fun - I kinda liked it even. But then came the RTM gold bits , wasn't as pleasant as expected ; partly because us techies got the binary standalone installer for RTM not the Windows Update way. My system was a fully loaded Vista Ultimate with loads of installed software and loads more of tweaks - it was running on minimal services, which i suspect to be a partial cause of my 48 hour installation ordeal. The installation went on for a solid 36 hours (on an infinite cycle) before it failed and I reinstalled vista and i'm in the process of getting all the software back on.

Normal users have nothing to worry, your final two updates required to make the jump have been delivered in the previous patch Tuesday. You should expect SP1 to be delivered via Windows Update sometime in March/April.

Vista SP1 brings with it many tweaks including fixes for the infamous file transfer issues. And of course Ultimate users continue to get dust.

Update: Seems like I wasnt the only one having SP1 RTM install issues, and Microsoft has fixed them.  And here is more info on post SP performance.