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The latest version of Microsoft Corp.’s browser Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) is now available. It has come with improvements in the areas of security, performance, ease of use and tighter adherence to W3C standards.

Microsoft kept its own IE rendering engine for years which forced developers to build separate versions of webpages for IE and other browsers.

With new IE8, the company has embraced W3C standards in a broader way and it also went out to address key issues like backward compatibility, privacy and security for millions of IE6 and IE7 users and potential new users.

It is ensured that old pages optimized for IE6 or IE7 won’t break when viewed in IE8. For this Microsoft has introduced a “Compatibility View” icon that users can click on to facilitate viewing of the old websites. With the insertion of a specially created “meta” element into the webpage, IE8 triggers the old standards mode, emulate its behavior and show the old pages unscrambled.

IE8 behaves much differently from former versions, there are new features such as Accelerators, Web slices, Visual search suggestions, and SmartAddress Bar, among others.

Accelerators

Accelerator is a form of selection-based search that helps users reduce the number of clicks and navigation time to get to the online information they want. Users can simply right-click a word or phrase and instantly map, e-mail or share it. Accelerators are designed to help people go from Point A to Point B fast. It’s an open platform for people to create their own scenarios. It is XML and CSS (cascading style sheet) based and can be created in minutes.

Web Slices

Another tool in IE8 designed to maximize users’ productivity online is the so-called WebSlices, which makes favorite information from sites such as Digg, Yahoo! Mail, OneRiot, and eBay instantly available wherever the user goes on the Web.

It’s the Web in a more condensed format. The technology is RSS that fetches the information needed. The RSS in IE8 can go out on the Web and fetch the information and pull it into the browser in a way that is formatted for the end-user.

Visual search suggestions

IE8 also provide users a way to do “visual search” by partnering with major sites such as Amazon, Wikipedia, Yahoo!, and eBay

Smart Address Bar

The IE8’s SmartAddress bar gives users a list of suggestions under the address bar to include sites that users have bookmarked in their favorite folders in addition to browsing history. With it, users can just type key words and not necessarily the whole Web address and the SmartAddress Bar can pull the page or Web title based on what it remembers.

In addition, IE8 does color-coding. What it does is it groups tabs from the same website together and color-codes them so, for instance, if four pages from the same website are open, IE8 will group these pages and display their tabs in one color.

Privacy and Security

For privacy and security, IE8 contains new tools to guarantee both. First, there’s the InPrivate Browsing which helps prevent a user’s browsing history, temporary Internet files, form data, cookies and usernames and passwords from being retained by the browser, leaving no trace of browsing or search history.

The privacy features of IE8 give users visibility and control over who they want to share information with. Users can selectively remove certain sites from their browsing history while preserving their favorite sites. Similar to the privacy protection modes in Firefox, Safari and Google Chrome, InPrivate Browsing, which has been jokingly called the “Porn Mode” by some, can be turned on and off by the user.

SmartScreen Filter

To protect IE8 users from malicious malware, phishing and other dangers, IE8 introduces a SmartScreen Filter that warns users when the sites or files they are attempting to open are potentially unsafe. If the SmartScreen filter detects a malicious website, IE8 will automatically step on the brakes and block the entire site. IE8’s malware filter analyzes the software from sites and block it during download or suggests that you don’t download it.

It can also stop “cross-site scripting” and “click-jacking.” IE8’s built-in, cross-site scripting filter detects these types of attacks and disable the harmful scripts. Phishing sites are immediately flagged as phishing sites.

Its malware filter automatically block pervasive sites or pop-ups. IE8 also works separately from the rest of the operating system so, for instance, a hacker gets control of the browser the computer’s OS, registry and file system remain sandboxed.

Its crash recovery system promises that if a single website or tab crashes, it should not crash the whole browser. This capability is called Tab Isolation wherein each tab functions independently and runs its own internal processes. This means closing a tab will only affect that particular tab, allowing the user to continue with only minimal disruption.

Lab tests

The IE8 test chose the Top 25 websites in the world as measured by comScore to reflect the sites users are most likely to visit on the Web .

This table shows results from the benchmark testing process for 25 websites tested on the following browsers: Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer 8.

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