Microsoft's latest update to the world's most popular browser, Internet Explorer, went live today at 12 Noon EST. Travel to Microsoft's site and download IE 8, install it, and enjoy a new, moderately improved, web-browsing experience...unless you have a Mac. Right now, the new browser is PC only.
Among the improvements and features you can expect:
* Improved security: NSS Labs released an independent study today showing IE8 beating competing web browsers Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Google Chrome and Opera in catching and blocking badware. IE8 caught 69 percent of malware, while Firefox 3.07 caught only 30 percent.
* InPrivate Browsing: A mode that keeps no trail of browsing history. I'm sure you can understand the utility of this mode, but to spell it out, TheFeed's Frank Meyer called it "Porn Mode."
* User Interface Improvements: Improvements include color-coded browser tabs, the ability to recommend sites, a "visual search feature" that allows users to see pictures of things like eBay and Amazon search results, auto-completion of searches and URLs, and a toolbar for searching within a page. Taking a tip from Google's "Chrome" browser, the new IE allows individual tabs to work in isolation, so one crashed site doesn't bring down the whole browser.
* Increased speed: Microsoft ran some tests and its product won! So Microsoft says its browser is generally faster than the competition... but it did say that difference comes down to "milliseconds."
* Standards support: Okay, this one is a little techy, but Microsoft's new browser contains both a "legacy browsing mode" and a standards browsing mode so web standards are supported, but non-standard sites still work, too. Best of both worlds? I guess it depends on how well it works! Anyway, developers tag their sites either "standard" or not, and the browser, apparently, does the rest, so you don't have to worry about it.
get it here
more here
Among the improvements and features you can expect:
* Improved security: NSS Labs released an independent study today showing IE8 beating competing web browsers Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Google Chrome and Opera in catching and blocking badware. IE8 caught 69 percent of malware, while Firefox 3.07 caught only 30 percent.
* InPrivate Browsing: A mode that keeps no trail of browsing history. I'm sure you can understand the utility of this mode, but to spell it out, TheFeed's Frank Meyer called it "Porn Mode."
* User Interface Improvements: Improvements include color-coded browser tabs, the ability to recommend sites, a "visual search feature" that allows users to see pictures of things like eBay and Amazon search results, auto-completion of searches and URLs, and a toolbar for searching within a page. Taking a tip from Google's "Chrome" browser, the new IE allows individual tabs to work in isolation, so one crashed site doesn't bring down the whole browser.
* Increased speed: Microsoft ran some tests and its product won! So Microsoft says its browser is generally faster than the competition... but it did say that difference comes down to "milliseconds."
* Standards support: Okay, this one is a little techy, but Microsoft's new browser contains both a "legacy browsing mode" and a standards browsing mode so web standards are supported, but non-standard sites still work, too. Best of both worlds? I guess it depends on how well it works! Anyway, developers tag their sites either "standard" or not, and the browser, apparently, does the rest, so you don't have to worry about it.
get it here
more here
