Internet Explorer 8 – Out Now

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Internet Explorer 8 was made available for download on March 18.  There are two key reasons why you should care.

First - It’s a great browser and is easier to use, faster and offers leading-edge security features in direct response to people’s increasing concerns about online safety.

Security

Internet Explorer 8’s security enhancements offer protection against existing and emerging security threats online. It blocks two to four times more malware attacks than other browsers; cuts down on the time it takes to complete common tasks on the Web such as searching, mapping and sharing, including navigating 15 of the 20 top worldwide sites; and blurs the lines between the services they use daily and the browser used to access the Internet.  It offers the best security protections among leading browsers: a study released on March 18 by NSS Labs indicates that Internet Explorer 8 blocks two to four times as many malicious sites as other browsers on the market today.

Speed

In addition to offering improved security and privacy protections, Internet Explorer 8 is one of the fastest browsers on the market today, beating other top browsers in page load time on almost 50 percent of the 25 top comScore Inc. Web sites (based on December 2008). 

Ease of Use

It also helps people save time while using the Web with easy-to-use new features, including the following:

  • Accelerators. Accelerators make it faster and easier to perform common tasks online by making Web-based services such as ESPN.com, Live Search and Sina available for use directly from the page people are viewing. Users can simply right-click a word or phrase and instantly map, e-mail, or share it.
  • Web Slices. Web Slices in Internet Explorer 8 makes favourite information from sites such as Digg, Yahoo! Mail, OneRiot, and eBay instantly available wherever someone goes on the Web.
  • Visual search suggestions. The Instant Search Box in Internet Explorer 8 enables rich, real-time search from sites such as The New York Times, Amazon.com and Wikipedia, as well as sites from people’s own Favourites and History, complete with visuals and detailed information that saves time.

Another feature of note is Compatibility View.  Some Web sites that are designed for older browsers may not display correctly in Internet Explorer 8, which by default renders content in the most standards-compliant way possible.  Internet Explorer 8 provides people with an easy way to fix display problems such as out-of-place menus, images and text with a Compatibility View button that displays those pages as they were designed to be viewed.

Secondly – Even if you’re not ready to roll this out internally in your business, odds are your customers will be using it.  So, you need to ensure your public facing websites are displaying as you expect in Internet Explorer 8.

You should download a copy today and test your external facing websites.  Internet Explorer 8 ships with a more standards-compatible layout engine that allows developers to build a single standards-based site for multiple browsers.  To provide developers with the choice for when they migrate their sites to the new standards-compliant layout engine, Internet Explorer 8 enables Web developers to ask for the Windows Internet Explorer 7 layout engine by inserting a simple meta tag into their code or by adding a single HTTP header on their servers. 

Should you find that your sites are not displaying correcting, it is easy to rectify.  As mentioned above, in order to maintain backwards compatibility with Internet Explorer 7 we have provided a compatibility meta-tag usable on a per-page or per-site level.  Adding this tag instructs Internet Explorer 8 to display content like it did in Internet Explorer 7, without requiring any additional changes.  Get step-by-step instructions for using this meta-tag on your site here.  Also, check out the Internet Explorer 8 Readiness Toolkit.

Last key point to note is for those of you beta testing Windows 7.  Windows 7 Beta already includes a pre-release candidate version of Internet Explorer 8 that is optimized for that release.  Windows 7 enables unique features and functionality in Internet Explorer 8 including Windows Touch and Jump Lists which require additional product tests to ensure we are providing the best Windows experience for our customers.  We will continue to update the version of Internet Explorer 8 running on Windows 7 as the development cycles of Windows 7 progress and plan to include the final version of Internet Explorer 8 in the release candidate version of Windows 7 later this year.  For the latest information on Windows 7, visit the Windows 7 site.

Finally, check out the fact sheet for all the info on the updates in Internet Explorer 8, plus download it here.