Internet Explorer 8: What is new and improved with Microsoft's browser

Can it ward off its increasing competition?

This is Microsoft’s first update to their infamous browser since August 2006. Back then, Internet Explorer was the king of the web browsers. But with Mozilla Firefox nipping at its heels, not to mention Google’s introduction of its own browser, Chrome, and IE 8 has a lot more competition to ward off. Microsoft needed to make IE 8 faster, safer and easier to use than ever.

IE 8 aims to reduce the need to copy something from one web page and paste it onto another. Called Accelerators, these little actions can be called up by highlighting the text on a page and clicking on a small blue icon that appears. Users can add Accelerators to reflect their own search, email and other habits. IE 8 also adds much needed functionality to the built-in toolbar search box. Users can type a word into the box and a preview of suggested searches or results appears in a drop-down list, and they can easily switch between different search providers by clicking small icons in that window. By clicking on the icons, the list refreshes. Microsoft has also added a toolbar button that opens a menu of the most recent news headlines. Users can add several “Web slices” to keep track of information that is frequently updated. Microsoft is also adding a tab function, whereby each web page has its own tab, and if one web site crashes, only that tab will be affected, not the entire browser.

IE 8 also has some new privacy features. One is a mode for web browsing that does not remember what sites were visited and does not store cookies. IE 8 also lets users block ads from companies that track their web surfing habits across a number of sites. It has improved protection against malware and known phishing scam sites. It also has built-in technology to protect against “cross-site scripting,” a scheme where hackers insert code into legitimate web pages that compromise a person’s computer without their knowing it. IE 8 disables the bad scripts but in most cases allows others needed for a web page to run as usual.

IE 8 also helps people who create web sites prevent an attack called “click-jacking,” where someone thinks that they are clicking on a legitimate button when they are really activating an invisible, malicious action. Microsoft has promised to adhere to web standards or agreed-upon ways of reading web designers’ code and displaying the page as described with IE 8. For any sites that don’t display properly with IE 8, Microsoft has added a button that reverts to the old, nonstandard way of operating.

With so many new features added to IE 8, Microsoft hopes to remain the number one web browser. If you want to download Internet Explorer 8 and try out these new features for yourself, go here.