Internet Explorer 8 arrives

Stephen Withers
Thursday, 19 March 2009 11:44

IT Industry - Development

The search box has been updated, and incorporates real-time suggestions from a variety of sources including Amazon, Live Search, The New York Times, Wikipedia and Yahoo!. Search suggestions may include images.

Recognising IE8's move towards web standards, Microsoft has included a compatibility mode to cater for sites that take account of IE7's quirks.

InPrivate - described by some as 'porn mode' - allows browsing without having to worry about the contents of the cache, history or cookies as they are all flushed at the end of the session.

As for security, IE8 incorporates the SmartScreen Filter to warn users when they try to visit potentially unsafe sites, a cross site scripting filter, and domain highlighting (to reduce the risk of users being fooled by obfuscated URLs).

"Customers have made clear what they want in a Web browser — safety, speed and greater ease of use," said Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft.

"With Internet Explorer 8, we are delivering a browser that gets people to the information they need, fast, and provides protection that no other browser can match."

Now that IE8 is available in its final form, we'll be able to see whether it will stem the flow of users away from Internet Explorer to Firefox and Safari.

According to Net Applications' Market Share report, IE's web share has dropped from almost 75 percent in February 2008 to 67 and a half percent in February 2009.