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Friday, March 20th, 2009
Yesterday, Microsoft launched their new web browser, Internet Explorer 8. It promises a number of new features, including greater privacy and security. But will it do enough to win back the Internet users that have dropped IE in favour of other browsers?
While Internet Explorer is still used by the majority of web surfers all over the world, its popularity has definitely decreased over the last couple of years, with competitors like Mozilla Firefox and Apple’s Safari snapping up a chunk of its market share. Microsoft will be hoping to tempt users back with the latest incarnation of IE, and to do so they’ve given it some unique features.
Microsoft are particularly trumpeting the heightened security and privacy features of IE8. One aspect of the new version that has already gained a lot of attention is InPrivate Browsing, which allows you to prevent any records from a browser session being stored for that session. This means that all traces of your browsing history and any login or password details for that session will be instantly ‘forgotten’ as soon as the browser is closed. This has some pretty obvious advantages, and InPrivate Browsing is already being informally referred to by many as ‘Porn Mode’.
There are other, less controversial, new security and privacy features in IE8. Its phishing filter, called the Smartscreen Filter, has a regularly updated database of malware, and warns users if they are about to visit a site which is known to contain any. InPrivate Filtering gives you greater control over whether your private data and browsing habits can be shared with other sites, and prevents such information from being shared without your knowledge. InPrivate Filtering is highly customisable, so you can allow access by sites that you trust.
Beyond privacy and security, IE8 has more functions that Microsoft are hoping web users will find beneficial. For starters, the address bar has been jazzed up, so that it also works as a search tool, using whichever Search Engine you have set as default. As soon as you start typing into the bar, IE8 will bring up a list of suggested search terms, as well as previously-visited URLs which contain the letters you have typed (in much the same way as Firefox 3 already does).
Accelerators allow you to get further information from the web quickly and easily. Highlighting on a section of text in IE8 brings up an Accelerator button. Clicking on this button gives you a number of options for getting more information. For example, clicking on our postcode, BN3 2BB, in IE8 and then clicking on the Accelerator button allows you to look at a map of its location or to search for it in your default Search Engine. You can even highlight a piece of text and see it instantly run through a web translator into a wide range of languages.
These are just some of the new gimmicks that Microsoft are hoping to tempt us all back with. It remains to be seen whether they are successful. On first impressions, the new browser seems a little sluggish, and continues the age-old habit of all Microsoft products - trying to second-guess what the user is about to do and offering advice on how to do it. The Accelerator button certainly has its uses. The real test will be over the coming weeks and months, and whether IE8 can gain back some of the ground it has lost to its rivals remains to be seen.
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