The latest internet browser from Microsoft, Internet Explorer 8, brings out a number of great features, makes browsing the internet safer, easier, and wide compatibility.
From the looks of Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2, it seems to be a lot like Internet Explorer 7. However, Microsoft has added a number of changes. Most people already had seen some of these features in IE’s known rival, Mozilla Firefox 3.
Here are the features of Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2:
Tabbed BrowsingThis is useful if you want to browse multiple website without opening a new Internet Explorer Window. Besides that, if you accidentally close the browser window in Internet Explorer 8, it will give you option to reopen (restore) the website or use Home Page in the next program launch. These features seem already available in Mozilla Firefox. But Internet Explorer 8 has added the features to group the similar tab (from the same website) together using color coding.
Another new features added to Internet Explorer 8 is tab isolation. This feature is developed to avoid the program crash from the buggy Web site. When Internet Explorer 8 encounter the buggy website, only the specified tab will close and this prevent you from information lose when browsing other website.
Web SlicesInternet Explorer 8 Web Slices is a latest feature that allows users to select the portion of web pages they want to monitor so you can view the updates of the selected portion without open the actual web page. This feature is pretty cool to me; it allows you to monitor real time update of the website such as price information, bidding information, stock market and important information that updates regularly. From the Web Slices, you can also click on it to view the actual page.
AcceleratorsAccelerators allow users to get specified information from a web page without open another website to get the information details or leaving the current page. For example, if users want to get the details of selected address the web page, the user capable to view the map by the address and get additional information for it. You can also use Accerators feature to Digg the current page, blog it, news lookup, dictionary lookup, share the page in your Facebook, etc.
Security EnhancementInternet Explorer 8 introduces a new feature that allows users to browsing the internet much safer with InPrivate feature. If you enable this feature, Internet Explorer 8 will not save any sensitive or private data such as history, password, log in information, and so forth. It’s just like your browsing session never happened. This feature is already used in Apple’s Safari web browser, what the different is Internet Explorer makes InPrivate status more visible.
Internet Explorer 8 also integrated with the latest phishing filter called SmartScreen which improved the previous versions. This feature will protect you from visit the scam/phishing website and warning you about it. However, this feature still relies on the database of known phishing sites, if the phishing site is new, it still can be visit by users.
From Internet Explorer 8 address bar, you can also see the site’s domains is in darker text color, so it easier for users to identify whether the website is phishing or not.
Backwards CompatibilityThe Internet Explorer 8 also supports backward compatibility by provide the option to display web page the same way as Internet Explorer 7. If users find out the web page doesn’t display correctly in Internet Explorer 8, they can always revert back to Internet Explorer 7 view.
