NEW Features in Internet Explorer 8 beta

 

Ø     New to Beta 2! InPrivate

Ø     New to Beta 2!Delete Browsing History

Ø     Search

Ø     New to Beta 2!Search Suggestions

Ø     New to Beta 2! UserPreference Protection

Ø     New to Beta 2! CaretBrowsing

Ø     Accelerators(previously known as Activities)

Ø     Web Slices

Ø     New to Beta 2!Suggested Sites

Ø     Favorites Bar

Ø     New to Beta 2! TabGrouping

Ø     Automatic CrashRecovery

Ø     SmartScreen Filter (previouslyknown as the Phishing Filter)

New to Beta 2! InPrivate

When using the Internet for such activities as checking e-mail on afriend’s computer or shopping for a gift on a family PC, some users prefer notto leave any traces of their session. The InPrivateBrowsing feature of Internet Explorer 8 prevents the browser from savingsession history, temporary Internet files, form data, cookies, and usernamesand passwords.

ctivate InPrivateBrowsing by selecting Start InPrivate Browsing either from a New Tab page or from the Safety menu—which is new in Internet Explorer 8. With the featureactivated, Internet Explorer 8 will launch a session that will retain noinformation and leave no trace of the user’s browsing activity. By default,activation of InPrivate Browsing also activates InPrivate Blocking (discussed in the next section). Simplyclosing the browser window will end the InPrivatesession.

 

DeleteBrowsing History

Introduced in Internet Explorer 7, the Delete BrowsingHistory feature enables a single-click deletion of the datasaved by Internet Explorer. Deleting records of web browsing activity has neverbeen easier!

Not all such records, however, need to be deleted. Forfrequently visited websites, the information stored in cookies is especiallyuseful. While many websites offer the so-called “Remember me” option,others (for example, financial websites) will store a cookie on every computerfrom which a user has accessed them; one use of this would be to eliminate therequirement for challenge questions (e.g. “What was your high schoolmascot?”)

Internet Explorer 8 addresses this issue by allowing users topreserve the cookies and temporary Internet files from the websites added tothe Favorites list

Thus, to stay registered with a specific website, a user wouldsimply add the website’s URL to Favorites, making sure that Preserve Favoriteswebsite data is selected; Internet Explorer will preserve all cookies and cachefiles for the website.

However, if a user wants to erase the browsing history completely,the Delete Browsing History on Exit feature will do the job!

Search

The search functionality of Internet Explorer 8 builds upon thework we started in Internet Explorer 7, which saw the introduction of a searchbox that supports the addition of search providers through OpenSearchdescription files. We have enhanced the search box in Internet Explorer 8,adding features that will help users initiate a better search query and easilyswitch to a secondary search provider.

The main modification we have made in search is an improvedsearch box drop-down which will help users execute better queries. The InternetExplorer 8 search box drop-down includes AutoComplete, Search suggestions andresults from local history. AutoComplete results, which were available inInternet Explorer 7, show users queries that they had previously typed in thesearch box. Search Suggestions allow your currently selected search provider tosuggest different queries to you as you are typing in the search box. (Theseare discussed in detail in the section below.) Finally history results show theuser pages they had previously browsed to which are related to what they arecurrently typing in the search box.

SearchSuggestions

Search suggestionsallow a search provider to suggest different queries while a user is typingtext into the search box. Search suggestions, as they are implemented incurrent toolbars and competing browsers, consist mainly of text suggestions forrelated terms that users might want to find; in some cases, specific links arealso suggested.

CaretBrowsing

Caret Browsing is anew Accessibility feature that allows users to navigate a webpage using amoveable cursor on the screen and the keyboard. Users can select and copy textdown to a single character using only the keyboard. Other content types, liketable or images, can also be selected and copied.

Moving the cursorwithin the text of a webpage is similar to moving the cursor within the text ofa Word document. Holding the shift key down and pressing the arrow keys selectstext. Pressing F7 turns Caret Browsing on or off. It can be enabled on a pertab basis or for all tabs and windows.

Accelerators

Accelerators are acontextual feature used to quickly access a service from any webpage. It iscommon for users to copy and paste content from one webpage to another, andaccelerators simplify this process.

Accelerators allowusers to find information without leaving the current webpage. For example, todetermine the location of a specific restaurant, a user will select therestaurant’s address, generating an in-place view of the map. Clicking the viewwill open a full webpage that includes additional information from the mappingservice.

WebSlices

Web Slices is a new featurethat allows users to connect to a website by subscribing to content directlywithin a webpage on that website. Web Slices behave just like feeds, whereusers can subscribe to get updates and notifications of changes.

Internet Explorer 8users discover Web Slices within a webpage and add them to the Favorites bar: arow located below the Address bar and dedicated to easy access of links. Once auser has subscribed to a webpage, the browser will detect changes in the WebSlice and get notified about updates. Users can preview these updates directlyfrom the Favorites bar, and click through to the website to get moreinformation.

SuggestedSites

Suggested Sites is anew feature which helps you find new websites that are interesting and relevantto you. With your permission, Internet Explorer will suggest new websites basedon sites you have visited in the past. You can see these suggestions by openingthe Suggested Sites Web Slice…

or by visiting theSuggested Sites page from the Internet Explorer Favorites Center.

 

FavoritesBar

In Internet Explorer7, the Links bar provided users with one-click access to their favorite sites.This bar has undergone a complete renovation for Internet Explorer 8.Specifically, it has been renamed Favorites, and it will allow users to accessnot only their favorite web content, such as links, feeds and Web Slices, butalso the documents created in Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

By using the new Addto Favorites Bar command, which is conveniently located on the Favorites baritself, a user can easily add a link to the Favorites bar

 

TabGrouping

This new feature ofInternet Explorer 8 Beta 2 allows users to put related tabs—the tabs thatoriginate from the same webpage—into groups. Users can form tab groups in one ofseveral ways, such as by opening a link from within a webpage in another tab,or by right-clicking a specific tab and clicking New Tab. If, for example, auser chooses to queue up several different search results, the related tabswill not only open next to the original search result page (as opposed to theend of the tab band) but will also be put all in one group represented by asolid color. Different colors for different browsing tasks—for example, aresearch project, an online shopping spree, or a set of news articles openedfrom the same newspaper website—allow users to quickly identify the tabs.

AutomaticCrash Recovery

The Automatic CrashRecovery (ACR) feature of Internet Explorer 8 helps to prevent the loss of workin the unlikely event of browser failure or nonresponse.ACR takes advantage of the Loosely Coupled feature of Internet Explorer toprovide new crash recovery capabilities, including tab recovery,that will minimize interruptions to a browsing session.

SmartScreen Filter

A phishingsite imitates a legitimate site to steal the user’s personal or financialinformation. In Internet Explorer 7, we introduced the PhishingFilter: a feature that warns users that they are about to visit a phishing site. For Internet Explorer 8, we have built uponthe success of the Phishing Filter—which blocks overa million phishing attacks weekly—to develop the SmartScreen Filter. The latter offers the followingenhancements:

·                   Improved userinterface

·                   Faster performance

·                   New heuristics andenhanced telemetry

·                   Anti-malware support for blocking unsafe downloads

·                   Improved group policysupport

 

 

References