Microsoft Launches Internet Explorer 8

Microsoft today announced the availability of Windows Internet Explorer 8 web browser. According to a press release the new IE has been designed from ground up to provide consumers with ease of use; faster navigation and enhanced security and privacy, Internet Explorer 8 can be downloaded from www.microsoft.com/ie8, starting 9:30 PM (IST) today.

Among the new features in IE include Accelerators, Visual Search and Web Slices. The release claims that all these features cut down the number of clicks required for common tasks on the Internet. Accelerators speed up everyday online tasks like search, email, social networking etc. within the active web page; Web Slices appear in the browser’s ‘Favorites’ bar and allow users access to updated information from their most visited websites, without physically going there; and Visual Search provides image based search results from the browser’s home page.

IE8 also includes features to aid in security and privacy such as In Private Browsing that provides users the choice of going private on the internet, and ensuring that browsing history and related data are not retained locally on the PC they are using; Compatibility View that lets users fix display problems such as out-of-place menus, images and text with a button that displays those pages as they were designed to be viewed and crash recovery, which automatically restores and reloads tabs, and any information the user may have already entered on the page (such as when writing an e-mail or filling out a form) after recovering from a crash.