Eight Reasons to Fall in Love with Internet Explorer 8

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As announced at the MIX09 conference today, we just shipped the final version of Internet Explorer 8. If you haven’t yet given it a try, here are eight reasons that might persuade you to check it out:

  1. You want a web that moves as fast as you do: Highlight an address, click the blue "Accelerator" button (clip_image001), and see all the things you can do instantly – like mapping, searching, and translating. Check out accelerators from Digg, Facebook, eBay, Yahoo, and others.
  2. You want to know if it's raining outside: Visit live.com, search for “Seattle Weather” (or any major city), hover over the search result, and click the green "Web Slice" button (clip_image002) to add a weather Web Slice to your Favorites Bar. As of this morning there are over 1,200 Web Slices, Accelerators, and add-ons available worldwide in the IE8 add-on gallery.
  3. You like everyone to get along:   And that includes wanting the web sites you visit to work well with your browser. IE8 is the only browser to include multiple rendering engines to address backwards compatibility— hit a site that doesn't seem right, hit the Compatibility View button, and you're on your way.
  4. You're a visual learner: See pictures of what you’re looking for as you type in the Instant Search box – rich search results in action! Don’t forget to install some extra search providers, such as those from NY Times, Amazon, Wikipedia, OneRiot and ESPN.
  5. You want to find it again, fast: To quickly find sites you’ve visited before, simply use the new Smart Address Bar which searches your history, favorites, and feeds.
  6. You like your privacy: Enjoy more control over your personal information and privacy on the Web with InPrivate. Keep your work and personal lives separate and protect yourself from unwanted cookies.
  7. You want an edge against the bad guys (aka security): Internet Explorer 8 offers unparalleled protection against malware – it's ten times safer than Internet Explorer 7, four times safer than Chrome, nearly three times safer than Safari, and twice as safe as Firefox according to an independent study.
  8. You hate interruptions: If one tab crashes, you can re-launch it without affecting your browsing experience – your other tabs keep right on working.

IE8 isn’t just a good browser, it’s much faster than the Internet Explorer of old. Check out this video to see performance tests of real-world sites with leading browsers. Great web performance is about more than the speed of the scripting engine – in the real-world, it’s an end-to-end test of all the browser components.

As far as I’m concerned, the only legitimate excuse for not upgrading to Internet Explorer 8 is if you’re currently already living on the leading edge with Windows 7 Beta. A pre-release version of Internet Explorer 8 is already built into the beta of Windows 7. When we ship the release candidate of Windows 7 later this year, we’ll include the final IE8 release.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    March 19, 2009
    PingBack from http://blog.a-foton.ru/index.php/2009/03/19/eight-reasons-to-fall-in-love-with-internet-explorer-8/

  • Anonymous
    March 19, 2009
    Tried IE8 a few times. Went back to FireFox. When I click on a link, I want it to go to the site NOW! That's what Firefox does; that's what IE8 doesn't. IE8 is like launching/loading a Tank. Launching Firefox is effortless like throwing a Frisbee. Fast & Light. SSDD. Vista is simply unbearable. Silverlight - text is impossible to read and strains the eyes. IE8 is slow. LiveMesh SDK - you can add your own data fields BUT you CANNOT query them! But the enthusiasm out of MS is off the charts! I tried, IE8, I tried. I really want to like it, but I'm back using FireFox.

  • Anonymous
    March 19, 2009
    I know IE8 is pretty secure, but what's this independent study? Can you post a link to this?

  • Anonymous
    March 19, 2009
    hey, nice information, I think I'll try IE8 to see how it works for me. You have some very up-to-the-minute information, and some cool analysis. Thanks.

  • Anonymous
    March 20, 2009
    Tim, I actually tried installing IE8 yesterday evening and all worked fine until I found out that it somehow disabled my MediaSharing in Vista (32bit sp1). I went through a lotta forum posts all describing howto jump start this service but nothing could actually solve this issue. Uninstalling IE8 (reverting to IE7) made the service start again... Riddle me this. Regards, Nathan

  • Anonymous
    March 21, 2009
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    March 23, 2009
    Most people probably already know that Microsoft's MIX09 event took place last week. Because I am

  • Anonymous
    March 26, 2009
    Following the launch of IE8 at MIX09 eBay has their Accelerator, Visual Search and Web Slice available