ie8_logoThere are four big areas we think about building in a browser for a billion customers around the world. And these four areas have been put into Internet Explorer 8. For ISVs, there are compelling reasons for your customers to use IE8 and for you to add support for Web slices, accelerators.

You should know too that Internet Explorer 8 will be made available via using Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) starting August 25. For more information, see IT Professionals: Prepare for Internet Explorer 8 availability via Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) in August 2009.

Internet Explorer 8 takes a big step forward in browser innovation focused on the way people use the web today. Faster, easier, safer and more reliable than ever before, Internet Explorer 8 is the best version of Internet Explorer we’ve released to date. For example, through Accelerators and Web Slices we are optimizing the browser experience by removing repetitive, time consuming actions, and Internet Explorer 8 offers protections against malware that are far superior to the protections in other browsers.

So what is all the buzz about?

Security and Reliability Built-In

  • Educating and putting people in control to protect people from the major threats of today – top in malware (NSS labs) and leader in phishing, first to integrate the two into one, easy to understand feature without additional add-ons or customizations.
  • Built-in protection from emerging threats – first to have cross site scripting (XSS) protection that doesn’t interfere with the way the page renders (like No Script), protection from ClickJacking.
  • Tab Recovery – first to have loosely-coupled tabs built-in.

XSS protection helps protect users against Cross-Site Scripting Type-1 reflection attacks, one of the most common attacks against websites. For more details on how this security protection works, see IE8 Security Part IV: The XSS Filter.

Along with XDomainRequest, cross-document messaging (XDM) facilitate a more secure method for creating sites that share content known as “mashups”. XDM provides an easier method for domains to communicate with each other given mutual consent, providing a simpler, better-performing and more secure mechanism

Real World Performance and Ease of Use

We did the research to understand how people use the Web and made those things faster.

  • Web Slices and Accelerators – let you do the stuff you usually do on the web faster – either keeping up to date on things without having to actually go to the webpage or finding, searching, etc all without having to open new window, copy/paste, etc. A video shows off how Accelerators in Internet Explorer 8 make your browsing experience quicker and easier:
  • Visual Search – helps you find what you are looking for faster; less steps to get you to what you need; allows you to switch between search engines mid-search and change search engines faster
  • New tab page – we know people close tabs and then go back to the tab they just closed.  Put that right into the new tab page.

Performance is extremely important to us. Internet Explorer 8 is the fastest version of Internet Explorer we have ever created. Not only is Internet Explorer 8 one of the fastest browsers for surfing from site to site it is one of the fastest browsers for doing everyday web tasks such as mapping addresses, emailing links to friends, monitoring eBay auctions, etc.

Enterprise Readiness

Enterprise customers demand all of the above, but more than that, they need to be able to manage and deploy easily.  With over 1300 Group Policy settings, we offer more flexibility for how enterprises manage their browser than any other browser out there.

In terms of support, Microsoft supports IE for the life of the operating system.

Support for What Developers Need Now

We have the best support for the most widely used standard – CSS 2.1. 

We are committed to providing a browser that accurately supports web standards. In Internet Explorer 8, we shipped several features from HTML5 and a few from CSS 2.1. Our primary concern was making sure that we got CSS 2.1 (a specification that has reached final candidate stage) done right before we moved on to specifications that are still in development and may change.

Best developer tools built-in.

Resources

For more information about IE-8 for developers, see Internet Explorer HTML, CSS, Compatibility, and More on MSDN.