Microsoft announced that Internet Explorer 8 will launch today at noon. This means that site managers like myself will be fielding a ton of "this doesn't work on your site in IE8" emails in the days and weeks to come. I've spent a lot of time using the beta to view our site and so far, there's nothing about post-gazette.com that will be a big problem for IE 8 users, knock wood.
New features in Internet Explorer 8 include:
- Tab groups make the tabbed browsing experience easier. When you open a window in a new tab from a link in a previous tab, it is opened next to the parent tab and color coded.
- The "Find on page" search mechanism has been redesigned. I tried it in the beta and didn't really experience any vast improvement in functionality.
- The address bar is smarter. If you have trouble remembering a web address you've visited recently, the bar will suggest sites based on the letters you start to type into the box.
- Internet Explorer discards the cookies and history of the pages you're visiting when in "InPrivate" browsing mode.
- You can reopen your last browsing session (tabs included) if you accidentally close the browser.
- The "Back" button now works the way you expect. Currently, the button may appear to trap you on a page if the redirect you followed was coded a particular way. IE 8 accounts for this now.
- "Web Slices" enable you to keep pertinent info from your favorite sites handy without visiting those sites directly.
Posted
Mar 19 2009, 08:19 AM
by
Jody Farr