What’s New in Internet Explorer 8?
By Helium Hung, Joe Lee |
Microsoft
had shipped the final version of Internet
Explorer 8 (IE8) and it has made available
for installation during windows update.
The new browser has better tab handling,
a niftier search bar, a more useful address
bar, and new tools that deliver information
directly from other Web pages and services.
It has also been tweaked for security, new
anti-malware protection, and better ways
to protect your privacy.
However,
some educational institutions have pointed
out that IE8 is incompatible with Blackboard
(our eLearning application) and Sungard’s
Banner (with which most of our administrative
applications have been developed). While
most of Blackboard’s compatible issues,
but not Banner’s, can be solved by using
IE8’s ‘Compatible View” (see IE8
new features below), thus it is necessary
to wait for Sungard to solve Banner’s
incompatibilities before IE8 can be adopted
institution-wide. Coupled with the fact
that offices, support units and application
developers also need more time to prepare
for IE8 support, the Computing Services
Centre (CSC) therefore has applied a temporary
policy to prevent IE8 from downloading automatically
to computers joined to the University’s
CityUMD domain (including Staff LAN and
Student LAN PCs). If necessary, skillful
users can still visit Microsoft’s downloading
website to obtain IE8 directly. If users
have accidentally installed IE8 and encountered
difficulties in rendering web pages, they
may seek assistance from our Help Desk for
removal guidelines or activating the Compatibility
View. The CSC will periodically review the
readiness of CityU’s support of IE8 in
campus. For now, users are recommended to
work with IE7 to avoid problems mentioned
above.
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Accelerators
allow you to perform a list of functions when selecting some text
or link in a web page without leaving the web page. You can add more
or remove any of the present accelerators to make the browsing experience
better.
o
Blog with Windows live
o E-mail with Windows live
o Map with Live search
o Translate with Live search
o Search with Google, Bing, Yahoo etc.
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Web
Slices allow you to keep up with frequently updated sites
directly from the new Favorites Bar. For example, if you want to watch
eBay bidding price you can get information from the Web Slice without
having to visit the eBay website.
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If
a Web Slice is available on a page, a green Web Slice icon will appear
in the Command Bar. Click on this icon to easily subscribe and add
the Web Slice to the Favorites Bar in order to keep track of that
“slice” of the web. When its content changes, the Web Slice turns
bold. Click the Web Slice, and it will preview the updated content
or you can click on the preview to go directly to the site that hosts
the slice.
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Compatibility
View allows you to display websites that were designed for
older browsers. If you’re looking at a page and the text or images
aren’t lined up right, just use the new Compatibility View button
next to the Refresh button on the Address Bar.
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SmartScreen
filter is a set of technologies designed to help protect users from
evolving web and social engineering threats. If the SmartScreen filter
detects a malicious website, IE8 will block the entire site and notify
the user about it.
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InPrivate
Browsing in IE8 helps prevent the user’s browsing history,
temporary Internet files, form data, cookies and usernames/passwords
from being retained by the browser, leaving no evidence of the user’s
browsing or search history, when checking e-mail at an Internet cafe
or shopping for a gift on a family PC.
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Smart
address bar suggests URLs while
you are typing characters in the address
bar when you forgot some website URL you
previously opened. The address bar searches
through almost everything like bookmarks,
history and RSS feeds etc. to suggest
URLs that you have opened before.
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Enhanced
tabbed browsing in IE8 introduces
Tab Groups. When you open a new tab from
an existing page, the new one opens directly
to the right of the originating one, and
both tabs are given the same color. When
you close a tab that's part of a group,
another tab from the same group is displayed,
enabling you to remain within the context
of the current group.
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Find
on page feature matches every alphabet you are typing to
get things done faster while typing in the keyword you are finding.
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Visual
search suggestions provides you
a small thumbnail beside the suggestion
that can make your search easy and better
with the search engine you wish.
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Automatic
crash recovery will recover and
reload all the tabs opened in the same
situation when the browser crashed.
IE8
Important Change
Microsoft
recently published a set of Interoperability
Principles (see References).
Thinking about IE8’s behavior with these
principles in mind, interpreting web content
in the most standards compliant way possible
is the best thing to do. Now, IE8 will show
pages requesting “Standards” mode in
IE8’s Standards mode.
Some
Web sites may not be displayed correctly
or work correctly in IE8. This problem does
not occur in earlier versions of Internet
Explorer, and the affected Web sites continue
to be displayed correctly and to work correctly
in Internet Explorer 7.
For
example, you may experience any of the following
symptoms in IE8:
-
Menus,
images, or text are in the wrong positions
on some Web sites.
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Some Web site features do not work.
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You receive script error messages on some
Web sites.
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Internet Explorer stops working or crashes
on some Web sites.
IE8
has a Compatibility View that's designed
to essentially trick a site into believing
that you're running IE7. Developers who
want IE8 to show their pages using “IE7
Standards mode” will need to request
that explicitly. There are two mechanisms
for using the compatibility mode switch.
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Option
1: Place the following HTML tag into the
top of the HEAD element of your Web page:
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible"
content="IE=EmulateIE7"/>
NOTE: For the META compatibility mode
switch to take effect, it must come before
all other tags in the HEAD element except
TITLE and other META tags.
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Option
2: If you control your Web server, you
can opt in an entire directory or folder
to a layout mode without having to modify
every page. Instead, you may use the HTTP
header equivalent of the META element
opt-in by configuring your server to send
the following header:
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible"
content="IE=EmulateIE7"/>
How
to test if your web site is IE8 ready?
Test
your website to make sure it is IE8 ready:
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Open
your website in IE8. If you do not have
IE8, you may obtain it from the Microsoft’s
website.
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Enable the Compatibility View if pages
look different from how they did in IE7
or do not work the same way.
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If Compatibility View makes your pages
render as in IE7, then modify your site
to use Compatibility View by default to
get your site working immediately.
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If your site does not render or function
properly in Compatibility View, contact
your web developer to identify the issue.
How
to prepare your web site for IE8 ready?
The MUST.
For
web developers, you MUST follow the developer
checklist and prepare your web-site ready
for IE8. Microsoft has provided tools to
help test and modify applications to run
on IE8:
-
SuperPreview
for Internet Explorer is a visual tool that makes it easier to migrate
your websites from IE6 to IE7 or 8.
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