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Issue
61 - September 2009
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What’s
New in Internet Explorer 8?
By
Helium Hung, Joe Lee
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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:
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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:
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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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