Internet Explorer 8: More secure, private, and reliable

Automatic Crash Recovery

Tab isolation

If a website or add-on causes a tab to crash in Internet Explorer 8, only that tab is affected. The browser itself remains stable and other tabs remain unaffected, thereby minimizing any disruption to your browsing experience.

Crash recovery

If one or more of your tabs do crash, your tabs are automatically reloaded and you are returned to whatever page you were on before the crash.

Browse privately

InPrivate Browsing

Sometimes you don’t want to leave any trace of specific web browsing activity, such as when checking e-mail at an Internet café or shopping for a gift on a family PC. InPrivate Browsing in Internet Explorer 8 helps prevent your browsing history, temporary Internet files, form data, cookies, and usernames and passwords from being retained by the browser, leaving no evidence of your browsing or search history.

You can start InPrivate Browsing by opening a new tab and selecting Start InPrivate Browsing or selecting it from the Safety button on the top right corner of the browser window. Once you complete this action, Internet Explorer 8 will launch a new browser session that won’t record any information, including searches or webpage visits. To end your InPrivate Browsing session, simply close the browser window.

InPrivate Blocking

Today websites increasingly pull content in from multiple sources, providing tremendous value to consumer and sites alike. Users are often not aware that some content, images, ads and analytics are being provided from third party websites or that these websites have the ability to potentially track their behavior across multiple websites. InPrivate Blocking provides users an added level of control and choice about the information that third party websites can potentially use to track browsing activity.

To use this feature, open a new tab and select InPrivate Browsing, or select “InPrivate Browsing” from the Safety menu. To end your InPrivate Browsing session, simply close the browser window.

Note: Because InPrivate Blocking is designed to watch for and block only third-party content that appears with a high frequency across sites you visit, no content is blocked until such levels are detected, nor is any such content blocked which is served directly by the site you are visiting. Depending on your web browsing activity and sites visited, the amount of time it can take before such content is automatically blocked can vary widely. However, at any time, you can customize which third-party content is blocked or allowed though subscribing to InPrivate allow and block feeds.

Enhanced delete browsing history

Now when deleting browsing history, you can choose to preserve cookies and temporary Internet files for sites in your Favorites folder. This helps to protect your information and privacy while preserving your data on your trusted favorite sites. Your preferences and cookies are preserved, helping you to get to your trusted sites faster with greater confidence.

Stay safer online

As the web continues to increase in complexity, so do the number of ways that hackers and malicious websites can attempt to send viruses, damage computers, obtain personal information, and monitor online behavior.

Did You Know?

Malware is software that designed to damage your computer, such as a computer virus. It may download without your knowledge or permission.

Phishing allows criminals to obtain your personal information (like your credit card number) by pretending to be a legitimate organization, such as your bank.

Internet Explorer helps protect against these attacks and more. Delivering a trustworthy browser means providing a highly secure and reliable browser—one that respects user choice and helps keep users in control of their PC and their information.

SmartScreen Filter

Internet Explorer 8’s new SmartScreen Filter builds upon our leadership in the detection of phishing sites and now helps protect you against inadvertent installation of malware—or malicious software—which can compromise your data, privacy, and identity while also damaging your computer and valuable data. Today Internet Explorer is detecting over 1 million attempts to visit known phishing sites weekly.

With our enhancements in Internet Explorer 8 and added telemetry and technologies, users are now afforded a higher level of protection from these emerging threats.

While we recommend all users enable SmartScreen, you can enable or disable it at any time. You can also help improve the web for everyone by reporting suspected malicious sites through this tool.

If the SmartScreen Filter is active and you attempt to visit a website that isn’t considered safe, the below screen will appear prompting you to take alternative actions.

When active, the SmartScreen Filter will also notify you when you attempt to download software that is potentially unsafe.

Cross Site Scripting (XSS) Filter

Cross Site Scripting (XSS) attacks have emerged as a leading exploit against web servers and web applications. Internet Explorer 8 introduces the capability to detect malicious code running on compromised websites, helping to protect you from these exploits which can lead to information disclosure, cookie stealing, account/identity theft, and more.

Domain Highlighting

Domain Highlighting lets you more easily interpret web addresses (URLs) to help you avoid deceptive and phishing sites that attempt to trick you with misleading addresses. It does this by highlighting the domain name in the address bar in black, with the remainder of the URL string in gray, making for easier identification of the sites true identity.

Data Execution Detection (DEP)

Data Execution Prevention (DEP), on by default in Internet Explorer 8 in Windows Vista Service Pack 1, is a security feature that can help prevent damage to your computer from viruses and other security threats by preventing certain types of code from writing to executable memory space.

Internet Explorer 8: More Faster and Easier

Microsoft have done to put the web at your service and make Internet Explorer 8 the best browser for everyday browsing.

Experience Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2, our new, improved and free web browser.

Download Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2

The main features of Internet Explorer 8 are as given below;

Accelerators

Tired of cutting and pasting information from one website to another for everyday tasks? Now there’s a better way. Accelerators give you ready access to the online services you use everyday—from any page you visit. Now you can simply select some text and then click on the blue Accelerators icon. For example, you may be interested in the location of a business featured on a webpage. In the past, you would need to copy the address from the webpage, navigate to another the webpage for a mapping service, and paste in the address. With the “Map with Live Maps” Accelerator in Internet Explorer 8, you can get an in-place view of a map displayed directly on the page.

Tired of cutting and pasting information from one website to another for everyday tasks? Now there’s a better way. Accelerators give you ready access to the online services you use everyday—from any page you visit. Now you can simply select some text and then click on the blue Accelerators icon. For example, you may be interested in the location of a business featured on a webpage. In the past, you would need to copy the address from the webpage, navigate to another the webpage for a mapping service, and paste in the address. With the “Map with Live Maps” Accelerator in Internet Explorer 8, you can get an in-place view of a map displayed directly on the page.

Enhanced navigation

Compatibility View

Internet Explorer 8 is a beta release and some websites may not yet be ready for Internet Explorer 8. Click the Compatibility View toolbar button to display the website as viewed in Internet Explorer 7, which will correct display problems like misaligned text, images, or text boxes. This option is on a per site basis and all other sites will continue to display with Internet Explorer 8 functionality. To go back to browsing with Internet Explorer 8 functionality on that site, simply click the Compatibility View button again.

Enhanced Tabbed Browsing

It can be difficult to keep track of many tabs at once. Internet Explorer 8 introduces Tab Groups, which make tabbed browsing easier. When one tab is opened from another, the new tab is placed next to the originating tab and color coded, so that you can quickly discern which tabs have related content. If 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 task rather than suddenly looking at an unrelated site.

Better Find On Page

Internet Explorer 8 includes a completely redesigned Find On Page toolbar, which is activated by pressing Ctrl-F or choosing Find On Page from the Edit menu or Search box drop-down. Press the Alt key if you do not see the Edit menu option.

Smarter Address Bar

The Address Bar in Internet Explorer 8 makes navigation easier than ever, becoming a highly useful search tool that enables you to just type a few characters and then go directly to the desired site. It searches across your History, Favorites, and RSS Feeds, displaying matches from the website title or any part of the URL. As you type, matched characters are highlighted in blue so you can identify them at a glance. In addition, you can delete any address in the drop-down box by clicking on the red X. This is especially useful for getting rid of misspelled URLs.

Redesigned New Tab page

The New Tab page loads quickly and provided links make it easier to get started on your next browsing activity:

Use an Accelerator:

Now you can use an Accelerator using any text you have copied to the clipboard.

Start InPrivate Browsing:

Two things happen when you start inPrivate Browsing: your browsing activities, history and cookies are not retained, and third party web content providers may be blocked from tracking your online activities without your consent.

Reopen closed tabs:

Reopen a tab that you’ve closed in your current browsing session, which can be helpful when a tab is accidentally or prematurely closed.

Reopen your last browsing session:

Reopen all tabs that were open when Internet Explorer 8 was last closed, which can be useful if you accidentally close the browser.

Improved Zoom

Adaptive Page Zoom improves upon traditional zoom-in/zoom-out functionality in the browser by intelligently relaying out the page content and eliminating the need to scroll left and right. This will improve your ability to magnify pages with small fonts and be able to read more on the web.

A better back button

When using rich applications such as mapping on the Internet, you may be taken to the beginning of the application instead of the previous page when you hit the back button. Now when you hit the back button, more pages will behave the way you expect.

Increased performance

Internet Explorer 8 includes many performance improvements that contribute to a faster, more responsive web browsing experience in the areas that matter most. Internet Explorer 8 starts quickly, loads pages fast and instantly gets you started on what you want to do next with a powerful new tab page. In addition, the script engine in Internet Explorer 8 is significantly faster than in previous versions, minimizing the load time for webpages based on JavaScript or Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX).

Improved favorites and history management

Enhanced Favorites Bar

Now there’s a better place to keep track of your top favorites. You can save Favorites, RSS Feeds, and Web Slices to the Links Bar that appears across the top of the browser, quickly navigating to the sites and content that you care about most.

One Click Favorites

Press the One Click Favorites button and immediately add the page you’re browsing to the Links Bar, saving you extra clicks.

RSS feeds on Links Bar

The links bar has been updated so you can drag an RSS feed to your links bar, making it easier to see when important feeds are updated.

History sorting

The new Browsing History view allows you to sort your history by Site Name, Most Visited Sites, Order Visited Today, and Date, making it easier to organize and locate sites in your history.

History searching

In Internet Explorer 8, you can search for pages in history by typing keywords, making it easier to locate sites when browsing your history.

Instant search

Search suggestions

Now you can type a search term and see real-time, relevant search suggestions from your chosen search provider and your browsing history. Click on a suggestion at any time to immediately execute the search without having to type the entire word or phrase.

Visual search

Internet Explorer 8 is partnering with top search providers like Live Search, Wikipedia, Yahoo!, Amazon, and more to deliver direct results and “visual search” images that provide you with immediate answers. For example, typing “Seattle weather” with Live Search will instantly show you a preview of the current weather directly in the Search Box drop-down. Look for more visual search results with your preferred search providers.

More improvements

Because people often use search to get back to sites that they’ve visited before, Internet Explorer 8 includes matches from your History in the bottom part of the Search Box drop-down.

An integrated “Find On Page” button also has been added to the instant search box, enabling you to search for text on the current webpage. Also, you can change the width of the Instant Search Box by dragging its left edge, making it easier to see long search strings as they are typed.

Web Slices

How many times a day do you check for updates to e-mail, weather reports, sports scores, stock quotes, auction items email and so on? Until now this was a manual process, where you had to go to those sites to check for changes or new information.

Using Web Slices, you can keep up with frequently updated sites directly from the Favorites Bar. If a Web Slice is available on a page, a green Web Slices icon will appear in the upper-right hand corner of the browser. You can then easily subscribe and add them to the Favorites Bar or delete Web Slices that are no longer desired.

Community-developed Web Slices and Accelerators can be found in the Internet Explorer Gallery.

Add a Web Slice to your Favorites Bar

Hover your mouse over an item on a webpage.

If that item incorporates Web Slice functionality, the Web Slice icon will appear. Click on the icon to add this “slice” of the web to your Favorites Bar. Now you can keep up to date with this information no matter where you are on the web.

To delete, right-click on your Web Slice and click Delete.

Need help with Web Slices? Check out this informative “how-to” video.

How to Remove GoogleUpdate.exe

Google Chrome, Google Lively, Google Earth, and an untold number of other Google applications may install an update mechanism named googleupdate.exe, googleupdater.exe, or something similar. The googleupdate may continually attempt to access the Internet without requesting permission and without providing an option to disable it. This behavior may persist even after the parent application has been removed. While there’s no single way to rid the system of googleupdate, the following tips provide the common install locations.

Here’s How:

1. Instead of removal, a permission-based firewall such as ZoneAlarm can be used to temporarily block Googleupdate. If desired, the steps below can be used to completely remove Googleupdate from the system. Before attempting any manual removal, it’s a good idea to backup your system and make a separate backup of the system registry. Also note that removing Googleupdate will impact the parent applications ability to download updates.

 

2. To locate instances of googleupdate, search all local fixed drives for googleupd or googleupd* (depending on the search utility, the * wildcard may be required. Note that it is not required for the Windows search feature in Windows Explorer).
3. Make copies of any files found, noting their original location. Depending on the OS, some or all of the following may be found:
   • Google Update (Task Scheduler Object)
   • Googleupdate.exe (Application) (two or more locations)
   • GoogleUpdateHelper.msi (Windows Installer Package)

 

4. You should be able to delete the Google Update Task Scheduler Object and the GoogleUpdateHelper.msi with no problem. However, to delete googleupdate.exe, you’ll first need to launch Task Manager, locate the running Google Update process, and stop it. After doing that, you should be able to delete Googleupdate.exe. In other cases, GoogleUpdate may be installed as a service, in which case you will need to first stop the service before attempting to delete the file.

 

5. Next, open the Registry Editor and browse to the following subkey:
   HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\

 

6. In the right pane, locate the value named “Google Update“, right-click the name and select Delete. Click Yes to confirm the deletion. When finished, close the Registry Editor.

 

7. After following the above steps, reboot the system.

Google Chrome Not Prefetching Pages

Google Chrome doesn’t actually prefetch webpages. Instead, it simply resolves the IP address to the domain name in advance. Should the page then be requested, the path to that page is already known so the page appears to load faster – even seconds faster, according to Google Chromium Developer Jim Roskind who explained the distinction in his comment to the original post. The good news – no need to disable DNS prefetching in Google Chrome. And faster surfing.

Google’s Chrome : Need To Polish

Less than a day out, and already frustrated users are posting about the Googleupdate “virus” which continually tries to gain Internet access even if Chrome itself isn’t active. (And allegedly even after Chrome has been uninstalled). For removal tips, see “How to Remove GoogleUpdate.exe“.

Other complaints about Google Chrome include a surprising inability to view YouTube movies (surprising because Google owns YouTube). The same videos run fine in Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Opera, but when attempted via Google Chrome, it either displays the message “”We’re sorry, this video is no longer available” or it tells you the Adobe Flash Movie Plugin is not installed.
Equally perplexing, the Terms of Service for Chrome are a bit confusing when it comes to intellectual property rights. Initially it seems reassuring with this disclaimer:

“Other than the limited license set forth in Section 11, Google acknowledges and agrees that it obtains no right, title or interest from you (or your licensors) under these Terms in or to any Content that you submit, post, transmit or display on, or through, the Services, including any intellectual property rights which subsist in that Content (whether those rights happen to be registered or not, and wherever in the world those rights may exist).”

But the referenced Section 11 states:

“By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services.”
According to Google Chromium Developer Jim Roskind, Google Chrome isn’t pre-fetching pages, but rather simply pre-resolving the IP address for the anticipated page request. For details, see: Google Chrome Not Prefetching Pages. (Note that this correction doesn’t apply to Firefox, which prefetches the first page of Google search results. To disable Firefox prefetch, see: How to Disable Google Pre-Fetching in Firefox).

Google Chrome : 10 Questions will Decide the way

After the launch of Google Chrome the scenario has been changed . Now it all leaves me with about a gazillion questions. Here, for starters, are ten of them:

1. Will Google stop promoting Firefox? It’s been known to use the Google homepage to tell IE users they should be running Firefox, and it distributes a version of Firefox with the Google Toolbar built in. You gotta think that it’ll redeploy some or all of its Firefox-boosting energies to drumming up interest in Chrome.

2. Will Mozilla decide Google is an enemy, not a friend? Probably not–as Kara notes, the companies recently extended the relationship that makes puts Google into Firefox as its default search engine until 2011. That deal makes Mozilla millions of dollars a year, which is presumably enough to make Google at worst a frenemy of Mozilla. It’s hard–although not impossible–to imagine Mozilla being so ticked off by Google launching a browser that it takes its search business to someone else, such as Yahoo.

3. Did Google tell Mozilla it was working on a browser? Out of courtesy, or to ensure that the Firefox deal, which makes millions for Google as well as for Mozilla, emerged unscathed? Or did Mozilla renew the partnership not knowing that Google was planning to become a competitor? In the great scheme of things, it’s no surprise that Google might want to build a browser, but conventional wisdom would likely have involved it being based on Mozilla, not Webkit.

4. Just how hard will Google push Chrome on the Google homepage? Like no other company on earth, Google has an opportunity to get hundreds of millions of people using its browser in a relatively short amount of time. You gotta think that it’ll use the Google homepage to drum up interest. But will it check to see if you’re using IE, Firefox, or another browser and attempt to convince you to switch?

5. Will Google try to convert Google Toolbar users into Chrome users? Toolbar is presumably Google’s most widely-used piece of software at the moment, and it seems inevitable that Google will want to let users know about Chrome. But will it, say, try to bundle Chrome into the Toolbar download from now on? Apple discovered that bundling is dangerous when it caught flack for distributing Safari for Windows via the iTunes updater.

6. How deeply will Chrome be integrated with other Google projects? It’ll include Gears. Will it tie into Google Maps and Google Print and Google Desktop and the 18,432,922 other Google projects in ways that a non-Google browser wouldn’t?

7. Or to put that last question another way, will Google services work better in Chrome than other browsers? A conspiracy theorist could easily come up with scenarios in which Google starts to tie together its offerings in ways that resemble the tactics that Microsoft used in the 1990s to drive IE adoption and discourage use of Netscape. Google is too smart and too well intentioned to go down that route in the same way, I’m sure. But even a company with good intentions might do things that reasonable people (or even the courts think are anti-competitive.

8. Just how popular could Chrome get? Can it get to ten percent marketshare? Twenty? Forty? Ninety? Firefox has shown that it’s possible for a good new browser to gain plenty of traction, and Chrome will have advantages that even Firefox doesn’t have in terms of distribution.

9. Who will it steal users from? Kara says that Chrome is at least a part a response to Google concerns that IE 8 may be bad for Google’s search-and-advertising business. So the company would presumably be pleased if IE users jump ship for Chrome. But if you can divide the world into folks who will switch to a better browser and those who won’t, a high percentage of the former group has likely already moved to Firefox. You can imagine a scenario in which the arrival of Chrome results in Firefox’s market share gains stalling. Or even in Firefox use eroding.

10. Will Chrome stay on the desktop? Google sees its future as being highly mobile, as witness its work on Android and all the work it’s put into making services like Gmail and Google Maps work well on iPhone, Windows Mobile, BlackBerry, and other mobile platforms. Will we see Chrome on phones?

I could go on–but for now, I’ll stop my pondering. Your speculation and additional questions would be welcome. And needless to say, I can’t wait to try Chrome, assuming that it’s real and imminent…

Google Chrome is now Much Safe

Okay, maybe safe is the wrong word, but at least if you use it to write a blog or post content, you are no longer giving all rights to that content over to Google in perpetuity.

They have changed their terms of service and it’s retroactive to anyone who’s already downloaded the software. Now it says:

11. Content license from you

• 11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services.

Short, and to the point.