Internet Explorer 8.0 XP

- Fast, safe, and easy. Internet Explorer 8 takes the web experience beyond the page for quicker and more reliable for browsing with peace of mind.
- Get things done without navigating to other websites.
- Browse and get things done quicker than ever.
- Stay more secure and browse with confidence.
- Now you can get more tasks done more quickly on the web. Accelerators provide instant access to information like maps, web searches, translations, email, blogging, and more. - Simply highlight a word or phrase on a page and discover a faster way to get the information you need.
- Web Slices put you in control of the information you care about most. Now you can subscribe to specific content within a page and monitor things like auction items, sports scores, entertainment columns, weather reports, and more. Add a Web Slice to your Favorites bar and the information you care about will automatically be delivered to you.

Windows Internet Explorer 8 improves browser interoperability and advances the Web by delivering a better implementation of Web standards. Although this is a move in the right direction, you might encounter compatibility issues with some sites that still rely on the behavior of earlier versions of Internet Explorer. Common symptoms of site compatibility problems are out-of-place menus, images, or text.

Compatibility View resolves most site compatibility issues and makes Web sites that are designed for older browsers look better.

To enable Compatibility View for specific Web sites that are not displayed correctly or that are not working, follow these steps:

1. In Internet Explorer RC1, open the Web site that is not displayed correctly or that does not work correctly.
2. Click the Compatibility View icon. This icon is located to the right side of the address bar. Or, click Compatibility View on the Tools menu.

You can see a list of major sites that are best viewed in Compatibility View n the Compatibility View settings dialog box. When you visit a Web site that is on the list, Internet Explorer 8 automatically displays the site in Compatibility View.

If you use Reset Internet Explorer Settings (RIES), and you have the Delete personal settings check box selected, the Compatibility View list feature may stop working. To resolve this issue, follow these steps:

1. In Internet Explorer, click Tools, and then click Internet Options.
2. Click the Advanced tab, and then click Reset.
3. Click to clear the Delete personal settings check box.
4. Click Reset.
5. Close and then reopen Internet Explorer.

A full change log is available from http://support.microsoft.com/kb/949787

While Beta 1 was for developers, we think that anyone who browses or works on the web will enjoy IE8 Beta 2. Before the team blogs about our Beta 2 in detail, here’s an overview of what you’ll find in IE8.

We focused our work around three themes: everyday browsing (the things that real people do all the time), safety (the term most people use for what we’ve called ‘trustworthy’ in previous posts), and the platform (the focus of Beta 1, how developers around the world will build the next billion web pages and the next waves of great services).
Everyday Browsing

We looked very hard at how people really browse the web. We looked at a lot of data about how people browse and tried a lot of different designs in front of many kinds of people, not just technologists. As tempting as it is to list here all the changes both big and small in IE8, we’ll take a more holistic approach. That’s how we built the product and how we’d like to talk about it.

From our customer research, we saw that the bulk of user activity outside of web pages involved tabs and “navigation” – the act of getting to the site the user wants to get to. We also knew that adding features has an impact only if they’re “in the flow” of how people actually use the product. Another menu item might matter in a checklist on a blog somewhere, but won’t matter to real people browsing. That’s why IE8’s New Tab experience is so remarkable: it’s obvious – after you see it:

The rest of our talks and demos focused on seven other areas that appeal to developers:

1. Our goal is to deliver complete, full CSS 2.1 support in the final IE8 product. IE8 Beta 1 for developers delivers better interoperability with other major browsers, addressing major pain points (e.g. floats and margins) from previous IE releases. We're not finished ' there's much more to come in Beta 2.

2. We've contributed over 700 test cases to the W3C CSS working group because we think a comprehensive certification test suite for CSS is important for true interoperability and we support the W3C's effort to deliver such a suite. The CSS spec is good, but contains many ambiguities, and a test suite will help resolve them and benefit web developers and designers. We're making these available under the BSD License, which is the license that the W3C CSS working group has proposed using for the rest of its test cases. Of course, we will contribute more tests en route to a full test suite, and welcome your feedback on the tests using the W3C's CSS test suite mailing list.

3. We've delivered better scripting performance because we heard from developers that they needed it given how heavily the latest rich web experiences rely on script.

4. We've started delivering support for HTML5 because we understand that developers want to start delivering richer web experiences, with great interoperability, as soon as possible.

5. We've delivered the first installment of great, built-in developer tools. We understand that script, CSS, and layout debugging are crucial today. Again, we're not finished here ' there's more to come.

6. We've delivered a better way for web services to integrate into the user's workflow with 'Activities.' For example, a user can select text on a web page and map it, blog it, look for it, or just act on it without having to copy it, open a new tab, navigate to another site, and paste. We made the OpenService Format specification available under the Microsoft Open Specification Promise and the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license.

7. We've delivered a better way for web services to enable their users to keep an eye on interesting parts of a webpage within the browser with 'WebSlices.' Developers can make parts of their pages 'subscribable' with just a little mark-up, and users can easily subscribe and keep an eye on information (like their social network, an auction, or a sports score) within the browser, even when users are not at the developer's site. We've made the WebSlice Format specification available under the Microsoft Open Specification Promise and is dedicating copyright in the specification to the public domain using the Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication.

* WGA Removed
* The menu bar is now visible by default
* The Internet Explorer 7 online tour has updated how-to's. Also, the "first-run" experience includes a new overview
* We've included a new MSI installer that simplifies deployment for IT administrators in enterprises

IE7 is the long awaited major update to Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

This new version adds tabbed browsing, greater support for new HTML standards and a restyled interface.

This build is designed for XP only and won't install on 64 bit or Windows 2003 systems.

Main features are:
- Built-in RSS Feeds
- Microsoft Phishing Filter
- Vista Protected Mode
- Microsoft ActiveX Opt-In
- Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Updates
- Portable Network Graphics (PNG) support
- XML HTTP Native support
- Internationalized Domain Name (IDN) support
- Tabbed Browsing
- HTML 4.0.1 Support

This version of IE contains WGA built in.