Internet Explorer 8

Compared with its predecessors, Internet Explorer (IE) 8 offers better Web standards support, significant privacy improvements, and new user interface features that could help users find information online quicker. The improvements place IE on par or ahead of competing browsers on nearly every front. That could enable organizations to improve browser compatibility and convenience for their Web users without changing browser vendors and could stop IE’s sliding market share, although the improvements may not be enough to get Firefox and Chrome browser users to switch back.

IE8 was released for Windows Vista and XP in Mar. 2009 and was included with Windows 7. IE9, the next version of Microsoft’s browser, is currently undergoing final testing prior to release in Mar. 2011. (For a preview, see the sidebar “IE9 on the Horizon“.)

Major Changes

Compared with IE6 and IE7, IE8 offers improvements in the following areas:

Standards support. IE8 is more compliant with new and emerging versions of Web standards and specifications, including Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) 2.1, Document Object Model (DOM) Level 2 Core, and HTML 4.01, all of which are used to design Web pages, and ECMA-Script 2.1, which is the latest version of the JavaScript standard used in many Web applications, including Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX) applications.