Internet Explorer 8

Michael analyzed and wrote about Microsoft's operating systems, including the Windows client OS, as well as compliance and governance. Michael... more

Compared with its predecessors, Internet Explorer (IE) 8 offers better standards support, significant privacy improvements, and new user interface features that could help users find information online more quickly. 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 users to switch back.

IE8 will ship with Windows 7, and was released for Windows Vista and XP in Mar. 2009. Details are still being negotiated, but Microsoft has scrapped an earlier plan to exclude IE from Windows 7 in some European countries.

Major Changes

Compared with IE7, the new browser 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 Level 2 Core, and HTML 4.01, all of which are used to design Web pages, and ECMAScript 2.1, which is the latest version of the JavaScript standard used in many Web applications, including Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX) applications.

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