On the second day at Mix 2010 Microsoft unveiled the Internet Explorer 9 Platform Preview including expanded support for HTML5, hardware-accelerated graphics and text, and a new JavaScript engine. Together these allow developers to use the same markup and deliver graphically and functionally rich Web applications that take advantage of modern PC hardware through a modern operating system.

With IE9 platform preview Microsoft detailed its support for a number of HTML5 specifications, including CSS3, Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), XHTML parsing, and the video and audio tags using industry-standard (H.264/MPEG4 and MP3/AAC) codecs, among others. In addition, Microsoft demonstrated a new JavaScript engine that uses the multiple cores of today’s modern chips to effectively manage computing resources and improve Web performance. By combining increased interoperability with a new JavaScript engine and Direct 2D technology, Internet Explorer 9 enables Web developers to provide users with richer experiences that render more quickly and consistently.

Drew Henry, general manager of GeForce and ION GPU business unit at NVIDIA Corp, Said

Internet Explorer 9 enabling GPU-accelerated HTML5 is a milestone for visual computing. By harnessing the power of NVIDIA GPUs, Internet Explorer 9 removes the glass ceiling for Web developers, enabling them to build graphically rich, high-performing Web applications.

Developers can download the Internet Explorer 9 Platform Preview at http://www.IETestDrive.com.

Microsoft launched Internet Explorer less than a year ago and according to Net Application ,Internet Explorer is the most popular browser on Windows with 27.9% usage share and has 25.6% of market share across all OS’s on a worldwide-weighted usage share basis.

Although Internet Explorer 8 is most widely used browser but in January The Google Chrome browser gained .6% of global usage share in January.  Both Firefox and Internet Explorer dropped share during the last month.

As of today, Internet Explorer 8 has done over 350 million malware blocks. Internet Explorer 8’s SmartScreen Filter blocks malware over 2 million times a day. Internet Explorer 7 and 8 have blocked a total of over 125 million phishing sites. Recently Google recommending that people update their browsers and move off older versions, such as the nearly decade-old Internet Explorer 6 and Microsoft also support Google’s recommendation to move off Internet Explorer 6. Modern browsers such as Internet Explorer 8 bring benefits for customers and developers alike.

Internet Explorer 8 is the version of browser from Microsoft. Microsoft and other vendors now offering an optimized versions of Internet Explorer 8 for specific websites. Recently Microsoft has released an optimized version of IE8 for Xbox 360 users. The optimized version of IE8 for Xbox 360 will include :

• Xbox Live Search
• Xbox Accelerator to stay up to date on Xbox.com news and features
• Latest Xbox News via the Web Slice

Xbox user can download this optimized browser via Add-ons Gallery. The browser still IE8 and would run on 32 and 64 bit versions of Windows operating system.

There additional customized version of Internet Explorer 8 are available for MSN, Yahoo, eBay and Tesco.

	Internet Explorer 8 optimized for eBay has new features that let you search for products on eBay and monitor auctions through Web Slices.
	Home Shopping for less from Tesco.com. Find our full range of groceries for delivery online, as well as thousands of affordable non-food products from Tesco.
	Stay up to date with Xbox 360 and Xbox LIVE games, content, downloads, news and features.
	The Yahoo! optimized version of Internet Explorer 8 is only available for the following operating systems: Windows XP 32-bit Service Pack 2 (SP2) or higher Windows Vista Windows Vista 64-bit Windows Server 2008 Windows Server 2008 64-bit
	MSN Homepage has the latest in entertainment, breaking news, videos, sports highlights and more. MSN Toolbar brings the best of MSN with you wherever you go on the web. Bing the new decision engine – helps you overcome search overload to make faster, better decisions.

Internet Explorer 8 is the latest browser from Microsoft. IE8 comes with a very useful feature that help its users to determine which add-ons are slowing down IE page load and IE.

In Internet Explorer’s manage  Add-on dialog there is a column called “Load Time”. This column show average time taken by each Add-on when you open a new tab or a new window.

To open the dialog, click Tools –> Manage Add-ons. You can sort the add-ons by load time by ungrouping them (right-click the column headers, then choose Group By –> None) and then clicking the Load time header

SuperPreview is a tool that comes with Microsoft Express Web , SuperPreview shows how your web pages render on different browsers. SuperPreview that comes with Express Web 3.0 is not free but SuperPreview for Internet Explorer is a free program that can be used by Web Developers and designers to see how their website is rendering on different versions of Internet Explorer.

via All About ASP.Net

Microsoft has made some changes in IE8 installer, now if you running IE8 installer on a machine that is already have some other browser then in this case you will find that IE8 installer will offer you an option to set IE8 as your default browser and import settings from other browser.

The goal of the IE setup experience is to put IE users in control of their settings and respect existing defaults.  IE will never install, or become the default browser without your explicit consent.  However, we heard a lot of feedback from a lot of different people and groups and decided to make the user choice of the default browser even more explicit. This change is part of our ongoing commitment to user choice and control.

Specifically, users who install IE8 and have another browser set as the default will now see this panel as part of their first run experience:

download IE8

The number of Windows users surfing the web fell down below 90%. As everyone knows the Microsoft Corp.’s Windows OS is the biggest market shareholder fell down to 89.69 % . it took biggest share dive during the past two years, erasing gains made in two of the past three months and sending the operating system’s share under 90% for the first time according to new statistics. whereas Mac and the iPhone hit record numbers in a Net Applications Web survey issued overnight Monday and updated Monday morning.

Read more…

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer Beta2 has a keystroke logger suggestion tool similar to used by Google for its Google suggest feature.  Unlike the Google Chrome IE8 keystroke feature is not enabled by default, IE8 beat2 users has to enable this feature. Microsoft does not enable Suggest site feature by default but they are asking using users whether they want to use Suggested feature or not after the IE8 beat2 installation. This makes a huge difference as compare to Google’s Chrome because Google Chrome enables this feature by default.Microsoft Suggested site privacy statement privacy statement does not provide any information how long Microsoft server will keep user data as compare to Google where Google has clearly mentioned that they will delete the user data after nine months. Only thing I like to see in this is that Microsoft has to make a clear statement how long they will kept user data.

Microsoft Suggested site privacy statement

Suggested Sites is an online experience designed to show you which websites you visit most, and to provide you with suggestions of other websites you might be interested in visiting. When you turn on Suggested Sites, your web browsing history is sent to Microsoft, where it is saved and compared to a frequently updated list of websites that are similar to ones you visit often. You can choose to pause or stop this feature from sending your web browsing history to Microsoft at any time. You can also delete individual entries from your history at any time. Deleted entries will not be used to provide you suggestions for other websites, although they will be retained by Microsoft for a period of time to help improve our products and services, including this feature. Any websites you visit while InPrivate Browsing is active will not be sent to Microsoft.

When Suggested Sites is turned on, the addresses of websites you visit are sent to Microsoft, together with some standard information from your computer such as IP address, browser type, and regional and language settings. To help protect your privacy, the information is encrypted when sent to Microsoft. Information associated with the web address, such as search terms or data you entered in forms might be included. For example, if you visited the Microsoft.com search website at http://search.microsoft.com and entered “Seattle” as the search term, the full address http://search.microsoft.com/results.aspx?q=Seattle&qsc0=0&FORM=QBMH1&mkt=en-US will be sent. Address strings might unintentionally contain personal information, but this information is not used to identify, contact or target advertising to you.
Statistics about your usage of Suggested Sites will also be sent to Microsoft such as the time that websites were visited, which Website referred you, and how you got there (e.g., by clicking a link or one of your Favorites). This information, along with the Website addresses and past history, will be used to personalize your experience, as well as improve the quality of our products and services. Microsoft will not use any information collected to identify, contact or target advertising to you.

How to turn on Suggested Sites:

• In Internet Explorer, click the Tools button.
• Click Suggested Sites. A check mark will indicate Suggested Sites is turned on.

How to turn off Suggested Sites:

• In Internet Explorer, click the Tools button.
• Click Suggested Sites to clear the check mark and turn Suggested Sites off.

Note: Turning off Suggested Sites does not clear your history.

To delete your browsing history (with or without turning off Suggested Sites), follow these steps:

• In Internet Explorer, click the Safety menu.
• Select Delete Browsing History

There is being a lot of talk is going on about the Google’s Chrome and Mozilla Firefox JavaScript engines. IE8 Beta1 has optimized core scripting engine and script debugger. Let’s see  IE8 Beta2 JavaScript features

Scripting Engine: IE8 Beta2 includes native support for JavaScript Object Notation (JSON). Developers can use a native JSON object to serialize and de-serialize JScript objects. This feature makes Internet Explorer 8 the first browser to support JSON natively.

Script Debugger: IE8 Beta1 comes with Script debugger and IE8 team made it even better in IE8 Beta2. IE8 Beta2 Script debugger include let’s you to see the code in syntax colored manner that you see in most of the code editors. Console show all errors at one place and developers can use "console.log" feature to log errors. IE8 Beta2 console is extensible, means developers can add their own commands through custom scripts.

Script Profiler: Script Profiler is a new feature in IE8 Beta2. Script Profiler help developers to find and fix performance bottlenecks, resulting in a  better Script that will be efficient and run faster on browsers. The Script Profiler comes with an easy-to-use UI and powerful features such as ‘Call Tree View’ and ‘Export’ functionality. The Profiler output can be exported to tools like Excel so you can visualize the execution times through charts and graphs.

What’s New for JScript in IE8? Video

As the tagline of upcoming Bollywood flick, Karzzzz says, “Vengeance is back”. Firefox 3 was really a top notch browser, which helped Mozilla, making its presence much dominant, than IE. But, Microsoft is back, with their new version of IE, competing for the “Best Browser for Windows” title, yet again.

Beta version of IE is officially available for download on Microsoft’s site, for quite a time now. For past few days, we went on testing this new iteration of IE, and for a sweet surprise, it actually surpassed our expectations. Obviously we don’t expect very much from IE, since the launch of Firefox 3, but still IE 8 is quite comparable to FF3, in terms of stability, security, faster loading, crash recovery and other such useful features. Only thing that IE still lacks is the number of addons available to download, to customize your experience the way you want it. Here is what we found about this new browser in the market.

1. Security :- A really important issue, with any browser. IE8 definitely, is quite an improvement in this area, over its previous version. It easily clears the Acid test, making sure, that your experience with web is quite secure. Since its a beta version only, it definitely needs further improvement to be as secure as FF3, but still we have to wait a little more to see if IE8 is really secure and bug free.
2. GUI :- Just by the looks, one can say, that it is made according to Windows Vista’s looks, which feels really catchy, than FF3’s default GUI. Although, FF3 has got some addons to improve its looks, in its arsenal, but on Windows Vista, IE8 definitely feels better than FF3. In beta version, though, we found few GUI issues, that were there in previous version of IE also, worth mentioning. The worst of all is the top menu bar, which takes up a full line, and shows only six menus. It would have been nice, if we can change its size just like a toolbar. Maximum no. of tabs shown at a time should have been less, so that tabs are easily.
3. Faster loading :- Well, sorry Mozilla fans. But i have tried IE8 on a very old configuration too. It loads really faster than FF3. And it is even better at memory management. FF3 takes up nearly double memory space, for same 6 tabs, compared to IE8. Really a nice work, by guys at Redmond.
4. Tabbed browsing :- A ripoff of FF3’s offering, its really well implemented. Tab grouping is another nice aspect, offered inbuilt in IE8, although for Firefox, add ons are available.
5. Crash Recovery :- Something every one wanted to see in IE, after it has already being implemented in all other competing browsers. Finally with this iteration of IE, its here, and to much of our relief, it works flawlessly. And even better, it just doesn’t asks for restoring your previous session once like in FF3, but gives you an option to come back to your previous session, anytime, during the next session. So, even if crashed, and next time, you by mistake clicked on cancel instead of Restore, not everything is lost. Also, re opening a closed tab, is finally supported. Again, a rip off of Firefox’s offering, but a point scored for IE8, nonetheless.
6. Address bar & Search bar :- Again a copy from FF3’s feature list. Address bar displays results from your web history, RSS feeds too, just like FF3. May be they should add desktop search, too alongwith this browser, just like Vista’s start menu. Although search bar is defaulted to Live Search, with an option to change it to other search providers, but still when we tried adding Google in that list, it just didn’t accepted it. Adding Wikipedia, amazon, etc. too was a lot of pain. We can expect to get this issue resolved, in final version. Still, displaying web results alongwith thumbnails, is real cool, and should be copied in FF3 too.
7. Accelerators :- Nice innovation really. Although, adding other accelerators is a real pain, but that is just a bug, waiting for a fix. Anyways, it was really helpful to use those accelerators, really. I was easily able to cut down on my internet usage by 15% easily. Really helpful for everyone.
8. Webslices :- Once again, a very innovative thought. It lets you get the latest info on a webpage without even navigating to it. Really a useful way, to keep an eye on stock quotes, or your favourite news site, or may be on a bid you placed at amazon. It is really useful and at times cool enough. Although, since this is just a new idea, not many websites are available which offers creating webslices of their pages. May be soon enough, we will see a better implementation of this feature, and a lot more sites, supporting it. Firefox developers, time to write one more add on for your FF3, this feature is a real killer.
9. Safety Filter :- Have you ever got this warning that this page may harm your computer, while navigating from Google’s search result page. But wait, what if you would have come to that link directly. Definitely, this issue needs to be addressed. And here we have it. The same malicious web filter, in Google search engine, has been made redundant with this Safety filter in IE8. One more feature, we would like to see in FF3 as an add on.
10. Performance :- Apart from Javascript, every where else, FF3 came crashing down to IE8. IE8 is twice as faster in rendering any graphically extensive site, than FF3. With Microsoft trying hard to gain an upperhand in graphically intensive sites, with its light weight Silverlight, on for Adobe’s Flash player, this high difference in performance is obvious. Something where FF3 needs to play catch up soon.
11. InPrivate mode :- Also called “porn mode” by nearly everyone, this feature is once again, a nice innovative idea. As expected, not even a single information is stored about your web browsing, even if it crashes. That means if you visited a site, that crashed IE while in InPrivate mode, sorry to say, but Automatic Crash Recovery won’t help. Obviously that’s what we call a good implementation. One more point scored for IE8.

In all, IE8 is a very good browser, worth upgrading if you are using IE 7 or previous versions. It is not so secure as other browsers, but still enough secure for a regular user. And the other new good features provided alongside rip offs of features from other browsers, make it real worth giving a try. Switching from FF3, would not be a good option at this point as IE8 still lacks proper implementation, and few bugs are waiting to be taken care of. But that may soon change, once the final version is out, which is expected to be much stable and bug free. Its time to see, which one of these two browsers, get more of user’s attention. With google’s Chrome set to be released soon, this war is really going to be tough, which is definitely a good news for users.