Internet Explorer 8 helps you save time with Accelerators

 

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Theres been a great deal of more talk lately about browser performance. You may have seen some previous discussion about page load performance as you saw here in a video and whitepaper in March. Page load ensures that you get to where you want to go quickly. But page load time differences actually measure about the length it takes for a person to blink their eye once, making a win for any browser pretty inconsequential as far as time savings go.

However, Internet Explorer 8 today offers a feature that saves you time and clicks and lets you get things done more quickly: Accelerators. Accelerators optimize the browser experience by removing repetitive, time consuming actions and give people easy access to the online services they use most. You can discover new Accelerators for Internet Explorer 8 at the Internet Explorer 8 Add-ons Gallery.

With all the talk about performance, we wanted to see what features like Accelerators really meant for time savings when people use the web, so we created another video looking at common tasks people actually do in four browsers: Safari 4.0, Chrome 2.0 beta, Firefox 3.5 beta 99 and Internet Explorer 8. Please note, all tests were performed using the default installation settings for each browser. No additional add-ons or extensions were added. 

Here is a video that shows off how Accelerators in Internet Explorer 8 make your browsing experience quicker and easier:

Accelerators in IE8 Help Save Time!

IE8 Accelerators and Tesco

Sometimes, everything you need to know about how to do something has been written, and sometimes there doesn?t need to be much of that. So me, @markjo, @domgreen, @will_coleman and a couple of others ? thanks Dan and Claire - went to Tesco to figure out why to do something: in the case, how useful is an IE8 accelerator to a business, and a consumer? Big thanks to Nick at Tesco for helping us with this ? including a cameo. Also, we got our hands on a Dell Adamo. Nice.

Download Internet Explorer 8 & Help Fight Hunger

Today, the Internet Explorer Team took over New York Citys Time Warner Center and San Franciscos Justin Herman Plaza where local artists used food cans to create sculptures of the Empire State Building in New York and the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. After the sculptures are completed, the cans will be donated. (Credit: Diane Bondareff Left / Pete LaPage Right) Its all part of our Browser for the Better campaign. Turns out that during the school year over 17 million U.S. children receive free or reduced-price breakfast and lunches at their schools. But once the school year is ends and summer begins, these children longer receive this benefit as they are no longer in school until the fall. In response, we are joining forces with Feeding America to help these children this summer. For every completed download of Internet Explorer 8 through the Browser for the Better website, we will donate the financial equivalent of 8 meals to Feeding Americas network of 206 local food banks. These food banks supply food to more than 25 million Americans each year! The Browser for the Better campaign starts today and will run through Aug. 8, 2009. To also help kick off the campaign, the Browser for the Better website is hosting a series of new viral videos staring Dean Cain and directed by Bobcat Goldthwait which highlight features of Internet Explorer 8. Here is one of the 2 videos available today with 2 more coming soon! Dean Cain is absolutely hilarious in these videos! So what are you waiting for? Go download Internet Explorer 8 today and help us fight hunger in the United States this summer! Oh and of course after downloading, give Internet Explorer 8 a try. Not only does it include features such as Web Slices and Accelerators for finding the information you want quickly on the web, its also fast and secure too.

Internet Explorer 8 Security

Here is another story from a Microsoft Program Manger discussing their favorite things in Windows 7. This time it is Eric Lawrence (Senior Program Manager on the Internet Explorer Team) to talk about his favorite security features in Internet Explorer 8, the browser that ships in Windows 7. Eric Lawrence Discusses His Favorite Internet Explorer Security Features

IE8 Gets You Where You Want To Go, Quickly

As any browser vendor will quickly point out, accurately measuring the performance of a browser is extremely complex. On the surface, testing performance seems quite easy visit a few sites with one browser and then again with a different browser, and simply time how long it took to load the page. In reality, its much more complex than that. Many things need to be taken into account when comparing the page load performance of different browsers. For example, due to the constantly changing nature of the Internet it is not easy to tell if the exact same content was delivered to each browser for each test. ISPs, routers, and cable modems often cache their content, meaning that the page being loaded isnt always coming all the way from the web server. The amount of network traffic can easily change between tests. All of these things (and more) can dramatically effect page load times. Unfortunately, tools to accurately benchmark browser page load times dont exist. All of the existing browser benchmarking tools available today are either narrow in their scope (SunSpider, Celtic Kane), inaccurate (iBench), or dont consider important factors such as network latency, network congestion, and caching. In the absence of effective benchmarking tools the Internet Explorer Team created a real world test which took the above mentioned factors into consideration and created a level playing field for all browsers tested. The results when comparing Internet Explorer 8 page load times to Firefox and Chrome were captured on video: IE8 Performance The performance video visually compares page load times between IE8, FF, and Chrome. Of the top 25 most popular sites in the world, IE8 wins 48% of the time, Chrome wins 38% 36% of the time, and FF only wins 16% of the time. Of course, they didnt cherry pick the sites they tested. They chose the top 25 sites as reported by ComScore in December 2008. We encourage (and expect) people to run their own tests to measure page load times and for the browser industry at large to create a test that can accurately measure page load times as seen by the user across browsers. To assist people in running their own tests the Internet Explorer Team has also created a whitepaper which describes techniques that can be used to contend with some of the complex issues mentioned above. For more information on Internet Explorer 8, visit www.microsoft.com/ie8. UPDATED 6:16pm Pacific Time: Corrected percentage numbers to accurately reflect data from whitepaper.

Internet Explorer 8 - ready for battle

Internet Explorer is available to download, and this final release includes only minor changes over the RC release candidate version from January. IE 8 comes with a new faster rendering engine that makes the browser more responsive and compatible with true W3C web standards while still having support for IE-specific pages. It is also user friendly - visual search suggestions, smart address bar, accelerators, Web Slices - a user can make a snippet of any part of a website and have it continuously update itself, better find on page, one click favorites, tab grouping, private browsing, tab crash protection, option for add-ons and other improvements. IE8 is still slowest among the other browsers (Apple Safari, Google Chrome, and upcoming Mozilla Firefox) but this time IE focus on usability, security, stability and browsing efficiency. There are many advanced usability tweaks already build in and ready for download that will tweak your overall internet experience and improve your protection against deceptive and malicious websites which can compromise your data, privacy, and identity. IE 8 is now available for Windows XP and Vista and will be a core feature of Windows 7 in US an optional feature in Europe becouse EU antitrust force a choice between browsers that lets users install an alternative browser without installing Internet Explorer. Read more and download IE 8 here. Get an add-on here.

Final Release of Internet Explorer 8 Now Available

Today on Day 2 of MIX09, Internet Explorer General Manager Dean Hachamovitch during his keynote this morning in Las Vegas announced the availability of the final release of Internet Explorer 8 to download and install on their PCs. Click here to download Internet Explorer 8! Internet Explorer 8 is available for the following Windows releases: Windows XP SP2 and SP3, Windows Server 2003 SP2, Windows Server 2008, and Windows Vista (RTM), SP1 and SP2. With Internet Explorer 8, common tasks on the Web are faster and easier. Id like to take a moment and highlight how I am using Internet Explorer 8 today to quickly accomplish tasks that important to me. It all starts with my favorite Internet Explorer 8 feature the Favorites Bar. The Favorites Bar in Internet Explorer 8 gives people quick access to information such as their top favorites and Web Slices. On my Favorites Bar, I have Web Slices from partners such as Digg and The New York Times and of course Live Search (see my post on Live Search Web Slices). These Web Slices give me one click access to the latest news, weather, and traffic as I browse the Web. I never have to leave a webpage Im on to view information from these Web Slices. When a Web Slice is updated, the slice on the Favorites Bar becomes bold. You can install Web Slices from The New York Times from this blog post from their First Look Blog and the Digg Web Slice can be installed by visiting Digg.com. The Favorites Bar isnt just a place for people to put their favorite Web Slices. In Internet Explorer 8, you can subscribe to an RSS feed and add it to your Favorites Bar. With both RSS feeds and Web Slices on my Favorites Bar, I feel I am able to access important bits of information much quicker and easier. The Favorites Bar is great at giving me information I want and keeping me up-to-date with things. But sometimes I need to quickly find something thats not in my Favorites Bar. Thats where Internet Explorer 8s Instant Search Box and Accelerators come in. Internet Explorer 8s Instant Search Box can provide Search Suggestions as you type in your search. When I search for Windows in Wikipedia, an Internet Explorer Search Provider, it provides me with suggestions (youll also note Instant Search also searches my History too). Internet Explorer 8s Instant Search also provides Visual Search. For example I am looking for some Zune accessories for my Zune 80. I want a dock for my Zune 80 for my office here in Redmond. Because just like with Wikipedia, I have Amazon.com as a Search Provider in Internet Explorer 8, I can search Amazon.com for Zune accessories and actually see the products. Accelerators in Internet Explorer 8 can also be a huge help in finding information you need directly off a webpage. Yesterday evening I was invited to a little meet up in downtime Seattle at a place called Spitfire Grill. Im not too familiar with downtown Seattle yet so I had no idea where this place was. With Accelerators in Internet Explorer 8 such as Live Search Maps, to find out where this place was real easy. All I needed to do was go to the Spitfire Grill website, select their address, click the blue Accelerator button that appears and choose Map with Live Search and a pop-out map appeared showing me where it was. There are many Accelerators available today including a Find on eBay Accelerator or a Find on Facebook Accelerator. Accelerators arent necessarily just for finding information on a webpage. They can be used for sharing information on a webpage, or simply a webpage, too. My two favorite Accelerators I use to share information are the Share on Facebook Accelerator and fellow Microsoftie Adam Kinneys Send to FriendFeed Accelerator. Both these Accelerators let me share webpages I find interesting that I would like other folks to check out. So in closing, Internet Explorer 8 truly lets me do common tasks on the Web easier and faster. And because of it, I feel much more efficient. You should definitely go download Internet Explorer 8 today and give it a shot. Feel free to share with me you favorite Web Slices, Search Providers or Accelerators in comments. Dig in at the Internet Explorer 8 Add-ons Gallery after you get Internet Explorer 8 installed. And if youre interested in how Internet Explorer 8 stacks up from a performance standpoint, I suggest reading this blog post and watching the following video: IE8 Performance

What are people saying about Internet Explorer 8 RC1?

February 16, 2009

Just like with the Windows 7 Beta, I thought it would be nice to take a look at what people have been saying about Release Candidate 1 of Internet Explorer 8. Dana Wollman from LAPTOP says: The last time we tested IE 8, it was oftenbut not alwaysfaster than Firefox 3. This time around, it blew Firefox out of the water, along with Google Chrome. Joe Wilcox from Microsoft Watch says this: IE 8 is the most significant upgrade to the browser family in more than a decadenot since IE 4, I say. This is the version you want to download, try and adopt. Preston Gralla from Computerworld says this: IE8 is clearly nearly ready for release. RC1 is stable and fast, and it contains a full feature set. From SuperSite for Windows, Paul Thurrott says this: ...IE 8 RC1 is a solid upgrade over the previous Beta 2 release, and points to a solid final release. If you're already using a previous beta version, you should snag RC1 immediately. And if you're curious about the future of Windows Web browsers, you could do a lot worse than IE 8 RC1: Even in prerelease form, it's a solid, dependable browser. Recommended. Anthony Ha from VentureBeat says: All in all, this sounds like a cool package, not just a facelift. At the very least, I can say that the new browser includes some compelling concepts that could help Microsoft hold on to its insanely high market share, and perhaps even reverse its decline against competitors like Mozillas Firefox and Apples Safari. Michael Muchmore from PC Magazine says this: ...I really like what Microsoft has done with Internet Explorer, and, in this late prerelease version, looks ready to give our Editors' Choice Web browser, Firefox 3, a real run for its money. The new browsing conveniences, tab behavior, security protections, and standards support offer a potent combo. And from InformationWeek, J. Nicholas Hoover says: Microsoft has come a long way with IE8 by pushing performance barriers, embracing Web standards, and adding a few new features. If you havent already, download Internet Explorer 8 RC1 today from http://www.microsoft.com/ie8.

IE 8 release candidate version

Microsoft web browser is out of beta phase and step near to the final version. Although the Microsoft web site (yet) has not additional information about the release of candidate 1 of Internet Explorer 8, this web-browser is already available for download. The differences between these (RC1) and the final version should be only "cosmetic" and should not be adding new features, but only fixes of spotted errors. IE8 RC1 is available for 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows, and Windows XP, Vista, Server 2003 and Server 2008.