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<img alt="" height="1" width="1"> Microsoft: Performance key in Windows 7, IE8 Computerworld, MA - 3 minutes ago Cherry suggested Microsoft consider performance for Windows 7 the way it did security with Vista. When Microsoft made security integral to the OS, ... More...

<img alt="" height="1" width="1"> Windows 7 must avoid the marketing trap that Vista stumbled into ZDNet - 4 hours ago I’ve been following the Engineering Windows 7 blog closely and I’ve come to the conclusion that while Steven Sinofsky is a man of many words, ... Windows 7 pricing thoughts - Is Windows too expensive? ZDNet all 6 news articles More...

As Paul mentioned in Part 1 of this post, we’ve really focused on making your everyday browsing experience better. In addition to the useful changes he talked about, we’ve made IE8 even more useful with integrated services so that you can easily accomplish the common things you do on the web – search for a product, check the weather, map an address, and more) In Beta 1, we showed how IE8 could be better with services with features like Accelerators and Web Slices (BTW, Accelerators are the same as the Beta 1 Activities with an updated name and icon). For Beta 2 we have even more features that help you use your favorite sites in new ways. Check out these features as you explore the product! Search Box Suggestions New to IE8 beta 2 are Search (text) Suggestions and Visual Search Suggestions which are wired into the Search box. As you type in the Search box, the selected search provider can offer query suggestions and display search results right in place! Not only can the search provider provide text suggestions, they can include images as well. This way you can dynamically narrow down your search results quickly and get single-click access to the web page without having to leave the Search box. Also, check out our new Quick Pick menu which puts your search providers at your fingertips. http://ieblog.members.winisp.net/images/Search.Box.png To make it easier to take advantage of the enhanced Search box, we automatically update many of your existing search providers to versions that support suggestions. If you want more providers use the IE8 Gallery. Accelerators Copy-navigate-paste is old. Accelerators are services that you access directly from the webpage in the context of what you’re doing, letting you bookmark, define, email, map and more with a simple selection. Even your search providers are available as Accelerators. Some Accelerators provide previews so that you can view the result without having to leave the current webpage. Clicking on an Accelerator opens a new tab with the full result. http://ieblog.members.winisp.net/images/Accelerators.png We’ve given you more control in IE8 beta 2 by adding custom categories to an Accelerator so that you can control how your Accelerators are organized. Just select an Accelerator from the Manage Add-ons dialog. Find out if your favorite site has an Accelerator available from the IE8 Gallery. Web Slices As we showed in Beta 1, Web Slices give you updates directly from the Favorites bar, helping you keep track of your important information. A Web Slice is a subscription to part of a web page; when an update is available, IE8 bolds the title of the Web Slice so you know there’s something new to see. I have several Web Slices that make it easy to keep track of my favorites – the weather, friend updates on Facebook, popular links from Digg, and current auction items on eBay. When there’s something new to see, you can preview the update and click through to the full web page for more details. We’ve also added a refresh button from the preview for Beta 2 so that you can get the latest content without having to navigate. http://ieblog.members.winisp.net/images/WebSlice.png When a site supports Web Slices a Web Slice icon http://ieblog.members.winisp.net/images/WebSlice.Button.pngappears in the command bar. Try out Web Slices with eBay, Digg, Live Search (type in your city + weather like “Seattle weather”), and more from the IE8 Gallery. Feeds on the Favorites bar In IE7 we added feed reading to the browser. For the IE8 Beta 2 release, we’ve made it even easier to reach your feeds by allowing them to be added to the Favorites bar. You’ll get updates just like you did before where unread headlines are marked in bold. Selecting a headline opens the full web page. http://ieblog.members.winisp.net/images/RSS.png Feeds are available for most websites today – select the feed icon http://ieblog.members.winisp.net/images/RSS.Button.png in the command bar and use the new add button http://ieblog.members.winisp.net/images/Favorites.Bar.Button.png on the Favorites bar. Suggested Sites It’s easy to get stuck in a bit of a rut, browsing the same sites all the time. In IE8 we make it easier to find sites you might like. Once you turn on Suggested Sites, IE looks at what sites you visit and then offers recommendations of other similar or related sites, right from the Favorites Bar. http://ieblog.members.winisp.net/images/Suggested.Sites.png If you don’t have Suggested Sites on already, try it out by going to the Favorites Center http://ieblog.members.winisp.net/images/Favorites.Button.pngand clicking on the “Turn on Suggested Sites” button at the bottom of the menu. These features give you quick access to your services without having to leave the current webpage, making it faster and easier to browse the web. We’ll be blogging about the details of these features as well as how sites can enable these services in the next few weeks, so stay tuned! In the meantime, we hope you try out Beta 2 and check out the IE8 Gallery to customize your browser with the services you use all of the time. Enjoy! Jane Kim Program Manager http://blogs.msdn.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=8902425 More...

<img src=http://news.google.com/news?imgefp=6YrE4oD9G4AJ&imgurl=www.siliconrepublic.com/fs/img/news/200808/378x/inprivate-homepage.jpg width=80 height=63 alt="" border=1> Siliconrepublic.com <img alt="" height="1" width="1"> Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 Goes Public Windows IT Pro, CO - 7 hours ago This version of the product, which will be made available free to Windows XP, Vista, 2003, and 2008 users, adds many functional advances and some new ... Microsoft Shows Off IE8's Ad-Blocking, Page-Tabbing Chops TechNewsWorld Microsoft releases IE8 Beta 2 Bluhalo Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 Now Available Bink.nu Redmond Channel Partner - TechSpot all 807 news articles More...

<img alt="" height="1" width="1"> Windows 7 must avoid the marketing trap that Vista stumbled into ZDNet - 3 hours ago I’ve been following the Engineering Windows 7 blog closely and I’ve come to the conclusion that while Steven Sinofsky is a man of many words, ... Performance-improvement Integral to Windows 7, IE8 PC World Windows 7 pricing thoughts - Is Windows too expensive? ZDNet all 5 news articles More...

<img alt="" height="1" width="1"> Performance-improvement Integral to Windows 7, IE8 PC World - 5 minutes ago IE 7 and Windows Vista have had serious performance problems early on that have alienated users and damaged the reputations of the products. ... More...

<img alt="" height="1" width="1"> Microsoft warns of IE8 lock-in with XP SP3 Computerworld, MA - 4 hours ago "A prompt in your Windows task bar will alert you when IE8 Beta 2 is ready for installation," she said. Windows Vista users, however, will not see IE8 Beta ... IE8 Beta 2 has a surprise for Windows XP SP3 users TG Daily How to get rid of Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 Lifehacker Australia all 9 news articles More...

<img src=http://news.google.com/news?imgefp=P9Bc1J8qAjcJ&imgurl=images.bit-tech.net/news_images/2008/08/latest-wga-deletes-wallpaper/article_img.jpg width=80 height=67 alt="" border=1> bit-tech.net <img alt="" height="1" width="1"> The Black Desktop of Death RealTechNews, CA - 39 minutes ago By Jimmy Daniels of Windows Tips I swiped this title from a comment on the Tech Blog at the Houston Chronicle. Microsoft this week has begun updating its ... Windows XP Piracy Badgering Set To Begin CRN Black screens for pirate copies of Windows Custom PC Microsoft Tweaks Anti-piracy Check for Windows XP PC World ZDNet - Computerworld all 43 news articles More...

<img alt="" height="1" width="1"> Windows 7 must avoid the marketing trap that Vista stumbled into ZDNet - 44 minutes ago I’ve been following the Engineering Windows 7 blog closely and I’ve come to the conclusion that while Steven Sinofsky is a man of many words, ... More...

Hi, my name is Paul Cutsinger and I’m the Lead Program Manager for the IE8 User Experience. As Dean mentioned in his beta 2 announcement post, for IE8 we focused on improving people’s everyday browsing experience – what they do all the time. We looked closely at what people do and how they do it to design ways to make their browsing even better. For all of the top usage patterns, we looked for ways to reduce steps, introduce new capabilities, and improve on how people actually browse. In this post, I’ll discuss a small sampling of IE8’s new features that make everyday browsing faster and easier. Future posts will cover each of these, and other, features in more depth. Smart Address Bar Based on our observations of IE7 and IE8 Beta 1 usage, we learned that roughly 80% of the time people’s destination on the web is a previously visited site. In the past, people would use their Favorites or History, or they’d just go through all the steps to navigate to the website again. The Smart Address Bar enables you to find Favorites and sites in your history by just typing a few letters. That’s much fewer steps than using the Favorites and History center. We also added the capability to search the title, web address and even folders for those who have organized their favorites. This means that you’ll find sites even if type something other than just the first part of the web address. To make it easier to find what you’re looking for, we group the results and highlight the matched text. http://ieblog.members.winisp.net/images/SmartAB.png Favorites Bar One click access is ideal for the sites and information you want frequently and you can use the Favorites Bar to do this. You can now add favorites, feeds, Web Slices and folders to the Favorites Bar for one click access. It’s also one click to add a favorite to the Favorites Bar. Many people make a habit of checking back on certain sites like email, auctions, news and blogs many times a day. Well, it’s great that these can be just one click from the Favorites Bar but, it’s really only interesting to see these pages when they’ve changed. So, feeds and Web Slices will turn bold, like an unread email, when there’s something new to see. Now you’ll know that there will be something interesting even before you click. http://ieblog.members.winisp.net/images/FavButton.png New Tab Page When people open a new tab, they’re about to go to a website. So, we looked for ways to make that as fast and easy as possible. They could use the address bar or the Favorites Bar. They could also use the Search Box with its Visual Search suggestions new to Beta 2. Those are all great ways to go to a website. While studying usage patterns, we found a few other opportunities to refine the experience even more. Now, from the new tab page, you can immediately start common navigation tasks like reopening a closed tab or starting an InPrivate Browsing session. All of these come together to help you get to the websites you want with the fewest possible steps and without needing to hunt through the menus to figure out how. http://ieblog.members.winisp.net/images/New.Tab.Page1.png Tab Grouping We’re seeing an emerging tab trend where people open several pages so they can read them later. For example, they might be reading a news article or blog and then they open some of the links in new tabs as they go so they can finish reading and easily come back when they’re done to read the related pages. We love tab browsing, but it’s easy to get confused where all the tabs came from. IE8 opens keeps these pages grouped together and color codes them. As you close tabs in a group, IE takes you to the next one in the group; similarly, if you open more tabs from the first site, IE appends them to the group rather than adding them to the end of all the tabs. With this, it’s easy to read and use all the related pages together. We’ll be blogging in more detail about this feature (and others) over the next few days. http://ieblog.members.winisp.net/images/Group.Tab.1.png Find on Page We’d heard from many, many users that the Find dialog in IE6 and IE7 was always getting in the way, making it hard to actually find content on the page. So, we’ve added a Find bar at the top of the page (finally!) that lets you more easily find content on the page. This is an example of how we’ve simplified experiences to remove subtle but significant extra user effort. http://ieblog.members.winisp.net/images/Find.On.Page1.png Faster and Easier throughout the product As you use the beta and read the deeper feature blog posts, you’ll see more examples of how we made browsing easier like how we highlight the domain in the address bar for quick visual scanning. You’ll also see how we made browsing even better with service connected features like Visual Search, Accelerators, and Web Slices in part 2 of this post. I hope you’ll enjoy how much faster and easier browsing is with IE8. I look forward to hearing your feedback on the beta. Paul Cutsinger Lead Program Manager http://blogs.msdn.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=8902443 More...

<img src=http://news.google.com/news?imgefp=P9Bc1J8qAjcJ&imgurl=images.bit-tech.net/news_images/2008/08/latest-wga-deletes-wallpaper/article_img.jpg width=80 height=67 alt="" border=1> bit-tech.net <img alt="" height="1" width="1"> Windows XP Piracy Badgering Set To Begin CRN, NY - 20 hours ago ... as they are for Windows Vista service pack 1, said Alex Kochis, senior product manager in the Windows Genuine Advantage group, in a Tuesday blog post. ... Black screens for pirate copies of Windows Custom PC Microsoft Tweaks Anti-piracy Check for Windows XP PC World Microsoft to tweak WGA Notifications on Windows XP ZDNet Computerworld - Yahoo! Tech all 42 news articles More...

<img src=http://news.google.com/news?imgefp=68JVC9k6LXIJ&imgurl=a123.g.akamai.net/f/123/12465/1d/media.canada.com/reuters/olustech_iptc/2008-08-27t192449z_01_nootr_rtridsp_2_tech-microsoft-explorer-dc.jpg%3Fsize%3Dl width=80 height=80 alt="" border=1> Canada.com <img alt="" height="1" width="1"> Microsoft warns of IE8 lock-in with XP SP3 Computerworld, MA - 1 hour ago "A prompt in your Windows task bar will alert you when IE8 Beta 2 is ready for installation," she said. Windows Vista users, however, will not see IE8 Beta ... Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 Goes Public Windows IT Pro Microsoft releases IE8 Beta 2 Bluhalo Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 Now Available Bink.nu Redmond Channel Partner - TechSpot all 725 news articles More...

<img alt="" height="1" width="1"> The Pervasive Datacenter CNET News, CA - 25 minutes ago Given that I recently built a new Windows Vista-based computer, I thought this would be a good opportunity to take a look at some of the options out there ... More...

<img src=http://news.google.com/news?imgefp=KxeLDBMu4swJ&imgurl=im.sify.com/sifycmsimg/aug2008/Finance/14748062_Internet_Explorer_8_news.jpg width=80 height=60 alt="" border=1> Sify <img alt="" height="1" width="1"> Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 Goes Public Windows IT Pro, CO - 48 minutes ago This version of the product, which will be made available free to Windows XP, Vista, 2003, and 2008 users, adds many functional advances and some new ... Microsoft releases IE8 Beta 2 Bluhalo Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 Now Available Bink.nu Microsoft Releases Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 Redmond Channel Partner TechSpot - Webmonkey all 721 news articles More...

<img alt="" height="1" width="1"> Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 Goes Public Windows IT Pro, CO - 5 minutes ago This version of the product, which will be made available free to Windows XP, Vista, 2003, and 2008 users, adds many functional advances and some new ... More...

<img alt="" height="1" width="1"> Weekly Digest Issue No. 430 ElectricNews.net, Ireland - 7 minutes ago As it attempts to raise the flagging profile of Windows Vista, Microsoft is to plough USD300 million into an ad campaign that bigs up the operating system. ... More...

<img src=http://news.google.com/news?imgefp=KxeLDBMu4swJ&imgurl=im.sify.com/sifycmsimg/aug2008/Finance/14748062_Internet_Explorer_8_news.jpg width=80 height=60 alt="" border=1> Sify <img alt="" height="1" width="1"> Microsoft releases IE8 Beta 2 Bluhalo, UK - 36 minutes ago ... of Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008 in a number of languages. Announcing the release on the official IE blog, ... Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 Now Available Bink.nu Microsoft Releases Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 Redmond Channel Partner Internet Explorer 8 Catches Up, Shows Improvements, With Beta 2 Webmonkey BetaNews - TopNews all 539 news articles More...

<img alt="" height="1" width="1"> File Sharing Redefined at HugeDrive.com PR Web (press release), WA - 2 hours ago These HugeDrive web file folder widgets look just like a traditional Windows or Mac OS file folder -- with any files you wish to share inside -- but have ... More...

<img src=http://news.google.com/news?imgefp=F288xh7er68J&imgurl=news.cnet.com/i/bto/20080827/266145main_askthecrew_tn_100x75.jpg width=80 height=60 alt="" border=1> CNET News <img alt="" height="1" width="1"> Be safer than NASA and disable Autorun/Autoplay CNET News, CA - 26 minutes ago In that posting, I described how to disable autorun for Windows XP and Windows 2000 and I just revised it to include Vista. In his December blog Abrams ... More...

<img src=http://news.google.com/news?imgefp=68JVC9k6LXIJ&imgurl=a123.g.akamai.net/f/123/12465/1d/media.canada.com/reuters/olustech_iptc/2008-08-27t192449z_01_nootr_rtridsp_2_tech-microsoft-explorer-dc.jpg%3Fsize%3Dl width=80 height=80 alt="" border=1> Canada.com <img alt="" height="1" width="1"> Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 Now Available Bink.nu, Netherlands - 8 hours ago You’ll find versions for 32- and 64-bit editions of Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, and Windows Server 2008. In addition to English, ... Microsoft Releases Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 Redmond Channel Partner Internet Explorer 8 Catches Up, Shows Improvements, With Beta 2 Webmonkey IE8 will feature privacy envelope, Microsoft confirms BetaNews TopNews all 424 news articles More...

In my latest review, I look at Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2, a major pre-release version of Microsoft's next Web browser! More...

<img alt="" height="1" width="1"> A PC for editing AVC guardian.co.uk, UK - 32 minutes ago Next, look for a PC with that Q number, 4GB or 8GB of memory, and 64-bit Windows Vista. An example is the Mesh Xtreme X9550GTX with a Q9550, 8GB of memory, ... More...

I am here to tell you how to upgrade to IE8 Beta 2. IE8 Beta 2 system requirements are the same as IE8 Beta 1 and it’s currently available in English, Chinese Simplified, German and Japanese. Stay tuned for more localized IE8 Beta 2 versions to be available shortly. Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 Getting Ready Before you start IE8 Beta 2 installation, there are a couple of things to keep in mind: Uninstalling IE8 Beta 1 If you have Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 installed, the IE8 installer will automatically uninstall any earlier versions and then install the latest version of IE8 Beta2 for you. You will be prompted to reboot twice. The first reboot is to remove IE8 Beta 1 from your machine and the second one to complete the IE8 Beta 2 installation. When you launch Internet Explorer, you can open the Help->About Internet Explorer dialog to see the version number 8.0.6001.18241. Getting required updates for IE8 Beta 2 There is 1 update required when running IE8 Beta 2 on multi-core XPSP2 x86 computers: Knowledge Base Article 932823 or Knowledge Base Article 946501 - This update resolves a problem in which an access violation occurs when an application exists on a Windows XP SP2-based multi-core computer. It will be installed automatically if you select “Install the latest updates” option in Setup Wizard. Windows XP Service Pack 3(SP3) users only The only time we encourage you to manually uninstall Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 prior to upgrading to IE8 Beta 2 for Windows XP users is if you happened to install Windows XP SP3 after installing IE8 Beta 1. To see if you need to manually uninstall IE8 Beta 1, check these things: Is your computer running Windows XP SP3? Click on the Start Menu and then right click on My Computer and then click Properties On the General Tab under System it’ll say Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 3 Is the remove option for IE8 Beta1 grayed out? From the Start menu, open Control Panel and click Add or Remove Programs Select Windows Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 and you are unable to click on the Remove button. If you answered yes to both questions, you will be able to install Internet Explorer 8 Beta2, but once installed, you will not be able to uninstall either IE8 or Windows XP SP3 later. The Setup Wizard will warn you prior to installation: http://ieblog.members.winisp.net/images/XPSP3.Install.Dialog.png If you chose to continue, Windows XP SP3 and IE8 Beta2 will become permanent. You will still be able to upgrade to later IE8 builds as they become available, but you won’t be able to uninstall them. To avoid getting into this situation, we strongly encourage you to follow these steps before installing Internet Explorer Beta 2: Uninstall Windows XP SP3 Uninstall IE8 Beta1 Re- install Windows XP SP3 Install IE8 Beta2 See my earlier blog post on Internet Explorer and Windows XP SP3 for more information. Windows Update Internet Explorer Beta 2 will be offered to those Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 systems that have IE8 Beta 1 installed and have Automatic Updates turned on. A prompt in your Windows task bar will alert you when IE8 Beta 2 is ready for installation. The language version of IE8 Beta 2 offered is based on the your Windows Operating System Language version. For example, if your computer is running a Chinese Simplified or German version of Windows, you will be offered IE8 Beta 2 in Chinese Simplified or German respectively. For any other Windows languages, Internet Explorer 8 will be offered to you in English. Again, this only applies to those systems that have IE8 Beta 1 installed. Localized Versions When installing localized versions of Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 on XP or Windows Server 2003 please remember that the base language of the operating system must match the IE8 language you are trying to install; otherwise the Setup Wizard will display an error. More information about installing localized versions of IE8 Beta 2 can be found in the release notes. Uninstalling IE8 Beta 2 From the Start menu, open Control Panel and click Add or Remove Programs Click Windows Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 and then click Remove. Your computer will be reverted to Internet Explorer 6 + previous IE6 security updates or Internet Explorer 7 + previous IE7 security updates depending on what you had before the upgrade. You can confirm that by clicking Help, then About Internet Explorer next time you launch Internet Explorer. Be sure to check for any new security updates. http://ieblog.members.winisp.net/images/Add.Remove.XP.png Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008 Getting ready Before you start installing Internet Explorer 8 beta2, there are a couple of things you need to do to prepare your computer: Uninstall Internet Explorer 8 Beta1 You need to manually uninstall earlier builds of IE8 before installing IE8 Beta 2. Open Control Panel and click Programs. Click Programs and Features, and click View installed updates. Wait for the full list to be populated and then select Windows Internet Explorer 8. Click Uninstall this update. After uninstall is complete, restart the computer. Your computer will be reverted to Internet Explorer 7 + previous IE7 security updates. Getting required updates for IE8 Beta 2 Knowledge Base Article 937287 - This update helps improve reliability and performance when you install or remove Internet Explorer 8 and future individual updates from Microsoft. Without this update, IE8 setup will be blocked: “Setup cannot continue because one or more updates required to install Windows Internet Explorer 8 are not present.” Knowledge Base Article 943302 – This update addresses known application compatibility issues in Windows Vista. It will be installed automatically if you select “Install the latest updates” option in the Setup Wizard. Knowledge Base Article 957055 – This update addresses a known compatibility issue between RealNetworks RealPlayer 11 and Window Vista Service Pack 1. It will be installed automatically if you select “Install the latest updates” option in the Setup Wizard. You are now ready to install IE8 Beta 2. After IE8 Beta 2installation is complete, the final screen of the Install Wizard indicates that Internet Explorer installation completed successfully. After you restart your computer and launch Internet Explorer, you can open the Help->About Internet Explorer dialog to see the version number 8.0.6001.18241. Localized versions In Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008, we significantly improved the installation experience for localized versions of Internet Explorer 8 beta 2. Unlike Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, the base language of Windows does not need to match the Internet Explorer 8 language version in order for a successful install. When your user active language matches the Internet Explorer 8 language you installed, then IE8 will appear in the desired language. You will still be able to use IE8 in all other scenarios, but it will appear in English as a fall back version. More information about installing localized versions of IE8 Beta2 can be found in the release notes. Uninstalling IE8 Beta 2 From the Start menu, open Control Panel and click Programs Click Programs and Features and click View Installed Updates (located in the left side menu Select Windows Internet Explorer 8 and Uninstall Your machine will be reverted to IE7 + previous IE7 security updates You can confirm that by clicking Help, then clicking About Internet Explorer next time you launch Internet Explorer. Be sure to check for any new security updates. http://ieblog.members.winisp.net/images/Uninstall.Vista.1.png http://ieblog.members.winisp.net/images/Uninstall.Vista.2.png What do I do when I run into issues installing IE8? Check out the knowledge base article on Troubleshooting IE8 installation. If after trying the recommended workarounds you still can’t install IE8, go to the IE Beta Newsgroup to see if there are any known solutions available. Microsoft MVPs and IE Team members are monitoring this newsgroup and they will help address your issues. Thank you, Jane Maliouta Program Manager http://blogs.msdn.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=8898771 More...

At the start of the Internet Explorer 8 project we made a commitment to great website compatibility. It’s worth noting that this commitment hasn’t changed, even given the short-term impact of our announcement to better align with Microsoft’s interoperability principles. In other words, compatibility has been and continues to be a very important part of the Internet Explorer 8 feature set. With Beta 2 we’re announcing a brand new feature known as Compatibility View. In a nutshell, Compatibility View allows content designed for older web browsers to still work well in Internet Explorer 8. Compatibility View and End Users When a web site says that it supports modern web standards, Internet Explorer 8 respects that and displays the site using its most standards compliant mechanism. In the majority of cases, this works out just fine. However, every once in a while, a page that says “display me using modern standards” really means “display me like Internet Explorer 7 used to display modern standards pages”. This is where Compatibility View comes in. There are a bunch of changes under the hood, but the main points to know are – Sites on the public internet still display in IE8 Standards Mode by default. Switching in and out of Compatibility View (between IE7 and IE8 modes) happens on the fly without a browser restart. Compatibility View is domain specific. A new UI button located in the navigation bar just to the right of the address bar (next to the refresh button) controls the Compatibility View feature and replaces the Emulate IE7 button from Beta 1. http://ieblog.members.winisp.net/images/CompatViewButton4.png IE only displays this button when toggling into Compatibility View makes sense, such as when viewing Standards mode pages. In all other cases, such as when viewing Quirks mode pages or viewing intranet sites (they’re already being displayed in Compatibility View as discussed later in this post), IE hides the button. Depending on the speed of your machine, you may see the page refresh when the Compatibility View button is selected. In any case, a balloon tip lets you know that the site is now running in Compatibility View. Additionally, the Compatibility View icon shows a “pressed” state so that you can know what view you’re running in after the balloon tip disappears. http://ieblog.members.winisp.net/images/CompatViewRefresh.png The "scope" of emulation is limited to the domain you are viewing when you press the button, not some other mechanism like the life of the process or the tab. And, Internet Explorer remembers your preference by storing the domain in a client-side list so that the next time you visit the site you don't have to press the button again. Compatibility View and the Enterprise A large number of line-of-business websites are Internet Explorer 7 capable today. In order to preserve compatibility, Internet Explorer 8 ships with smart defaults based on zone evaluation. In the default state, all sites on the public internet display in Internet Explorer 8 Standards mode (Compatibility View off) and all intranet websites display in Internet Explorer 7 Standards mode (Compatibility View on). Let’s look at some examples. If you navigate to sites on the Internet like www.msn.com and www.live.com, Compatibility View is off by default. Internet Explorer 8 identifies itself with a User Agent string of ‘8’, Version Vector of ‘8’ and displays webpages that trigger standards mode in Internet Explorer 8 Standards mode. The same is also true if you navigate by IP address, such as http://192.168.0.1. As Internet Explorer can’t tell offhand whether the IP address is internal or external, it assumes the latter. Use Compatibility View to fix problems with websites in this category just like you used to use the Emulate IE7 button. If you navigate to sites on your local intranet like http://myPortal and http://sharepoint/sites/mySite, Internet Explorer 8 identifies itself with a User Agent string of ‘7’, Version Vector of ‘7’, and displays webpages that trigger standards mode in Internet Explorer 7 Standards mode. This combination allows webpages that worked correctly in Internet Explorer 7 to continue to do so in IE8. Just for completeness, it’s also worth noting that local pages such as ‘C:\Temp\MyWebPage.htm’ display in Internet Explorer 8 mode (Compatibility View off) by default. A new entry in the ‘Tools’ menu allows for advanced configuration of the feature. http://ieblog.members.winisp.net/images/ToolsMenu2.png http://ieblog.members.winisp.net/images/CompatViewSettings2.png You can configure all intranet sites to display in Internet Explorer 8 mode. You can also configure policy such that every site is viewed in Internet Explorer 7 Compatibility View (identical to the behavior from Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 when the Emulate IE7 button was pressed). Lastly, you can pre-populate a list of sites that should always be viewed in Compatibility View and / or edit the current entries that are populated via Compatibility View button press. This is especially handy if you encounter a Quirks mode site that is blocking Internet Explorer 8 due to incorrect User Agent String detection – you can add the site in question to the compatibility list and be on your way. The entire feature is Group Policy enabled, giving you the most granular level control over the various knobs and switches. Most settings can also be configured using the IEAK. Compatibility View and Web Developers If you develop pages according to modern web standards and use the DOCTYPE directive to indicate layout mode, Internet Explorer behaves just as you would expect – Quirks DOCTYPEs map to Quirks mode and Standards DOCTYPEs map to IE8 Standards mode. And, just as in Beta 1, you can opt-out of IE8 Standards mode via tag / HTTP header. The best way to ensure users have a great experience with your website, and thus don’t have to use the Compatibility View feature at all, is to test your site using Internet Explorer 8 and update it as necessary. In the event that a user selects Compatibility View for your site, you can “bring them back” to your desired layout mode via use of the version targeting tag / HTTP header. A new content value, ‘IE=EmulateIE8’, rounds out the list of supported values and assists in this particular scenario. Content Value Details IE=EmulateIE8 Display Standards DOCTYPEs in IE8 Standards mode; Display Quirks DOCTYPEs in Quirks mode. Use this tag to override compatibility view on client machines and force Standards to IE8 Standards.The presence of the tag / header serves as an indication that the site has been updated to support IE8 and its value “wins” over whatever mode Compatibility View on the client would have resulted in. The presence of the tag / header also has some other side effects. For one, it triggers clean-up of the user list entry, ensuring that long-term the client’s user list gets pruned and you don’t have to keep the tag / header in place forever. (BTW, the user list also gets pruned when you choose to delete browser history). For another, presence of the tag / header causes the top-level command bar icon for Compatibility View to not be displayed, effectively preventing most users from adding your site to the Compatibility View list. A new tag in the User Agent string allows for detection of clients viewing your site in Compatibility View. This tag is also present in the “normal” Internet Explorer 8 User Agent string. Compatibility View: User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0; Trident/4.0; SLCC1; Media Center PC 5.0; .NET CLR 3.5.21022) Updated IE8 UA String: User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 6.0; Trident/4.0; SLCC1; Media Center PC 5.0; .NET CLR 3.5.21022) Finally, an update to the Developer Toolbar completes the feature set. The new ‘Browser Mode’ menu lets you modify how Internet Explorer behaves as well as how it reports its version to servers and websites. This lets you use Internet Explorer 8 to see what your site looks like in IE8 (the default), what your site looks like in IE7, and what your site looks like for users in IE8 who are running in Compatibility View. http://ieblog.members.winisp.net/images/DevToolsCompatView2.png The ‘Document Mode’ menu continues to exist independently of ‘Browser Mode’ to let you see what your site would look like if you changed the layout mode by using a different DOCTYPE or the tag. Summary We hope you find the new Compatibility View feature a noticeable improvement over the Emulate IE7 button experience. If you encounter problems with a specific website that Compatibility View doesn’t resolve, we’d like to know about it. The Report a Webpage Problem tool will help you submit a report. Scott Dickens Lead Program Manager edit: updated ALT text for images http://blogs.msdn.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=8898736 More...

We’re excited to release IE8 Beta 2 today for public download. You can find it at http://www.microsoft.com/ie8. Please try it out! You’ll find versions for 32- and 64-bit editions of Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, and Windows Server 2008. In addition to English, IE8 Beta 2 is available in Japanese, Chinese (Simplified), and German. Additional languages will be available soon. 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: http://ieblog.members.winisp.net/images/New.Tab.Page1.png IE8 makes bringing back tabs (and entire IE sessions) users have closed a lot easier; it’s in the natural flow of how users work. IE8 also takes into account that there are often relationships between new tabs that users open, and the browser can make it a lot easier to figure out which tabs go with which. Below, the tabs that came from the links in the search results page are grouped together and colored differently from the headlines the user followed off another page, which are different from links the user followed off other pages: http://ieblog.members.winisp.net/images/Tab.Grouping1.png Navigation – or getting to where you want to – is a lot faster and easier too. Typing in the Smart Address Bar not only searches across Favorites, History, and RSS feeds, but provides a great experience: http://ieblog.members.winisp.net/images/Address.Bar.Nav.png We put a lot of different designs in front of users in order to find one that was this effective. It’s easy to scan, with the different sections marked off and one line for each item, and the highlighting is easy on the eye. Deleting typos (or other unwanted suggestions) from this list is also easy – notice the red "x" above appears when a user places his mouse over an item. Beyond tabs and navigation, people use services all the time. When you have an address but want a map, or want to just select some text and make a blog post out of it, IE8’s Accelerators (formerly known as ‘Activities’) are handy. For Beta 2, we’ve worked with a lot of great partners to deliver a bunch of choices for users. They’re much faster and easier than the “select, copy, new tab, navigate, paste, repeat” process in today’s other browsers. We think users will enjoy the consistent experience they’ll get from service to service, and appreciate being in complete control of which are installed and are the default. We hope that websites (and enthusiasts!) write more of them and give us feedback. Staying up to date with the latest information is a lot easier with Web Slices, that put information directly in your Favorites bar where you can get at it quickly. This is a good moment to talk about performance. We think about two kinds of performance: real world and lab. In a lab, we measure performance in milliseconds. That’s important work, and we did a lot of it since Beta 1. You’ll find IE8 is a lot faster than IE7 on many sites. We can go through and detail, for example, exactly which Gmail operations are faster in IE8 than other browsers and vice versa. Real world performance is about how people get their tasks done, and that’s something you don’t measure in milliseconds. We think you’ll enjoy the impact of IE8’s new tabs, Smart Address Bar, Favorites bar, Search box, Accelerators, and Web Slices on your daily browsing. Visual Search in IE8 speaks for itself. Websites can offer rich search results as you type in the Search box: http://ieblog.members.winisp.net/images/Visual.Search.1B.pnghttp://ieblog.members.winisp.net/images/Visual.Search2C.png After installing IE8, try out Visual Search from the New York Times, Wikipedia, Amazon, or eBay. (Many other sites offer regular text suggestions as well.) Safety Safety isn’t about technologies and features, but two words: in control. We think users should be in control… of their settings, their information, what code runs on their machine, of their browser overall. Previous posts have described what you’ll find in IE8 Beta 2 with respect to the SmartScreen Filter and protection from phishing and malware as well as many other defenses. The XSS Filter is particularly exciting because it offers real people a real defense from a real threat, by default and out of the box. We’ve blogged about InPrivate previously as well. Taken together, these features do a great job putting the user in control of their information. The reliability improvements in IE8 Beta 2 are big. Crash recovery is nice, but not crashing is even better. Because in IE8 Loosely-Coupled IE (LCIE) separates the frame (the address bar, back button, etc.) from the tabs, and the tabs (mostly) from each other, crashes are more contained and affect fewer tabs than before. We think users will also appreciate having close boxes on all their toolbars so that disabling ones they don’t want – while leaving the ones they do – is easier. Platform IE8 is more interoperable with other web browsers and web standards. The contribution of CSS 2.1 test cases to the W3C is an important in order to really establish a standard way to assess standards support. We think that CSS 2.1 remains the most important place to deliver excellent interoperability between browsers. We think developers will enjoy the improvements to the built-in tools, as well as the other opportunities to integrate their sites in the user’s daily life with Accelerators and Web Slices. You can find more information at the IE Development Center, http://msdn.microsoft.com/ie. After deciding to default IE8 to the most standards-compliant mode available, we wanted to be sure to address compatibility concerns for organizations and individuals. Would websites that expect IE8 to behave the way IE7 does create a problem for end-users? Since March, we’ve been telling developers about a small change they can make to their sites to tell IE8 to show their sites as IE7 does. Many have – but there are a lot of sites that may have not yet addressed this. The Compatibility View button (new to IE8 Beta 2) is a good solution to provide end-users a good experience as the web transitions. Some Important Details Anyone interested in customizing and redistributing IE8 (the way others have IE7) can find information about the IEAK here. (We’ll have a more detailed post about IEAK and group policy soon.) One important aspect of a beta release is getting feedback; we’re using the same channels as described in this Beta 1 post (for example, this IE Beta newsgroup). Read more about guidelines for upgrading to IE8 Beta 2 today. Also, If you are currently using IE8 Beta 1 on Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 with Automatic Updates turned on, you will receive IE8 Beta 2 through Windows Update. Download IE8 Beta 2, use it – the browser itself, the developer tools, writing an Accelerator, marking part of your page as a Web Slice – and let us know what you think. Thank you, Dean Hachamovitch General Manager http://blogs.msdn.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=8898910 More...