Internet Explorer 8 has gone “gold” and is now available for free download from Microsoft’s website.
It boasts “protection that no other browser can match” apparently, however I won’t be holding my breath on that one and if anything it will almost taunt the hackers into exploiting it even faster!
Here is the MS blurb on its other new features:
- Accelerators. Accelerators make it faster and easier to perform common tasks online by making Web-based services such as ESPN.com, Live Search and Sina available for use directly from the page people are viewing. Users can simply right-click a word or phrase and instantly map, e-mail, or share it.
- Web Slices. Web Slices in Internet Explorer 8 makes favorite information from sites such as Digg, Yahoo! Mail, OneRiot, and eBay instantly available wherever someone goes on the Web.
- Visual search suggestions. The Instant Search Box in Internet Explorer 8 enables rich, real-time search from sites such as The New York Times, Amazon.com and Wikipedia, as well as sites from people’s own Favorites and History, complete with visuals and detailed information that saves time.
Seeing as my main machine is a Mac now, I won’t get to test this on a daily basis, but I will install it on my Windows machine later and see if it as big a jump as IE7 was with its introduction of tabbed browsing.
