Internet Explorer 8 now available for Download

Internet Explorer which is the web browser of Microsoft corporation is now officially available for download from Microsoft corporation at Internet Explorer Homepage.According to Microsoft Corporation Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) is the fastest web browser available in the market till today.

IE8 comprises more features than the other web browsers and previous versions of Internet Explorer like Accelerators , InPrivate Browsing , Web Slices , Search suggestions , SmartScreen Filter and many more.

IE8 has been in beta version for over a year but now its final version is released.It will be interesting to surf the final version of IE8.So Download IE8 from Internet Explorer 8 homepage now.

IE8 Reliability Update for Windows 7 Beta Now Available

We wanted to let you know that an update was released earlier today that will improve Internet Explorer’s reliability for users running the Windows 7 Beta. The update is now available via Windows Update, and can also be downloaded via Microsoft Update.
In this post we’ll discuss how we used the information that we’re receiving from Windows 7 Beta customers to determine the reliability fixes to include in this update.

We use the term “reliability” to broadly encompass all types of stability problems including crashes, hangs, memory leaks, etc. When we measure reliability we rely primarily on instrumentation built into Internet Explorer 8 and Windows 7. For example, the Customer Experience Improvement Program enables us to better understand how customers use our products, and Windows Error Reporting provides detailed information about the problems customers encounter. Shortly after the Windows 7 Beta became publically available these systems began to send information back to Microsoft.

After a week of monitoring this feedback we felt that we had reached a representative sampling of our customers. We found that approximately 10% of customers who had downloaded the Windows 7 Beta had experienced some type of reliability problem in IE8. We also found that a small number of users were experiencing crashes on a more regular basis and that about 1.5% of all Internet Explorer sessions had encountered a crash. This is relatively good for a pre-release version of Internet Explorer running on a beta operating system. We were also pleased to see that the new IE8 Crash Recovery feature was successfully helping customers recover from these crash situations 94% of the time.

One of the approaches that we use to analyze this data is called a failure curve. A failure curve is essentially a bar chart where each bar represents a unique failure (crash, hang, etc.). The height of the bar represents the number of occurrences in the last 30 days. Below you can see the failure curve for Internet Explorer 8 on Windows 7 Beta. The color indicates whether the failure is caused by Internet Explorer or a 3rd party toolbar or extension running inside of Internet Explorer.















As you can see about 40% of our reliability problems were caused by Internet Explorer and about 60% by 3rd party components. Another interesting point is that 17 unique issues account for 50% of all reported reliability problems. Because users generally have lots of toolbars and extensions installed, it’s common to see this many 3rd party components at the top of our failure curve.

Once we had the failure curve set up we began investigating each unique issue starting from the top of the curve. We started to understand the technical details of our own issues and developed fixes for them. For 3rd party problems we worked closely with our partners to address each issue either through an update to the 3rd party code, by working around the problem inside of the Internet Explorer code base, or as a last resort by preventing the 3rd party component from loading.

Most of the issues that we discovered through the Beta are fixed in the Release Candidate 1 which is now available for Windows Vista and Windows XP. We also wanted some of these fixes to reach our Windows 7 Beta users now. We decided to piggyback onto this first update for the Windows 7 Beta.

This update will address many of the top crashes and hangs from the Windows 7 Beta, which includes those caused by Internet Explorer as well as 3rd party components like Adobe Flash, Adobe Acrobat, and several others. We have also included fixes to enable printing PDF files and an architectural change which improves cookie management. This update does not contain other changes introduced between the Windows 7 Beta and Internet Explorer 8 Release Candidate 1.
We encourage everyone to download this update and provide feedback. Your feedback was the driving force behind many of the decisions we made and we appreciate your continued participation during the Windows 7 Beta cycle.

Herman Ng
Program Manager

PM by ieblog

Google Toolbar 6 beta for Internet Explorer: back to basics

The Toolbar Team has always been focused on improving your web experience. We started with the goal of making search more accessible, and a couple of iterations led to improvements like search suggestions, Google Bookmarks, Autofill, and Custom Buttons and gadgets. Now we're bringing the focus back to our core areas of search and navigation.

First of all, in today's Toolbar 6 launch for Internet Explorer we're introducing the Quick Search Box (QSB) feature that provides search functionality outside of the browser. Just click on the Google logo in the taskbar to trigger it (or use the Ctrl+Space shortcut for quicker access). As you type, it will provide search and website suggestions, relevant bookmarks, and even allow you to launch applications directly from the search box. Try typing "solitaire" to see the application launcher in action. And here's the best part: as you use the QSB, it'll customize itself to your usage pattern, so over time you have to type fewer characters to navigate to your favorite sites and applications.


In addition, we're building on our existing suggest functionality in the Toolbar search box by bringing elements from our search results page directly into the toolbar. We're experimenting with displaying high-quality website suggestions and sponsored links as you type your query. Clicking on these will take you directly to the website (try typing "cnn" in the toolbar to see an example). Going forward, we'll continue to explore new ideas and optimize the search box to give you the best experience possible.

Lastly, we wanted to bring the new tab page to our Internet Explorer users (our Firefox Toolbar users have been enjoying it already for the last few weeks). You can quickly access your most viewed sites, recently closed tabs and bookmarked pages — all from this new tab page. Editing your most visited sites is easy, and all this data remains locally in your browser, meaning none of your most viewed sites or recently closed pages are sent back to Google. Those who prefer new tabs to open a blank page or a website can do so in the Internet Explorer or Toolbar settings menus.

So, give the latest toolbar a shot — it's available in 40 languages — and don't forget to let us know what you think.

Posted by Zelidrag Hornung, Engineering Lead, Toolbar Team

Is the new browser war a good thing for end users?

Posted by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes @ 5:00 am

Browsers are getting better. Much better. The latest beta from Apple of Safari 4 shows just how much work is going in to making the modern browser fast, reliable, easy to use and standards compliant. Even Internet Explorer, while trailing the pack in terms of speed and compliance, is getting better. But is the new browser war a good thing for end users?

On the face of it that seems like a silly question. Of course it’s good for users. As a result of the groping competition users end up with faster, more reliable, more secure, easier to use browsers. Even Internet Explorer, which was stagnant for years, has improved dramatically (but it still has a long way to go). That’s gotta be a good thing, right?

Well, maybe not. While I’m happy to have several browsers installed on my system, and switch between the browsers depending on what I’m doing, this kind of behavior isn’t for everyone. Putting aside the fact that installing multiple browsers on a system means that you have to keep them all patched up in order to prevent vulnerabilities from building up, you can only really have one default browser on a PC, and so switching between them is cumbersome. You either have to copy and paste URLs between the browsers, or continually switch the default browser setting. You also run into problems with favorites - importing favorites into a newly installed browser is one thing, keeping all the favorites synced up is another. As a user of multiple browser, I know just how much of a hassle it all it.

So, wile I like Opera, Google Chrome and the new Safari 4 beta (I feel pretty indifferent about Internet Explorer 8 beta so far), I still consider Firefox to be the primary replacement for Internet Explorer. The reason is simple - it’s the most mature of the alternatives. While Chrome handles multiple tabs far better than Firefox, Opera has a built-in torrent capability, and Safari 4 is faster, but Firefox is a better all-rounder. not only that, but while Firefox remains the only browser that makes extensive use of add-ons, it’ll continue to remain popular amongst geeks (oddly enough, I don’t care much for the add-ons … too much hassle come time to upgrade the browser).

In my opinion, the only real alternative to IE is Firefox. It’s nice to have the other browsers (and on the Mac, an improved Safari is a good thing), but for now they’re just minor players.

Do you think that the new browser war a good thing for end users?

Windows 7 testers should upgrade their IE8

Though there is no IE8 release candidate for Win7, there's now another way for testers to apply critical bux fixes.

By Scott M. Fulton, III | Published February 25, 2009, 11:08 AM

The first release candidate for Microsoft Internet Explorer 8, released last month, addressed a number of technical behavioral issues that, according to IE8 Program Manager Herman Ng yesterday, included some serious crashes and system hangs. That's normal for even a public beta like IE8 Beta 2, and the new Crash Recovery feature in RC1 addresses 94% of these "reliability problems," Ng said, albeit with what could be for many testers a very well-used safety net.

But what about Windows 7 beta testers? The IE8 release candidates currently available are for Windows Vista and Windows XP, separately. Microsoft decided it would be a good idea to address their concerns as well, so yesterday, it begain issuing a "reliability update" for its version of IE8. This doesn't make its IE8 a "release candidate for Win7," though it does roll up the various fixes implemented in the Vista and XP RC versions.

"We found that approximately 10% of customers who had downloaded the Windows 7 Beta had experienced some type of reliability problem in IE8," Ng wrote. "We also found that a small number of users were experiencing crashes on a more regular basis and that about 1.5% of all Internet Explorer sessions had encountered a crash. This is relatively good for a pre-release version of Internet Explorer running on a beta operating system."

Good, but not great. Ng's data showed that, over the last 30 days, about half of all Windows 7 crashes being automatically reported to Microsoft were being caused by IE8. Issuing an "RC for Win7" would be wrong on two levels: First, Win7 is not an official product; it's a moving target with a variable code base. Second, it would introduce a factor into more clinical tests that would not be associated with something a real-world Windows 7 buyer would be likely to encounter. In other words, imagine this banner: "Welcome to Windows 7! To begin your experience, download a safety net for Internet Explorer 8 crashes now!"

So Microsoft is issuing its IE8 fix to Win7 testers today in a more clandestine manner, almost slipping it under the table. We dug around through Windows Update this morning on our virtual test Win7 system (not the same one we concocted by updating Windows XP), and we located the IE8 Reliability Update, though not under "Important." In fact, it's listed as "Update for Windows 7 Beta," with the only mention of IE being in the description.

We also checked this morning to see whether a similar rollup is being issued for testers of Windows Server 2008 R2, and we were surprised not to find one.