Last week Microsoft released their latest and greatest version of Internet Explorer; version 8.  As always some people hated it, some people liked it and another group…well they yawned and went on to other stuff.

Being a Microsoft supporter, I dislike having to say it but I yawned after I installed it on my desktop and netbook units.  After installing it, I have to tell you I didn’t see that much had changed.

I am going to mention a few things that will be of some difference for the average user.

First, they (the MS designers) have added a better search feature.  If you are looking for a particular word or phrase in a web page, hold down the CTRL (Control) key and tap the F (Find) key.  Immediately a box will open at the top of the page and you just start typing what you are looking for.  The CTRL + F keystroke combination has been in MSIE (Microsoft Internet Explorer) for all of the past versions that I can remember but now it does more.  It will tell you how many times the search phrase appears, will highlight the first occurrence and let you click “Next” to get to the next item.  It also highlights all of the appearances in the document in case you just want to read through and see them. 

Next, it has a new feature entitled, “Web Slices”.  This one allows you to find items that change on a page, say something you would like to purchase on eBay.  “Mark” that page so that when it changes in price the Web Slice tab will become bold and start flashing.  A neat feature, although so far I have only been able to make it work on very few sites.  Here’s hoping they get that one fixed…soon.

Another interesting feature is called, “Compatibility View”.  With this one you may get to a web page that will not load properly or just not look like it should.  Compatibility will allow you to click the CV button and you will then see it the way it appeared in older browsers.  It will put the images or menu selections in the correct place the way the page was written.

There are many behind the scenes features that only a web developer would notice. 

Give it a try and see how it works.  All of the features that I have tried out so far have been present in Firefox add-ins for quite a while.  Will I switch to MSIE 8 as my fulltime browser?  It is highly unlikely since I currently prefer Firefox to MSIE 8.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 24th, 2009 at 6:42 am and is filed under Columns. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.