Five reasons to try IE8

Microsoft's Internet Explorer 8 is now just weeks away from its final release following the release candidate version made available last week. The final release of IE8 is expected to be almost identical to the release candidate version so we took at a look at some of the more interesting features users can expect in IE8.

Accelerators
Accelerators are a form of selection-based action. With the appropriate accelerators installed users can highlight a piece of content on a site they are visiting and then either perform a search based on that, add the content to their blog or view a map of the area, for example. Microsoft has an already-extensive collection of accelerators for users to download and add to their browser and they range from social networking tools to news tools, search, email and translation tools.

Web slices
Web Slices are portions of a website that users can subscribe to. Once subscribed they can quickly monitor changes to that "slice" in their favourites bar. The developer of a website does, however, need to define the slices on a page that users can subscribe to.

InPrivate Filtering
InPrivate Filtering, which was called InPrivate Blocking in Beta 2of IE8, helps protect the privacy of users by allowing the user to block content coming from third parties that are in a position to track their online behavior. Users are provided with notice, choice and control of which third parties to allow and which ones to block.

Compatibility View
Compatibility View is intended to make it possible for users to view sites that have been written for "older browsers" and may not perform as well in IE8. This is in large part because Microsoft's earlier browsers were significantly less standards-based than Internet Explorer 8. With its latest browser the company has committed to build one that is as standards compliant as possible which, ironically, means that sites built with browsers like Internet Explorer 6 in mind, don't always work as planned on Internet Explorer 8. The Compatibility View in IE8 allows users to switch back to older rendering engines for those sites that don't look right in IE8.

Anti-Clickjacking
New in Internet Explorer 8 is a feature that allows Web site content owners to play a role in preventing ClickJacking, which is an exploit that tricks users into clicking into malicious sites without their knowledge. Website owners can now insert a header tag into the site so that users are warned if there is an attempted ClickJacking attempt.