There are several new and interesting features. Web Slices lets you save predefined sections of a Web page for at-a-glance viewing. Instead of going to a traffic Web site for updates, the latest commuting news comes to you. Similarly, Accelerators make repetitive tasks one-click behaviors, for instance finding directions or blogging. InPrivate browsing introduces a cache and history on-off switch, while related tabs are color-coded and automatically reorganized as you open them. There’s also tab sandboxing, which means that when a tab crashes, IE itself won’t, and it even tries to resurrect the page that crashed.

There’s a greater emphasis on Web standards and security than before. The SmartScreen and cross-site scripting filters throw up a red warning page when you’re about to visit an unsafe site. There’s also domain highlighting, which grays out the name of the URL you’re looking at except for the domain itself. This sounds simple, but effectively draws attention to spoofed site URLs. There’s also a compatibility button so that sites designed specifically for IE 7 and earlier can still be viewed.

IE 8 lacks a default “smart” location bar that many other browsers have, but you can search your history and most visited pages from there. Also, the installation process still requires a reboot–unimpressive, to say the least. Drawbacks aside, there’s no reason to not upgrade if you’re an old fan of IE, and there’s even a few things in IE 8 for new users.

This feature is described by Microsoft as a tool to suggest websites, which is done by the browser sending information to Microsoft over a secure connection, which keeps the information and a per-session, uniquely-generated identifier for a short time.The Suggested Sites feature is turned off by default, and is disabled when the user is browsing with InPrivate enabled or visiting SSL-secured, intranet, IP address, or IDN address sites. Potentially personally-identifiable information such as the user’s IP address and browser information is sent to Microsoft as an artifact of the HTTPS protocol. Microsoft has stated that they do not store this information.

The functionality was defended by Microsoft after itworld.com’s Gregg Keizer described it as a “phone home” feature.

A new security mode called InPrivate debuted with IE8, and consists of two main features: InPrivate Browsing and InPrivate Filtering. Like similar privacy protection modes in Safari, Firefox 3.5, and Google Chrome, InPrivate Browsing has been described as a “porn mode” in various news outlets.

InPrivate Browsing in Internet Explorer 8 helps prevent one’s browsing history, temporary Internet files, form data, cookies, and usernames and passwords from being retained by the browser, leaving no easily accessible evidence of browsing or search history. InPrivate Filtering provides users an added level of control and choice about the information that third party websites can potentially use to track browsing activity. InPrivate Subscriptions allow you to augment the capability of InPrivate Blocking by subscribing to lists of websites to block or allow.

As with other private browsing modes there are ways that information about a browsing session can be recovered.

Accelerators are a form of selection-based search which allow a user to invoke an online service from any other page using only the mouse.Actions such as selecting the text or other objects will give users access to the usable Accelerator services (such as blogging with the selected text, or viewing a map of a selected geographical location), which can then be invoked with the selected object. According to Microsoft, Accelerators eliminate the need to copy and paste content between web pages. Internet Explorer 8 specifies an XML-based encoding which allows a web application or web service to be invoked as an Accelerator service. How the service will be invoked and for what categories of content it will show up is specified in the XML file.Similarities have been drawn between Accelerators and the controversial Smart tags feature experimented with in the IE 6 Beta but withdrawn after criticism (though later included in MS Office).

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