[ it's my Windows ]

Join members of the Internet Explorer team for an Expert Zone chat next Thursday, October 16^th at 10.00 PDT/17.00 UTC. These chats are a great opportunity to have your questions answered by members of the IE product team. Thank you to all who have attended the chats to date!

If you can’t join us online, all chat transcripts are published here.

The IE Team want to hear your feedback on IE8 Beta 2!

P.S. Upcoming IE chat dates are posted here.

Source: IE Blog

Internet Explorer

IEAK8 Beta is now available publically for everyone to try. To give you some background, the IEAK allows you to deploy customized packages and manage IE settings post deployment within corporations and among Internet Content Providers (ICP) and Internet Service Providers (ISP). For instance, Acme Corp could use IEAK to create a custom IE package for their employees that has Acme favorites, search providers, home pages, Web Slices, Accelerators, and more.

We simplified creating, deploying and managing branded IE packages. We optimized the IEAK to help you build your customized IE packages more quickly and to allow you to configure and customize new features in Internet Explorer 8, like Accelerators and Web Slices.

In this post, I will be talking about how the IEAK:

• Helps customize new features in IE8
• Provides full language and platform support
• Builds IE8 packages more quickly and is more intuitive.

Customize New Features in IE8

The following new features can be now customized via the IEAK8:

Accelerators

You can easily include custom defaults for Accelerators: simply point to an XML file for the desired Accelerator, or import existing Accelerators from a local machine.

Web Slices

In the Favorites, Favorites Bar and Feeds dialog you can now add custom Web Slices by simply clicking on the Web Slice radio button and specifying the Web Slice information.

Compatibility View

Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 introduces Compatibility View which is a significant enhancement over the “Emulate IE7” functionality from IE8 Beta 1. You can customize this feature in the Compatibility view dialog.

Search Enhancements

 IE8 supports search providers which offer rich text and image suggestions; through IEAK 8 you can add search providers with suggestions and configure default search providers.

Additional IE8 Features

Many other IE8 features, like InPrivate Browsing, Developer Tools and Delete Browsing History, can be customized in the Additional Settings page available in the corporate license mode. For example, in a corporate environment you might want to encourage users to delete saved passwords; you can chose to have the Delete Passwords checkbox in Delete Browsing History checked by default. Similarly, you may want to turn off InPrivate Browsing mode by default.

Build Your IE8 Package More Quickly

Internet Explorer 8 Customization Wizard has fewer pages than the Internet Explorer 7 Customization Wizard: you’ll be able to build your customized package faster now.

The simplified IEAK8 Custom Components Screen:

Full Language and Platform support

The IEAK8 Beta can build IE8 packages for all platforms and 24 languages supported by IE8 Beta 2. Please refer to the blog posted titled IE8 Beta 2 Available in 25 Languages for a complete list of supported platforms and languages.

How does the IEAK apply branding?

Customers have often asked me how the IEAK applies branding to IE. Branding in this case can be defined as any customization of IE, including all the customizations mentioned above. The IEAK generated IE package contains both the IE8 setup files (unless you are using the configuration only package, in which case IE8 would already be installed on your computer and you wouldn’t need the setup files) and customizations. The IE8 setup is used to install IE8. Upon restart, customizations are applied per user to the registry and branding files.

The customizations are stored in the install.ins file found under the Custom or Signup folders in the Internet Explorer directory. The install.ins file contains all types of branding including IEAK and unattend branding. IEAK branding consists of ISP, ICP and corporate branding, while unattend branding consists of the manufacturer defaults.

Branding is also applied when the user chooses to Reset Internet Explorer settings (RIES). This can be done by selecting Reset under the Advanced tab in the internet options dialog. RIES will apply the branding found in the install.ins file. If a user were to remove the install.ins file and reset IE, the branding step would get skipped. In IE8, RIES comes with a Remove Branding option; however, this option only removes ISP, ICP and Corporate branding; unattend branding will not be removed.

Thanks to Jatinder Mann, Program Manager for sharing this informative article.

Download : IEAK 8 Beta

Source: IE Blog

How do I ?, Internet Explorer

If you’re already using IE8 Beta 2, you’ve probably already seen the new search features available in IE8, perhaps you’ve even tried them out. Today I’d like to show you these features in greater detail and fill you in on some of the things we were thinking about when we created them.

Our goal for IE8 is to make searching for what you need faster and easier. We want you to search for the right term on the right provider and get the right information as quickly as possible. Here’s how we make that happen in IE8:

• Search Suggestions present you with suggested queries as you type which help you compose and research your query.
• Visual Search Suggestions are suggestions which include an image and additional text. These can help you visualize what you are searching for and sometimes even get you the information you need without even leaving the search box.
• The QuickPick menu enables you to easily switch to your secondary, non-default, Search providers allowing you to search with the right provider every time.
• History results, directly accessible from the search box, show you pages you’ve already visited and save you a click or two. 
• Automatic Search Accelerators allow you to send selected text on a webpage to any of your search providers skipping the cumbersome copy and paste step.    
• Search query synchronization keeps the search box up to date with your most recent query term even if you search within a webpage instead of the search box. You can quickly edit or redirect your searches

For More Detailed Article: IE8 Blog

Internet Explorer

Recently Microsoft has been announced IE8 Beta 2. In comparison with Beta 1 release, the Beta 2 is packed with features and functionality aimed at the home & business users and as well as for IT Professionals and Developers too. IE8 is still under development and may contains bug issues, So its not ready for day to day use and web development environment. But apart from all these things, It has plenty of new features and major IE release since IE6. So give yourself an opportunity to take a test drive of IE8 Beta 2.

Top 5 Features

Accelerators

Accelerators offers resourcefully your day to day surfing activities like mapping directions, translating words, emailing your friends (not even Live Mail, but you can also add 3rd party accelerators to get functionality to send using Gmail, Yahoo Mail etc), and much more few mouse clicks.

Web Slices

Using Web Slices, you can be notified and get updated contents regularly from the Favorites Bar. If a Web Slice is available on a page, a green Web Slices icon will appear in the upper-right hand corner of the browser. We can subscribe and add them to the Favorites Bar effortlessly.

More Web Slices and Accelerators: http://ieaddons.com/

Instant Search

One thing that amazed me is Instant Search and offers preview of search result’s web pages. Instant Search, as you type anything in search box, it display search results with visual preview according to relevant web search. IE 8 offers accelerators to add custom search of top search providers like Live Search, Wikipedia, Yahoo!, Amazon, Google and much more.

Compatibility View

IE 8 is a beta release and most of websites may not yet be ready for Internet Explorer 8 and it distorts UI of web pages. To fix or resolve this issue IE 8 offers Compatibility View button to display the website as viewed in Internet Explorer 7, which will correct display problems like misaligned text, images, or text boxes. You can add any website in capability list by click on Compatibility View button in address bar.

InPrivate Browsing

I am sure; this feature will be taking on by most of users. Sometimes you want to safe browsing without footprints for a specific web browsing activity. Then InPrivate Browsing helps you to prevent your browsing history, cookies, and usernames and passwords from being retained by the web browser, leaving no evidence of your browsing or search history.

You can start InPrivate Browsing by opening a new tab and selecting InPrivate Browsing from Command Bar’s Safety menu or by press shortcut key CTRL+Shift+P.

Rest of all these features, there are lots of chnages has been implemented such as SmartScreen Filter formally know as Phishing Filter, Enhanced Favorites Bar, Tab isolation and Crash recovery. So give yourself an opportunity to take a test drive of IE8 Beta 2.

Download: Internet Explorer 8

Internet Explorer, Reviews

Microsoft announced to release IE8 Beta 2 today for public download. You can find it at http://www.microsoft.com/ie8. Please try it out!

You’ll find versions for 32- and 64-bit editions of Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, and Windows Server 2008. In addition to English, IE8 Beta 2 is available in Japanese, Chinese (Simplified), and German. Additional languages will be available soon.

Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 comes with new features to enhance privacy, ease-of-use, and security. Microsoft first released Beta 1 version of IE 8 in March, but that was aimed at letting Web developers take a first look at the new browser. This latest version is aimed at a broader consumer audience.

Source & Download: Microsoft

Internet Explorer

What about your privacy as you browse the web? As Dean outlined is his post earlier today, there is so-called “3rd-party” content on websites, some of which can gather data about how you browse the web. How do you know what that is, or how to control it?

With respect to privacy, IE8 gives users more choice about controlling what information they keep and exchange. In the first part of this post I’ll describe two Internet Explorer 8 features that help you control your history, cookies, and other information that Internet Explorer stores on your behalf. In the latter part, I’ll describe two more features that can help you control how your browsing history is shared by websites. By default, IE8 browses the web the same way IE7 does.

InPrivate™ Browsing lets you control whether or not IE saves your browsing history, cookies, and other data
Delete Browsing History helps you control your browsing history after you’ve visited websites.
InPrivate™ Blocking informs you about content that is in a position to observe your browsing history, and allows you to block it.

InPrivate Subscriptions allow you to augment the capability of InPrivate Blocking by subscribing to lists of websites to block or allow.

More Details

Internet Explorer