IE8: Nine Things You Didn't Know You Could Do
Our typical posts here are original information about the product from the people who built the product. This morning, I ran across a well-written article from PC Magazine with “some tips about features that you may not have noticed” in IE8.
We try to post a lot of useful information on this site (e.g. Session Cookies, sessionStorage, and IE8 or “How can I log into two webmail accounts at the same time?”) and it’s both exciting and humbling to see professional writers take it a step further.
Dean Hachamovitch
General Manager, IE
Comments
Anonymous
May 12, 2009
PingBack from http://asp-net-hosting.simplynetdev.com/ie8-nine-things-you-didnt-know-you-could-do/Anonymous
May 12, 2009
Do not be shy about explaining how to use inPrivate as an AdBlock Plus "equivalent". It needs some work: subscriptions (auto updating) and better support for the AdBlock Plus format but it is a much better option than AdBrick for IE... until IEPro is ready for IE8 ;)Anonymous
May 12, 2009
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May 12, 2009
It's all nice and dandy with IE 8 out the door, but it's about time starting to spill the beans on the next version of IE. Whats going on? talk to us!Anonymous
May 12, 2009
Dean Hachamovitch, I commend you for leading me to the PC Magazine article. I can't believe it, but I can switch back to IE8 now because they actually found how to have the InPrivate Filtering setting be initially on!!! I stated during the IE8 RC that that was the deal breaker and I would go back to Firefox if it was not "fixed" in the final release. Well, it wasn't, and I went back. LOL So now, WOW! The setting is actually in there, of course just hidden from the masses thanks to whatever IE team wisdon. heh Thanks again!Anonymous
May 12, 2009
"All of us that love blocking ads should be pushing Microsoft NOT to make blocking ads any easier lest the sheep start blocking ads and ruin it for everyone." Take a hike pal! LOL Adblockplus in Firefox is the greatest thing since sliced bread. And now IE8 can do it natively, that's AWESOME. 3 cheers to MS for making it (a little bit, anyway) easier! ha!!!Anonymous
May 12, 2009
Why 9 things? Why not 10? could they not find 1 more?! Or even 8 things for IE8!Anonymous
May 13, 2009
@Moron: Errr.. interesting choice of name, but hey, maybe you're being ironic. I can only hope so, because your comment makes no sense at all. My point is that if you want to keep enjoying your "sliced bread," you have to keep it to yourself, or as few people as practical. Otherwise, it's not going to be nearly as good. Ever hear of the "Tragedy of the Commons"? Do some research.Anonymous
May 13, 2009
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May 13, 2009
And that's EXACTLY where you're wrong, Nick. The only reason that you can block based on URL/IP is because the advertiser isn't bothering to make these MUCH more difficult to predict, and because the content provider hasn't bothered to write a little tiny bit of script to detect blocked ads and kick you out to a full page advertisement instead. These are both relatively simple things to do; I could bore you with about 50 different techniques. The advertisers aren't bothering (yet) because somewhere well under 5% of users are blocking ads. That will change. Even the makers of the adblockers realize this and are trying to call for a truce: http://adblockplus.org/blog/an-approach-to-fair-ad-blocking Maybe a story is called for. I bought one of the very first Tivo boxes back in the day. It was awesome. I could effectively block ads on every show I watched. Then, curse it, Tivo and other DVRs got popular, and soon everyone had one, even my grandparents and parents and non-technical friends. Have you watched TV lately? Ever wonder why the judges on American idol fondle Coke cups throughout the show? Or why the contestents "sing/perform" in commercials masquerading as content? Or why the bottom 20% of the screen is constantly overlayed by some kind of flashing gizmo trying to get you to take some action (watch something else, learn about a product, etc)? These things are almost a DIRECT result of the mass marketization of ad-blocking technology like Tivo. There is ZERO reason to believe the web model is going to behave any differently.Anonymous
May 13, 2009
Why won't you support the latest scripting and html features in your releases ? You are always behind competitors for absolutely no good reason. Where is the HTML5 support for things like <CANVAS> currently supported (for a long time) by Firefox and Chrome. Is it because you fear nobody would use Silverlight if there was an easy browser independent way to do animations and video without plugins ?? SVG support is aboslutely not the same thing since it isn't even fully scriptable. And why did we need to wait until IE8 to get standards support ?? Amazing. You need to lead the development, not lagg behind competitors all the time !!!Anonymous
May 14, 2009
Earlier IEs had standards support. Just not the standards that you wanted. And as it wasn't stated anywhere that those standards were being supported, this is completely the correct way of going about things. Complaining about it is like complaining that your unleaded car won't run on diesel. If you want a car that does so then get one that supports it. The only real difference here is that in this case we would also have a lot of the petrol stations (developers) wanting cars to run diesel (more recent standards), but they have no real say in the matter.Anonymous
May 15, 2009
At least do some Silverlight based plugin that works like the standard <canvas>, including of course the scripting part. Preferrably it should recognize the <canvas> tag and not require an object tag. There so many other pet projects from MS devs so this should interest someone, either that or support one of the projects currently trying to emulate canvas support in ie.Anonymous
May 15, 2009
How about being able to pause a download and resume it in a later session? FF has been doing this for a while. For me this is a feature which has been missing for quite a while. If a lengthy download takes forever, I can pause it and resume later. When will we see this on IE8?Anonymous
May 17, 2009
I have Windows Vista with I E 7, version 7.0.6001.18 and cannot load Internet Explorer 8. Windows keeps sending it to me ( in my updates area ) and I try to load it and fail. I've done this four times now, why does Windows keep sending me a product that repeated fails ? Bye.Anonymous
May 18, 2009
Thanks Dean Hachamovitch for posting the link. Hope IE8 ad-blocker algorithm gets constantly updated as advertisers try to circumvent it.Anonymous
May 25, 2009
I am a dialup user and while SAVING A WEBPAGE the save webpage dialog in IE8 blocks ALL the tabs till the saving is over,it usually takes about 2-3 minutes per webpage saved(with images etc)If I save 10 webpages that adds up to 20-30 minutes of wasted time by using ie Although I have mentioned this a several times before MS has not given me a proper answerAnonymous
May 26, 2009
hdw, what do you consider a "proper answer"? Microsoft did respond to you, acknowledged that this is a known and undesirable issue, and indicated that they have not yet fixed it.