Just when I thought I was content and somewhat complacent about my web browser, here come the Windows people with their latest version. Internet Explorer 8 claims to be faster, easier and safer. I just had to see this for myself. How does this get any better?

I immediately downloaded it to try it on for size and in no time saw what they meant. Internet Explorer 8 addresses just about all of the major concerns that users and critics have had with the world’s most used browser.

Internet Explorer 8 adds accelerators to provide instant access to information like maps, web searches, translations, email, blogging, and more; faster performance; a smart address bar; improved privacy protection; and Compatibility View for displaying websites designed for older browsers.

True to form, 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 is a breeze and so is 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. The people at Windows seem to give a greater emphasis on web standards and security more 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.

For the more techie set (IT people!), faster and easier deployment and manageability is accomplished with new features such as Slipstream Installation that enables the deployment of IE 8 and customizations as part of the Windows Vista operating system image, eliminating the need to install the browser separately. When deployed in this manner, it will behave as part of Windows Vista, thereby improving desktop consistency and manageability.

There’s also the Simplified IE Administration Kit which helps IT pros configure deployment settings easily and now has Favorites customization and the ability to import Acelerators that will give us easy access to online services of our choice from any page we‘ll visit. They also allow us faster browsing by eliminating most of the clicks required to get to the sites.

The most reliable version of the browser to date? With less clicks to do therefore making things easier and faster, not to mention safer, IE 8 outperforms its ancestors with tighter security, private browsing and a clean look.

One thing I like is the more extensive parental control we can customize to fit each individual in a family. If you have small kids and safety’s a priority, then this is definitely the browser for your home computer.

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