Internet Explorer 8 Guide

The latest version of Internet Explorer, Internet Explorer 8, is being hailed as a must-have download for Windows users. It features private browsing, a new and very handy feature called Web Slices and much, much more. Michael "Doc" Callahan gives the guided tour in this 10-part series.

Understanding Internet Explorer 8 - #11 - Basics of Internet Explorer 8 Hi, this is Mike Callahan Doctor File Finder. Now, Internet Explorer is probably one of the most talked about releases of Internet Explorer in quite some time. This is probable because it has lots of new features and functions, lots of improvements over Internet Explorer 7. So in this 10 part series, we’re going to be looking at some of those new features like accelerators that give you lots more information from the Web, InPrivate Browsing that lets you browse the internet privately. There are also search suggestions, new things called Web Slices that are really interesting and very cool. There’s also improved navigation, improved the favorites and history management and lots more. Now, in this segment, I’m going to look at some of the navigation improvements in IE8. One of those is compatibility view. Some web pages won’t display properly under Internet Explorer 8 and so there’s a compatibility mode that my own web page won’t display properly. So when you get to a page that isn’t quite supportive of Internet Explorer 8 it brings up this compatibility view icon to right next to refresh up by the address bar and just click on that now my page in compatibility view. If you click on tools compatibility, compatibility view settings I can add my website so that next time I come back it will automatically go into compatibility view. I can include website lists updated by Microsoft. I can just play all websites in compatibility view and so on. Another cool feature is the improved tab function. You’ll notice that this two are the same color that’s because the one was opened from the other. So for example, I’m on this page here, if I right click let’s opening a new tab it opens a new tab and it color codes them the same. So if I go to this page and I click on function, right click and say opening a new tab, it opens that in the same color. So this way, it’s easy to see which tabs were open from preceding tabs, you can right click, you could say close this tab, close this group, close other tabs, ungroup this tab from the rest of them and so on. So that’s another handy function in the navigation. In addition, there’s an improved search function, find on page where you can type in as word and as you can see down here that as I’m typing the word browsing it’s highlight in it. And if you go down here you can see it’s highlighted in yellow so that it clearly stands out which is a huge improvement over previous versions. Now, in this segment, I’m going to take a look at InPrivate browsing. This is a new feature in Internet Explorer 8 for those times when you want to browse privately. Now, normally, when you open up a webpage it automatically saves history information, cookies, temporary internet browse and more to your hard drive where it can be visible. Now, you can get to InPrivate browsing by clicking on safety in InPrivate browsing and click over here in tools and InPrivate browsing or you can also right click in a tab say new tab and when the new tab opens up here’s an option here to open an InPrivate browsing window. So whichever ways easiest way for you is the way to go. Now, with InPrivate browsing turned out, you see this indicator up here InPrivate and it helps prevent Internet Explorer from storing data about your browsing session that includes temporary Internet files, history, cookies and other data, the toolbars and extensions are disabled by default. When you browse in here and nothing will be saved and when you’re done all you have to do to close it is simply close this window. And now, you’re back here in regular browsing mode. But once again, just to show you if I go to InPrivate browsing opens up a window and it shows this graphic right here to show you that you’re in InPrivate browsing session. Now, in this segment I’m going to look at Web Slices. This is a cool new feature in Internet Explorer 8 that I’m excited about because rather than you going to webpage over and over during the course of the day or week to find out that it’s been updated or to get email or to check out something. With Web Slices, the content brought to you. So when you go to the Ad-ons here for Internet Explorer 8 and I’m going to pick the Traffic from Live Search so I’m going to say add to Internet Explorer and that’s going to come up real time Traffic reports and you can see here it’s the symbol for Web Slices. So when I click that, now here it’s asking me add a Web Slice, get updated the Web Slice content from this webpage and do it in your favorites bar. This is Traffic Gallatin, Tennessee I’m going to click add to favorites bar and now you can see here’s Traffic for Gallatin Tennessee. Now, if you click in here, you can see the updated Traffic in the dropdown. If you right click, you can see that you have some options here, you can refresh them, refresh all of them and you can say bold on update. So the next time that there’s an update in the Traffic for Gallatin Tennessee this section of the favorites bar will become bold. So I’ll know that there’s some change. You can also add ones for weather and has Internet Explorer is out longer that will be more and more pages that support web slices. So, this is a cool way to give information if I want to manage the Traffic or the weather or email or so many other things instead of me having the casts that go to the site it’s like comes to me and says, hey there’s new Traffic. Now, in this segment I’m going to take a quick look at the new Smart Screen Filter that’s in here in Explorer 8. This function improves in the Phishing Filter that was introduced in Internet Explorer 7. Phishing you recall is an attempt by the perpetrators to lure you to flagellant websites so they could steal your personal information. Now, with the Smart Screen Filter, this has been greatly improved and I’m going to a test site here, click on the click start to see the page and wrap, a drape wrap. The red screen comes up shows that this website has been reported as unsafe; show the IP address, tells you that they recommend that you’re not continue to the website, go to your home page you can click this dropdown and get some more information. In addition, you can click on tools, we’ve got here the Smart Screen Filter you can check a website, and you can turn the Smart Screen Filter off something I don’t think I do. And you can also find the site that you find is unsafe and you can report that site. And then it goes into the database the Microsoft has compiled. Now, everything I’ve been able to read on the Internet is the same that the Smart Screen Filter has really improved the detection of Malware and Phishing sites and a number of sites say that Internet Explorer 8 is a mass download just because of this one feature. Now, in this segment I’m going to take just a brief look at the improved Search Function in Internet Explorer 8. The primary lows is search suggestions. Now, there’s a search box here at the top of the Internet Explorer 8 right across from the address bar. And you’ll find there as you start to type, Internet Explorer 8 says to provide you with suggestions. Just one character and already I have suggestions. In an --is giving me suggestions from the Internet these are some things from my computer. I’m going to take the word Charlie so I type the h-and the r and the l and now I’ve got a little image of Charlize Theron. Now, if I move to anyone of these things and click on it, it will take me right to that result. Now, if I put in the I, I get Charlie Sheen, Charlie Wilson, Charlie Chaplin, Charlie Daniels. Another really cool feature is that if you type in the name of a city and type in weather you’ll get the weather for that city so I can find out the weather for any city just by typing in the name of the city in the world weather and I find out that the weather in Nashville the temperature is 52 degrees and it’s cloudy with some white rain. Microsoft is also a teamed up with some providers like Amazon and Wikipedia to help you get some visual search so that you get images in type in Isaac Hayes. So this is one of the improved functions of Internet Explorer 8. It works extremely well and that concludes part six. Now, in this segment I’ll take a quick look at the Accessibility’s functions in Internet Explorer 8. The number of improvements: first in which is Adaptive Zoom. Now, the difference with the Zoom in Internet Explorer 8 compared to the Zoom that was introduced to Internet Explorer 7 is that Internet Explorer 7 was like holding a magnifying glass in front of the screen. Now here in Internet Explorer 8, you click view, you go on to Zoom, I’ll say a 125%. Now, keep your eye on the screen it zooms the portion of the screen I was actually looking at whereas in Internet Explorer 7 it would zoom in so that you were no longer focused on the part that you’re actually trying to look at. So this is a huge benefit for people with visual disabilities. Another cool feature in Internet Explorer 8 is Caret Browsing. Click view; go on to Caret browsing, get a little pop up that asks you if you want to turn it on, you say yes. And this is really very cool. Now, watch the cursor is on the page and I can maneuver the webpage with the keyboard, we’re going page up, page down; I can use the home key, the end key. If I want to select text just like being inside Microsoft Word, hold on the Shift key, cap the right arrow and I’m selecting text. I can go down; I could select the screen so. I can press control C and I’ve got all of that there. So this is a huge improvement for people who have difficulty using the mouse or who preferred to use the keyboard. And as always, you can also change the default size of fonts. So if you have visual problems you can increase the font in all webpages so that makes it easier to read. So these are some of the improved accessibility functions in Internet Explorer 8 and that concludes part seven. Now, in this segment I’m going to take a quick look at the Improved Favorites Function in Internet Explorer 8. They have it run in across here in the favorites bar. You can see other browsers like Firefox is called the bookmark bar. But this favorites bar, is vastly improved. In the earlier segment you saw that we could click web slices here. You can see there’s a updated Traffic for Gallatin Tennessee then click on the favorites here and see what you’ve got, Feeds, Favorites and History. You can also take and do a quick add so for example let’s say we want to add butterscotch.com as a favorite a wise choice. just click right here on this little star that’s got the green arrow on it at the favorites bar click and there it is added to our favorites. Another thing you could do is add an RSS Feed. So we’ll click on the RSS Feeds link; go here and say I want to see all the episodes of the A-list with Amber Mac. I click right here and then the little star with the green plus button; ask me if I want to subscribe, I subscribe. And now, if we look in our favorites list, under Feeds there it is the A-list. So we can have these things in our favorites. There’s also by default a suggested site button that brings you site based on what you’ve been looking at recently. I’ve been looking in awhile stuff pertaining to Tennessee so there are some suggestions there. If you’re in the favorites bar and you right click you can go down here, you can customize the widths so that—for example I can do icons only which gives me a lot more room. So as long as you know what the icon stand for you’re doing okay or you can have short titles rather than long titles in his Traffic or it’s whether butterscotch suggestions. You can also click here and you can refresh all of them, you can delete. So this is the Favorite Function in Internet Explorer 8 and that concludes part eight. Now, in this segment, I’m going to take a look at the History Function Internet Explorer 8. Click over here on Favorites now the History tab. Now, by default the history assorted by date. If you will click mo day, two weeks ago, three weeks ago and so on. If you click here in this dropdown menu you can have it sort of by site, by most visited, do the order of visited today and you can even do a search. So for example, let’s try it dong view by most visited click and see I’ve visited MSN the most, visited my own website a few times and the Live Search, few things on Butterscotch. So you can use this to find just like you visited in the past that you can’t quite recall where they are. When you search the history, you can go here and type in from text that you think might be relevant and then click search now and it pulled up three sites. Now, if you click on this, you go to that site. So this is a great way to utilize the history to sort it by date, by site, by the ones that are most visited and so on. Now, in this final part, I’m going to look at Ad-ons gallery for Internet Explorer. There are quite assortments of Ad-ons from blogging, bookmarks, email, mapping, shopping, news. I personally added Foxmarks which is one of my favorite Ad-ons for Firefox to Internet Explorer so all my bookmarks are synchronized with all my copies of Firefox. And to add one of this, we’ll select something simple dictionaries and reference. You can just do Wikipedia visual search, click add to Internet Explorer, a box comes up. Use search suggestions from this provider I’ll click add and that’s all there’s to it. Obviously some Ad-ons will come up in and prompt you for other input. You click here on Tools, Manage Ad-ons and here you’ll be able to see the toolbars and extensions, search providers, accelerators like I have send with Gmail accelerator that I added from the ad-ons section and things were Inprivate filtering. So these are Ad-ons for Internet Explorer; they give it more power, more functionality and more flexibility and that concludes part ten.