It’s The Launch Of IE 8

A year after the first beta of the browser, Microsoft is launching the finished version of Internet Explorer 8.

The battle of the browsers renews today as Microsoft officially launches Internet Explorer 8, a year after the first beta release, ZDNet has reported. Although IE remains the dominant browser in the marketplace, others, like Firefox, have slowly been eroding that superiority, so a lot is riding on this.

However, IE 8 has several new offering, including greater safeguards to stop malware and phishing, grouped tabbing, and the quickly-becoming ubiquitous privacy mode.

With the grouped tabbing, where one tab has been opened from another, or both are from the same site, the tabs are color-coded to make them easier to recognize.

The browser also features so-called “accelerators,” under which users can select text on a Web page then click on it to bring up action options, such as searching on Live Search or bringing up a map from a zip code, or even sharing on Twitter.

There’s also better security, with the site name in bold in the URL bar, making it easier to identify fake sites, and there’s’ also a cross-scripting filter to cut down on those attacks.