IE (INTERNET EXPLORER)
Internet Explorer is 10 years old
this year, but its genealogical roots are actually much older. Back when the
Internet was first invented (for want of a better word) it was used mainly by
universities and research institutions to share documents and information via
FTP, Gopher and Usenet. Casual usage as we know it today was a rarity. That,
however, was to change as the World Wide Web slowly came into being, thanks to
a gentleman by the name of Tim Berners-Lee who not only published the first
formal proposal for the World Wide Web, but is also credited with publishing
the first Web page on August 6, 1991.
The Grandpa of Internet Explorer
was a web browser called Mosaic, which first began development at the National
Center for Super Computing Applications (NCSA) back in 1987. It was the first
browser to use a GUI (graphical user interface) and was ground breaking stuff.
The technology and trademarks behind Mosaic were eventually licensed to a
company called Spyglass, Inc. Spyglass, Inc was an Internet software company
associated with the University of Illinois that was founded in 1990 especially
to commercialize various technologies during the early days of the World Wide
Web. In 1995, Spyglass licensed the source code for Mosaic to Microsoft and
Internet Explorer was born.
Features
Internet Explorer 8 addresses just
about all of the major concerns that users and critics have had with the
world's most used browser. Whether they get answered in a way you like is
another matter.
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 or
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.
There's a greater emphasis on Web
standards and security 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.
IE 8 lacks a default
"smart" location bar that many other browsers have, but you can
search your history and most visited pages from there. Also, the installation
process still requires a reboot--unimpressive, to say the least. Drawbacks
aside, there's no reason to not upgrade if you're an old fan of IE, and there's
even a few things in IE 8 for new users.
Last edition: 18/9/2009
By: Carlos Salinero Sierra
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