Windows Internet Explorer 8 or IE8 is a major version of the Internet Explorer web browser for Windows released by Microsoft on March 19, 2009 and is the successor to Internet Explorer 7. It was the default browser on Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.

It is the first version of Internet Explorer to pass the Acid2 test, the last of the major browsers to do so. It is also the first version of Internet Explorer to include web development tools, as previous versions of Internet Explorer never had tools to develop websites. (In the later Acid3 Test, it only scores 24/100.) Additionally, it is the first version of Internet Expolrer to has a Compatibility View mode to optionally emulate older versions' rendering behavior, and color-coded tab groups where links opened in new tabs share the color of the website they originated from. According to Microsoft, security, ease of use, and improvements in RSS, CSS, and Ajax support were its priorities for IE8.

Internet Explorer 8 requires Windows XP SP2, Windows Server 2003 SP2 or Windows XP x64 Edition SP2 at the minimum. It is the last version of Internet Explorer released for Windows XP, Windows XP x64 Edition, and Windows Server 2003 before the operating systems reached end of support on April 8, 2014, and July 14, 2015, respectively. It is also the last version to support Windows Vista RTM (before this version reached end of support on April 13, 2010) and SP1 (before this version reached end of support on July 12, 2011), and Windows Server 2008 RTM (before this version reached end of support on the same day as its client counterpart). It is the last Itanium version of Internet Explorer as well, although it is only available as pre-installed in the Itanium edition of Windows Server 2008 R2. The Itanium version does not support versions earlier than Windows Server 2008 R2. In addition, it is the last version of Internet Explorer supporting processors without PAE or SSE2.

History Development

Internet Explorer 8 development started in or before March 2006. In February 2008, Microsoft sent out private invitations for IE8 Beta 1, and on March 5, 2008, released Beta 1 to the general public, Internet Explorer 8 Readiness Toolkit although with a focus on web developers. The release launched with a Windows Internet Explorer 8 Readiness Toolkit website promoting IE8 white papers, related software tools, and new features in addition to download links to the Beta. Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) added new sections detailing new IE8 technology."MSDN IE8 White Papers". Microsoft. Major press focused on a controversy about Version Targeting, and two new features then called WebSlice and Activities. The readiness toolkit was promoted as something "developers can exploit to make Internet Explorer 8 'light up'."

On August 27, 2008, Microsoft made IE8 Beta 2 generally available. IE8 Beta 2 download page. PC World noted various Beta 2 features such as InPrivate mode, tab isolation and color-coding, and improved standards and compatibility compared to Internet Explorer 7. Two name changes included Activities to Accelerators, and the IE7 Phishing filter renamed Safety Filter in the first Beta to SmartScreen, both accompanied by incremental technical changes as well. By August 2008, the new feature called InPrivate had taken the spotlight.

On January 5, 2009, a tool was provided by Microsoft to block the automatic install of Internet Explorer 8 via Windows Update.

IE8 reached general availability on March 19, 2009. A version optimized for Bing and MSN was also available.

Language support Language support (localization) was not complete on release. Internet Explorer 8 was released with 25 languages. This grew up to 63 for 32-bit in June 2009. Support for additional languages can come pre-installed based on the OS, or downloaded and installed via Multilingual User Interface (MUI) packages.

Release history + Internet Explorer 8 release history Version Release date Windows XP /Windows Server 2003 Windows Vista /Windows Server 2008 Windows 7 /Windows Server 2008 R2 Languages Name Number Beta 1 8.0.6001.17184 March 5, 2008 3 Beta 2 8.0.6001.18241 August 27, 2008 25 8.0.6001.18343 December 10, 2008 1 Release Candidate 8.0.6001.18372 January 26, 2009 25 Final Release"Microsoft Announces Availability of Internet Explorer 8" 8.0.6001.18702 March 19, 2009 25–63 Service Pack 1 8.0.7601.17514 February 9, 2011 25–63

* Initially, Internet Explorer supported 25 languages; additional languages, for a total of 63 were released by June 2009, but not all languages are available on all Windows versions.

End of life Support for IE8 on Windows XP ended with its end of extended support on April 8, 2014 with no upgrades to more recent versions, as Windows XP cannot run IE9 and higher officially, making IE8 the final version of Internet Explorer which could run on Windows XP. Support for IE8 on Windows Vista and later ended on January 12, 2016, when Microsoft began requiring customers to use the latest version of Internet Explorer available for each Windows version. On October 13, 2020, Microsoft released the final IE8 update for Windows Embedded Standard 7, marking the end of IE8 support on all platforms.

New features

Internet Explorer 8 contains many new features, including Web Slices and Accelerators, and is the first version of Internet Explorer to include web developement tools to help design and debug webpages. Visible changes of the user interface are that the tabs have an inward, softer color gradient instead of the outward, more glossy and vibrant gradient of Internet Explorer 7, and a redesigned Favorites Bar has been added, replacing the Links bar of Internet Explorer 7.

Accelerators

Accelerators are a form of selection-based search and browser extension which allow a user to invoke an online service from any other page using only the mouse. Microsoft introduced accelerators in Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 as "activities". It was later renamed to "accelerators" in IE 8 Beta 2. Actions such as selecting the text or other objects will give users access to the usable Accelerator services (such as blogging with the selected text, or viewing a map of a selected geographical location), which can then be invoked with the selected object.

According to Microsoft, Accelerators eliminate the need to copy and paste content between web pages. IE8 specifies an XML-based encoding which allows a web application or web service to be invoked as an Accelerator service. How the service will be invoked and for what categories of content it will show up are specified in the XML file. Similarities have been drawn between Accelerators and the controversial Smart tags feature experimented with in the IE6 Beta but withdrawn after criticism (though later included in MS Office).

Support for Accelerators was removed in Microsoft Edge, the successor to Internet Explorer.

Autocomplete changes The address bar features domain highlighting for added security so that the top-level domain is shown in black whereas the other parts of the URL are grayed out. Domain highlighting cannot be turned off by users or web sites. Other features of the address bar include support for pasting multi-line URLs and an improved model for inserting the selection caret, and selecting words, or entire URLs in the Address bar. The inline autocomplete feature has been dropped from Internet Explorer 8, leading to criticism by beta users.

Automatic tab-crash recovery If a website or add-on causes a tab to crash in Internet Explorer 8, only that tab is affected. The browser itself remains stable and other tabs remain unaffected, thereby minimizing any disruption to the browsing experience. If a tab unexpectedly closes or crashes it is automatically reloaded with the same content as before the crash.

Developer tools

Internet Explorer 8 is the first version of Internet Explorer to include web development tools, as previous versions only displayed the raw HTML to edit using Notepad. The new developer tools interface includes new tools, such as an HTML element inspector to select HTML elements in the Document Object Model (DOM), displaying and editing CSS style sheets of a webpage, programming, debugging, and running JavaScript and VBScript code, testing the webpage in different browser versions such as IE7, and can modify webpages in real-time. The developer tools interface consists of 4 sections: HTML, CSS, Script, and Profiler.

The HTML section displays the Document Object Model (DOM) of a webpage as a tree view with indentation, elements in the tree view can expand and contract child elements, and any selected element in the DOM displays the applied CSS styles to the selected element. The CSS section lists all of the style sheet files used on a webpage at once, in a tree view, and the style sheet files displays their properties within the style sheet.

The Script section provides a debugger and editor for JavaScript and VBScript code. Clicking on the "Start Debugging" button allows live debugging of on-the-fly JS and VBS debugging, typing on the console will execute the code in real-time, and enabling "Multi Line Mode" allows users to edit multiple lines of code without it executing automatically. The Profiler section provides data about JavaScript performance, method latency, and can profile the performance of JavaScript and VBScript code in the webpage. Clicking on the "Start Profiling" button will start profiling in real time, and displays the processes in multiple sortable views, and it can save profiling sessions to a .csv table file.

Favorites Bar Another new feature in IE8 is the redesigned Favorites Bar, which can now host content such as Web Slices, web feeds, and documents, in addition to website links and folders.

Inline search within pages Internet Explorer 8 replaces the Find... dialog box with an inline Find toolbar which can be activated by pressing or from search box drop-down menu but the (or any other kind of a keyboard-driven) NextFind command has gone. Internet Explorer 8 highlights all instances of found words while allowing the user to continue the navigation normally.

InPrivate

A new security mode called InPrivate debuted with IE8, and consists of two main features: InPrivate Browsing and InPrivate Filtering. InPrivate Browsing has been described as a "porn mode" in various news outlets. A similar feature, first introduced in Safari in 2005, was later implemented in Firefox 3.5, Opera 10.5, and Google Chrome.

When a user uses InPrivate Browsing in Internet Explorer 8, one's browsing history, temporary Internet files, form data, cookies, and usernames and passwords are not retained by the browser, leaving no local evidence of browsing or search history.

InPrivate Filtering provides users an added level of control and choice about the information that third party websites can use to track browsing activity. InPrivate Subscriptions allow users to augment the capability of InPrivate Blocking by subscribing to lists of websites to block or allow.

As without InPrivate mode, information about a browsing session can be recovered on unexpected software closes.

Performance and stability

Internet Explorer 8 includes performance improvements across the HTML parser, CSS engine, mark-up tree manipulation as well as the JScript runtime and the associated garbage collector. Memory leaks due to inconsistent handling of circular references between JScript objects and DOM objects were corrected. For better security and stability, IE8 uses the Loosely Coupled Internet Explorer (LCIE) architecture and runs the browser frame and tabs in separate processes. LCIE prevents glitches and hangs from bringing down the entire browser and leads to higher performance and scalability. Permissions for ActiveX controls have been made more flexible – instead of enabling or disabling them globally, they can now be allowed on a per-site basis.

SmartScreen Filter