The Hindu : Front Page : New Microsoft browser lets you surf ‘InPrivate’

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Sunday, Sep 07, 2008
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New Microsoft browser lets you surf ‘InPrivate’

Anand Parthasarathy

Beta 2 of version IE8 offered for free download

BANGALORE: Like great minds thinking alike, the announcements of ‘Chrome,’ Google’s browser, and the latest — and eighth – ‘avatar’ of Internet Explorer, the market leader in this application area, were almost simultaneous last week.

And trust Microsoft to steal some of Google’s thunder by introducing a feature which was one of its key additions to existing browser features: privacy! The second beta or trial version of IE8 is available for free download at www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/beta/ and it is a 16 MB file. A key feature is InPrivate.

In fact, Microsoft has applied for a trademark on the term, which it explains as follows: “Computer programmes for disabling the history of web cashing features of a web browser ... and for notifying a user of a web browser when others are tracking web use, and for controlling the information others can access about such use.”

Simply put, it means the new IE enables its users to delete — what Indian Finance Minister P. Chidambaram would call — an ‘audit trail’ of their surfing — websites they visited and cookies they downloaded. If they stumble on sites which try to snoop on their activities they are warned and will be able to block such attempts.

It is too soon to fully evaluate the new browser offerings, but it would seem at first glance that this feature in IE goes beyond what might be on offer in Chrome in its Incognito feature.

Microsoft has also tweaked IE to cut the time and the number of clicks to perform common tasks. It has quickened search by trying to second guess what you are looking for even as you make every key stroke. Visual elements have been integrated into basic search. The new Explorer can be downloaded to all PCs running Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003 or Windows XP which has been updated with Service Pack 3.

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