Microsoft Shows Off IE8's Ad-Blocking, Page-Tabbing Chops

Microsoft rolled out the second beta of its upcoming Web browser, Internet Explorer 8 (IE8), Wednesday. When finalized, IE8 will be the first new version of the browser the software maker has released since 2006.

While the browser looks much the same, Microsoft has been tinkering under the hood to bring IE users new features and functionality.

"It's great to see Microsoft moving forward with IE and trying to innovate in the browser. They are making the correct choices regarding standards support and privacy," Matt Rosoff, an analyst at Directions on Microsoft, told TechNewsWorld.

With the eighth version of Internet Explorer, Microsoft software developers focused on three key themes -- everyday browsing, safety and the platform -- according to Dean Hachamovitch, general manager of IE8.

The release of IE8 Beta 2 comes nearly six months after Microsoft released the initial beta to developers in March. It is available in English, German, Japanese and Simplified Chinese for Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows Vista x64, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2003 x64.

Browser for Every Day
As Microsoft engineers looked at how people surf the Net, according to Hachmovitch, one thing that became clear was that the majority of user activity beyond the Web page involved tabs and navigation.

As a result, IE8 features a redesigned New Tab page that allows users to perform common tasks by clicking links on the New Tab page. Microsoft has also revamped the Tab Groups functionality. When one tab is opened from another, the new tab is placed next to the originating tab, and both are then marked with a colored tab. This enables users to quickly identify which tabs contain Web pages with related content, the company said.

"The launching of linked articles in new tabs coupled with the automatic grouping and color coding is probably the killer feature for me," Rob Enderle, principle analyst at the Enderle Group, told TechNewsWorld. "I hate losing the page I'm looking at when I click on a link, and there is a huge architecture change here where rather than always navigating away from a page, you tend to -- with IE8 -- stay on the page but still see additional information."

Another new feature is IE8's Smart Address Bar. Leaving behind the static URL bar of old, Microsoft has created the Smart Address Bar that -- like the Awesome Bar in Mozilla's Firefox -- will match URLs (uniform resource locaters) in the user's site history with what is typed into the Address Bar. Results include content in a user's favorites and feeds. The Smart Address Bar also has the capability to search the title, Web address and favorites folders.

"This means that you'll find sites even if [you] type something other than just the first part of the Web address. To make it easier to find what you're looking for, we group the results and highlight the matched text," Paul Cutsinger, IE8 lead program manager, wrote on the IE8 blog.
The Smart Address Bar will give Firefox's Awesome Bar a run for its money, according to Enderle.

"The smart address bar appears to go farther than the very popular Firefox 'Awesome Bar.' What it does differently is that when it displays addresses while you type one in, it groups them, making the feature vastly more useful," he said.

Performance, Safety and the Platform
Engineers at Microsoft took a double-pronged approach to boosting performance in IE8, looking at performance in both the lab and the real world. IE8, according to Hachamovitch, is much faster than IE7 on many sites.

In terms of performance in the real world, the browser's new tab functionality, Smart Address Bar, Favorites bar, Search box, Accelerators and Web Slices are aimed at making daily browsing simpler and quicker.

Users can use Accelerators to search, map, e-mail , translate or share content from any Web page they view with one click. They remove the need to cut and paste content or links in an e-mail or the Address bar. Microsoft takes care of that with a range of Accelerator buttons.

With Web Slices, users can subscribe to portions of their favorite Web sites and keep up-to-date with frequently updated sites from the Favorites Bar. When new information is added to a selected page or site, the Web Slice will become highlighted. Clicking on a highlighted slice will open a preview of the updated page.

Another feature that adds speed to a user's surfing experience is IE8's new Visual Search feature, which enables users to type in a search term and see results that include pictures, if they're available.

On the safety front, IE8 Beta 2 includes the SmartScreen Filter and additional protections from phishing and malware. Engineers have also added the XSS Filter feature that makes reflected / "Type-1" Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities -- a growing threat vector -- much more difficult to exploit from within the browser.

In addition, the InPrivate functionality, announced earlier this week, gives users the ability to control whether IE saves their browsing history, cookies and other data. The feature also enables users to block incoming third-party content and some types of advertising.

"Standout features for me include InPrivate browsing and Accelerators (formerly known as "Activities"), which can save a lot of time that would otherwise [be] spent opening new tabs and possibly copying and pasting data into them," said Direction on Microsoft's Rosoff.

Microsoft has also worked to make IE8 more interoperable with other Web browsers and Web standards. The company has also added CSS (cascading style sheets) 2.1 support, improved document object model and HTML 4.01. It's also added new navigation features for asynchronous JavaScript and XML (extensible markup language) applications.

"The improvements in compatibility mean fewer problems with pages that weren't optimized for IE, and this alone will probably reduce substantially the movement from IE to alternatives," Enderle pointed out.

Areas of Improvement
While IE8 Beta 2 is a great move forward for Microsoft, Rosoff said, one area the company could do a better job with is installation.

"The installation process took a bit longer than I expected and required a reboot. I'd contrast that with the very clean and quick Firefox installation process. But it's probably unavoidable given IE's integration with Windows at some fairly low levels," he noted.
Both Enderle and Rosoff said IE8 will be a competitive release able to go toe-to-toe with Mozilla's Firefox.

"Firefox and IE is where the battle is being fought, and IE remains the dominant product. I think this release should be enough to stop folks from leaving IE to go to Firefox, particularly given some of the problems with the latest Firefox release," said Enderle.

"I can't think of any obvious places where it lags behind these other browsers. Firefox users in particular might want to give it another look and see if the new features are enough to make them switch," Rosoff concluded.

Aug. 18, 2008 Tech News World (http://www.technewsworld.com/story/Microsoft-Shows-Off-IE8s-Ad-Blocking-Page-Tabbing-Chops-64337.html)

Microsoft relaxes virtual-machine rules

Microsoft on Tuesday announced a change in its licensing policy to make it easier for businesses that want the ability to shift server software that is running in a virtual machine from one physical machine to another.

The licensing shift, which had been expected, lifts a cap that had limited the ability to switch software from one physical machine to another within a server farm. Under the prior rules, such shifts could be made only once every 90 days. That's a problem because software from VMware and others aims to allow such transfers to be made dynamically in response to changing demand.
"Businesses are taking steps to make their IT operations more dynamic and are delving into virtualization as a cornerstone strategy," Microsoft Senior Director Zane Adam said in a statement. "Microsoft recognizes this and is innovating its licensing policies, product support, and a wide range of IT solutions to help customers get virtual now."

The change applies to 41 server titles, Microsoft said, including the enterprise version of SQL Server 2008, the standard and enterprise versions of Exchange Server 2007, as well as the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Microsoft System Center products.

Microsoft also plans to offer better support for businesses that are running its software inside other companies' virtualization engines. Under the changes, Microsoft will support its software running inside virtual machines from VMware, Cisco Systems, Citrix, Novell, Sun Microsystems, and Virtual Iron as if it were being run in nonvirtual environments.

In the past, many customers with problems running Microsoft software in VMware, for example, had to reproduce the problem outside of VMware in order to get technical support from Microsoft.

For some time now, Microsoft has been trying to shift its pricing policies to reflect a new world in which server software often runs inside virtual machines.

Microsoft is going to have more to say on the virtualization front at a September 8 event in the Seattle area.

August 19,2008
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10019601-56.html?hhTest=1&tag=nefd.lede

Microsoft Flashes Brief Glimpse of Windows 7

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and CEO Steve Ballmer revealed on Tuesday a few details on the software company's next operating system, Windows 7, at the D: All Things Digital conference in San Diego.

The company has maintained a disciplined silence about the upcoming OS -- a marked contrast to the constantly changing plethora of information released during the five years it took Microsoft to develop and launch Windows Vista.

"With the last release, many of the technologies Microsoft executives talked about and got everybody excited about didn't make it into the product," Michael Cherry, lead analyst at Directions on Microsoft, told TechNewsWorld.

Although the company is still giving little if anything away about the application's security, performance , networking and other so-called "under-the-hood" functionalities, during their keynote address, Gates and Ballmer presented a demonstration of the multitouch user interface the software maker plans to add to the OS.

That Touchy Feeling
Based on some of the technology developed for the Microsoft Surface, the multitouch fingertip user interface for Windows 7 covers a range of applications. Users will be able to enlarge and shrink photos, paint pictures with the new "Touchable Paint" application, and arrange, examine or write on digital photographs as well as map their location and search for specific places such as the nearest Starbucks.

Some of the features, including the two-finger zoom, single finger thumbnail panning and flicking through a slideshow, are reminiscent of Apple's iPhone.

"They developed this previously for another product, Microsoft Surface, which was built on Windows, so it's not a surprise that they are using this work in Windows 7," Gary Chen, a Yankee Group analyst, told TechNewsWorld. "I think it's a great leap forward in terms of the UI (user interface). It will make using a computer much more intuitive and collaborative.

However, Cherry said the UI "looked interesting" but there just aren't enough details about the technology for him to be enthusiastic about it.

"We don't know what it entails. Were the applications specially modified to work with it? Right now I'd say it looks interesting. They've demonstrated a lot of things, and I don't see any guarantee that that's a feature that will be in [Windows 7] or will require new hardware," he said.

Windows 7 Wish List
Outside of the show-and-tell session at the conference, Microsoft's silence regarding Windows 7 and its features is in part due to the development process being in the early stages.

"It's early, and you don't really want to commit publicly to something that hasn't been firmed up. Microsoft is still deciding a lot of things with Windows 7, and with their position in the market, it's best to keep mum until you know what and when you can really deliver something," noted Chen.

However, he added, Microsoft needs to give people a "reasonable lead time" about what they should expect in the new version. "I expect in 2009, we'll have a much better idea of what Windows 7 will be," Chen continued.

With details on Windows 7 sketchy at best, the one feature Chen said he hopes Microsoft will include in the OS is virtualization.

Meanwhile, Cherry just hopes that Microsoft does a better job of "managing expectations and only claim those things they really have accomplished, and if there are hard problems they have yet to solve, say that.

"The fact that they're not telling me anything right now, I don't care. What I'm more interested in is that the information they do give me be incredibly complete and accurate. What I don't want is a quick demo that says, 'Isn't this exciting?' What I want is specific details. And I want accurate scheduling information. When can I really get my hands on it?" he stated.
Windows 7 scheduling, however, appears murky based on conflicting remarks from Microsoft. Microsoft plans to release the new OS in late 2009, according to Ballmer; however, Windows Engineering Chief Steven Sinofsky told Cnet the launch would happen in January of 2010.

Lesson: Don't Over-Promise
Large enterprises and small businesses alike are in the midst of making very strategic decisions about their Windows desktop roadmap, explained Benjamin Gray, a Forrester Research analyst. That said, customer optimism is high for new information on the future of Windows.
However, with Windows 7, Microsoft is taking a tighter approach to communications. This approach stems from the lessons Microsoft learned from its Windows Vista experiences, Gray told TechNewsWorld.

"Let's face it, Microsoft was burned for promising too much for too diverse a crowd with Windows Vista, and it's going to be a little more disciplined about when and how it discloses information on Windows 7.

"Obviously, Microsoft is still in the throes of development and testing for Windows 7, so it's still too soon to come to any conclusions. And while the touch capabilities that Mr. Ballmer and Gates demonstrated were neat, they aren't going to help businesses with this decision-making process," Gray noted.

"At the end of the day though, Forrester recommends that most companies deploy Windows Vista eventually, because Windows 7 is clearly going to be an evolutionary update that is built on the Windows Vista foundation. So the challenges that organizations are experiencing with Windows Vista today will likely occur with what's coming next, and you're better off preparing for the future now than later," he concluded

By Walaika Haskins
TechNewsWorld
05/28/08
http://www.technewsworld.com/story/Microsoft-Flashes-Brief-Glimpse-of-Windows-7-63183.html?welcome=1212701908