Master hidden features of Internet Explorer 8

Preventing attacks
You do not need us to tell you that the internet is full of dangers. Phishing attempts are getting more and more sophisticated and it’s easy to accidentally click on a link to a potentially dangerous site.

To keep you protected, IE8 has a new Smartscreen filter that displays a warning if you are about to visit a website it considers to be unsafe. It also blocks dubious downloads before they reach your computer.

If you are sure the site or download can be trusted you can override these blocks but in general it’s best to adhere to any warnings.

Speedy surfing
IE8 helps speed up common tasks with its Accelerator feature, which is available when you highlight text within a website.

If, for example, you see a company’s address and want to pinpoint it on a map, you would previously have needed to copy the postcode, open a new tab and paste it into a mapping service such as Google Maps. Now, all you need to do is highlight the postcode and click on the blue, arrow-shaped Accelerator icon that appears next to the text.

Managing tabs
Tabbed browsing was introduced with IE7 and allows you to open multiple websites in a single browser window. This means you can see which websites you have open and quickly switch between them. IE8 adds a host of extra tab features, including a redesigned New Tab window – the window that appears by default when you open a new tab.

Restoring tabs
Over the course of a couple of hours’ surfing, it’s not hard to amass a large selection of tabs, all with different websites loaded. If you are on a laptop that suddenly runs out of battery power or your PC crashes, the browser window, along with all its tabs, will be closed.

IE8 includes a handy tool to re-open all tabs from the last open browser window. To use this, open a new IE8 browser window. Now, click on Tools and select Reopen Last Browsing Session. All the tabs from your last browser session will now be opened.

Compatibility options
If a website displays numerous error messages or ends up with images and text looking haphazard, it could be because it has not been designed for IE8. This doesn’t happen very often, but can occur when viewing old sites.

The Compatibility View feature of IE8 attempts to solve this problem by letting you view the site as if you were using IE7. To activate this, look for the icon of a broken page on the right of the address bar.

If the button is not visible, this means IE8 has automatically enabled Compatibility View. Click it once, and IE8 will activate Compatibility View immediately so you do not need to restart the browser. A second click will turn it off.

Cursor control
A little-known feature of IE8 is the Caret Browsing tool. This lets you use your keyboard to highlight text on a website.

Click the mouse at any point within the text on the website and the cursor will appear, allowing you to then use the arrow keys to move the cursor around.

As with a Word document, you can hold down the Shift key while moving the cursor to highlight text or hold Ctrl to move the cursor to the next word with a single arrow key press. To try this, press F7 while viewing a website; a pop-up window will appear warning that Caret Browsing is about to be turned on. To turn Caret Browsing off, press F7 again.

Give it a go
IE8 is a huge improvement on previous versions. We have highlighted some of the lesser-known features here, but there are plenty more on offer. It’s also worth taking a look at Computeractive's video guides to IE8 part 1 and part 2.

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