Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1

Before installation of IE8 Beta 1, the installer checks for malicious software on the system as can be seen below - something to be appreciate. It bears testimony of Microsoft's growing focus on security to its popularity and compete *nix systems.There is website filter that acts much like McAfee's SiteAdvisor. It says some sites shall be sent to Microsoft for verification of not being malicious. It is supposed to provide "real-time" protection.

After the first start, a few customizations are available. A wizard asks you about your default search engine. You can add online from a list of popular ones as I added Google (below).You can also build your custom search bar plugins as follows. Moreover, this is actually simpler than building search bar plugins for Firefox. If

Below is another feature of IE8 which is available in Firefox as a separate plugin.

Firefox has grown so popular that while talking of IE a comparision spontaneously comes to the mind. In Firefox, there is an option of checking for forged sites by checking from a list of downloaded sites or by checking with Google.

Problem with IE and "always on connection"

I have been having problems with Internet Explorer with my "always on " internet connection. Whenever i tried to use it, it would display the common error message saying "Cannot find server". Then I notied that each time I open up Internet Explorer it connects to 192.168.1.2 as shown below.

Now my previous connection required the modem to be configured to this address. So the problem lay in some remnant of my previous configuration which had creeped into IE. I deleted my previous connection from "Network Connections". Yet the problem persisted. IE was still trying to connect to "192.168.1.2". Now I had to look up a setting which was not changed even after deleting my previous connection. After some search, I found that my LAN settings were set to use "192.168.1.2" as proxy. I unchecked that option and tried to connect again. The problem was solved now.

Yahoo messenger used IE internally. So it was also not working on my system. But now I can happily use Yahoo Messenger again.