Internet Explorer 8: A Hands-on View - Compatibility View and Managing Search
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I saw differences between IE 7 and IE 8 right away, even though they were subtle. There are new icons and controls at the top of my browser. So let's start at the very top and work our way down.
This image was taken from the right side of the address bar. That little icon that looks like a ripped piece of paper lets you activate Compatibility View. As the tool tip explains, this lets you view websites that look “broken” in IE 8 because they were designed for older versions of IE. Interestingly enough, when I clicked it while the browser was pointing to Google, instead of getting an ad for the Google toolbar in the upper right hand corner, I got an ad for Google Chrome.
When you activate Compatibility View, by the way, you get a little balloon that tells you the site you're viewing is now running in Compatibility View. And it does this every time you switch to it. If there are certain pages you will want to always see only in Compatibility View, you can set this up under Tools (more about that in the next part).
I was pleased to see from my initial checks that ASP Free doesn't look any different in either view. No doubt our programmers will be glad to hear this as well. One of our CMSes, however, DID look different in IE 8 – different enough to make working in it difficult. Switching to Compatibility View solved the problem. If you use a CMS to which you connect via the Internet, you may want to keep this in mind, especially if the CMS has been customized at all.
The Google search box is different. That arrow next to it gives me a drop-down menu that tells me Google is my default, but makes it easy for me to switch to Live if I want to. I can also “Find on this Page,” “Find More Providers,” and “Manage Search Providers.” That latter was kind of eye-opening. I knew I could specify my default, but I also found out I could change my search provider from this box for a specific search. Additionally, I could turn Search Suggestions on and off.
Incidentally, clicking “Manage Search Providers” brought up a useful box for managing some of the browser's features and add-ons. Let me show you what I mean:
From this screen, with just a couple of clicks, I can manage my toolbars and extensions, search providers, accelerators, and InPrivate filtering. “Find More Providers” took me to Microsoft's add-on gallery for search providers. It included Google, Amazon, Wikipedia, eBay, the New York Times, and many more. I won't run out of search helpers here!
Before I close this section of the article, I wanted to show you how the right hand search box behaves now with Search Suggestions. Here's an image to give you an idea:
You can see not only Google's suggestions as it tries to complete what I'm typing in, but also my history – searches that I've already completed that are related to this topic. And it's worth noting that the address bar behaves the same way, potentially saving a lot of time.
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