Microsoft Internet Explorer is the world's most widely used web browser, and Internet Explorer 8 is the latest version, officially launched on March 19th, 2009 — the first new version of IE in nearly three years. It will also be the default browser in the Microsoft Windows 7 operating system.

Like the previous version of IE it has standard browser features generally competitive with the other top browsers (Mozilla Firefox and Apple Safari), such as tabbed browsing, anti-phishing tools, an RSS reader, and so on. Version 8 adds substantial security improvements, such as the SmartScreen filter, which prompts you before proceeding to a site it believes might install unsafe software.

The new version also adds "Accelerators," which allow you to activate features of various web services from any web page with just a couple of mouse clicks. For example, you can select text on a website and blog about it, or select an address and retrieve a map.