A: Even though the Web browser on the iPad can’t play Adobe Flash video files like the ones YouTube typically serves up, Apple did include a special YouTube app on the iPad, similar to the one on the iPhone, that can play loads of YouTube content. In fact, this YouTube app was shown at the iPad launch. The company says the one for the iPad has been rewritten to take advantage of the larger screen, as have all of Apple’s built-in apps. Apple also says when you orient the tablet horizontally, YouTube videos automatically play in full screen mode. However, Web videos using Flash that must be accessed through a Web browser don’t appear to work on the iPad, just as they don’t work on the iPhone.

I have had Internet Explorer 6 as the browser on my home PC for years. Having heard about the security problem with IE6, I wonder if you would suggest that I keep IE6, download IE8 or download another browser.

A: I definitely recommend that you dump IE6, which is outdated and insecure compared to newer browsers. Its latest successor, Internet Explorer 8, has many nice features and much improved security. But, in my tests, IE8 proved slower than its main competitors. So I’d suggest switching to either Mozilla Firefox, Apple’s Safari for Windows or Google Chrome. The latter two are the fastest Windows browsers I’ve tested, but Firefox boasts many more add-ins and extensions that add extra features.

You can find Mossberg’s Mailbox, and my other columns, online, free of charge, at the All Things Digital Web site, http://walt.allthingsd.com.

We’ve all seen it, that spiro-graphed, color-splotched invitation to Apple’s Jan. 27 event at the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco. Weekend Update isn’t on the inside, but we hear rumors that Jobs will storm the stage dressed as Moses, carrying the new tablet, which will be made of stone, under his robes. Apparently, that’s where it’s been hiding all along. Either that, or Weekend Update is going a little nuts from “tablet fatigue.”

Before we got to rumors, plans and all important educated guesses, AllThingsD spent the week doing reporting about real companies with products you can actually buy.

Walt’s column wasn’t exactly its normal, gadgety self this week. Maybe he’s saving his strength. Instead of the newest thing that won’t be leaving your pocket, he covered a service that claims to help you remember everything. Evernote, with its adorable little elephant logo, aims to be a sort of digital filing cabinet in the cloud, allowing you to save information, images, notes and just about anything else that can be digitized. Walt had good things to say all around, even if the available apps didn’t give every device the same functionality. Weekend Update liked the auto text-recognition feature that makes pictures of text searchable. We’ll never carry a business card home again. Neither rain nor snow nor tablet rumors can keep Walt from his appointed rounds at Mossberg’s Mailbox, and this week he grabbed a couple questions about e-readers, Microsoft’s (MSFT) Internet Explorer 8 and the right laptop for the young and litigious. Walt cleared up the myth that e-books can’t highlight text (even if they don’t do it in color yet), and then moved on to a question about what IE8 refers to as “accelerators.” Before tying up the mailbag strings for anther week, he also gave counsel to a future counselor. He recommended a moderately priced Windows 7 laptop or a Macbook for the incoming law student, though he suggested it would be a good idea to check with the school and current students for specific needs. Weekend Update thinks that last bit is extra good advice. Katie was busy this week testing the latest Bluetooth earpiece from Aliph’s Jawbone line. The Jawbone Icon is the first earpiece to run with a software package that allows the addition of apps just for the earpiece. Overall Katie thought the Icon represented a step forward for Bluetooth earpieces but hopes for upgrades to the app suite will bring more robust features. Oh yeah, and she was glad that they finally got rid of those tricky hidden control buttons.

At MediaMemo, Peter gave us the continued saga of e-magazines and the world’s slowest moving electronic construction project. It looks like the Time Inc. e-mag prototypes won’t be part of Wednesday’s Apple (AAPL) event even though there was a lot of hullabaloo over the company’s Sports Illustrated prototype. Condé Nast, on the other hand, has declared its GQ mag-as-app tests a success. No word yet on who will be three-quarters naked on the first 10-inch screen edition. Completing the out-with-the-print, in-with-the-electronic trifecta was Peter’s post about the New York Times pay-wall announcement. The Times claims it will erect a metered wall in 2011, which seems like an awfully long time in the shifting sands of the Web. Outside partners may be playing a factor, and some speculate that the 2011 date is just a declaration that New York Times Company (NYT) will be waiting-and-seeing. Peter doesn’t see what that would accomplish and cites experts who assert that a year isn’t an unreasonable amount of time to build a complex pay wall with necessary features.

Digital Daily was on the ball this week with John’s signature hard-hitting hilarity. His early report proved correct when sources suggested that the EU’s approval of the pending Oracle (ORCL)-Sun (JAVA) acquisition was nigh. Not to leave the tablet news out in the cold, John asked some important questions about a future tablet’s data consumption habits, and thinks it might end up in a class of its own. A big, beautiful screen means big, beautiful images and video, which mean gloriously huge file sizes. Hooray for Wi-Fi. To round out the week, John covered a story about Google (GOOG) co-founders Larry and Sergey planning to sell about $5.5 billion in stock over five years. We’re not sure whether the proper term is “cashing out” or “cashing in,” but they are going to be doing a lot of one or the other. The stock sale will remove them as a two-man majority voting block, but their remaining 47 percent will assure that their velvety duet will continue to ring clearly at board meetings.

Boomtown led off with some viral video for the ages. Jimmy Fallon one-upped the “pants on the ground” video by performing the sarcastic ballad as Neil Young. We’re not sure the audience caught that it was Jimmy right way, in part, because Young was making the TV rounds about that time, and in part, because Fallon does a surprisingly good Neal impression. Kara asked her readers to vote on the new tablet’s name, making “iPad” her own prediction. Kara has an eerie way of getting this stuff right so Weekend Update is gonna go ahead and get that tattoo this weekend. Kara finished the week with a quick post about her trip to Sundance and all the geektastic happenings there. Kara’s Winnebago, which we call “Operation Rolling Thunder,” was crammed full of wife, kids, mom, dog, and maybe a few stowaway Bay Area indie filmmakers who tied themselves to the undercarriage. Read the post; there’s never a dull moment on a Swisher expedition.

AllTingsD is back on Monday with some great new stuff to feed that techie habit. And don’t forget to set your homepages here Tuesday (as if they weren’t already) to see live photos and blogging from Apple’s big unveiling. We’ll see you there, and will be sure to let you know if Jobs does, in fact, part the Bay in his walk from Marin to San Francisco that morning.

A: Your wait is over. Major e-book readers I’ve tested, such as Amazon.com’s Kindle and Sony’s Reader Daily Edition, already allow highlighting. In other words, you can select any section of text in a book and give it a gray background so it stands out from the rest of the text, persistently. It’s not yellow or any other color, because the screens are grayscale and don’t display colors, but it is highlighting. You can also add notes on e-readers.

I have a Mac laptop that I use at home with Safari and Firefox installed. My office environment uses Windows and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8. One of the features of IE8 that I really like and often use are “Accelerators.” I would like to know if there are accelerators available for download for the most up-to-date versions of either Safari or Firefox.

A: Accelerators are a particular feature of IE8 that allows users to perform an action on a highlighted portion of a Web page—like mapping an address or translating a word—even using services provided by companies that compete with Microsoft. Microsoft has put a system in place for companies to write accelerators and users to download them.

Firefox, on both Windows and Mac, has a massive collection of add-ons, some of which work in a manner similar to Accelerators, but it doesn’t have a directly competing feature. Safari on your Mac also can accommodate added features from third-party companies, some of which can work like accelerators, but it also lacks a feature that specifically goes head to head with IE8′s Accelerators.

I am going to law school in the fall, and I was wondering which laptop you would suggest I get for this three- to four-year time period of my life?

A: It really depends on your priorities, resources and environment. If you’re on a tight budget, value lots of choice, and enjoy playing games during breaks from work, you might pick a modestly-priced Windows 7 laptop. However, I’d stay away from netbooks, which can be cramped for writing long documents. If you have more to spend, and value freedom from malware, great built-in software and the convenience of dedicated stores, you might buy an Apple MacBook or MacBook Pro. But I would also recommend asking the school and current students, since it can be advantageous, or even necessary, to be using a laptop that the school prefers or that runs any special software the school requires.

You can find Mossberg’s Mailbox, and my other columns, online for free at the All Things Digital Web site, http://walt.allthingsd.com.

In your recent Firefox review, you said Internet Explorer has a private browsing mode that doesn’t record your history or tracks while surfing. But I can’t find how to turn it on.

The feature, which is called InPrivate Browsing, is only available in the latest version of IE, called IE8. You turn it on by either selecting that option from the Safety button at the upper right, or from the Tools menu in the Menu Bar if you have chosen to make that bar visible. Once you do, an “InPrivate” label appears at the top left corner of the browser and a page appears explaining that the browser won’t record on your own PC certain records of what you do in that browsing session. There’s an additional privacy mode, available from the same two drop-down menus, called “InPrivate Filtering,” which goes further. It blocks Web sites you go to from saving certain records of your presence there on their own servers. InPrivate browsing lasts until you close the InPrivate browsing window.

When you reviewed the latest Safari Web browser awhile back, you complained that Apple had repositioned the tabs in a way that made them harder to see. A friend said that’s no longer true. Is he right?

Yes. After getting a lot of negative reaction, Apple changed Safari 4’s design so the tabs are displayed in the previous manner, below the toolbar, instead of at the very top. The company also made more visible the page-loading indicator, though I personally still prefer the indicator style used in prior versions.

In your column last week, you recommended add-on software to search documents for key words in Windows XP. Is there any similar software that will do the same for Macs?

It’s unnecessary on Mac because the Mac operating system comes with a fast, comprehensive search system called Spotlight that’s built right in. Windows Vista also has a very good search system built in. The reason I recommended add-on software for Windows XP is that I consider XP’s built-in search to be slow and inferior to those in these two newer operating systems.

You can find Mossberg’s Mailbox, and my other columns, online for free at the All Things Digital Web site, http://walt.allthingsd.com.

For one thing, no matter how aggressively I lean on the fast-forward button on my DVR, I still end up seeing bits of Bing spots. Can’t escape them. But as far as I can tell, the ads below aren’t scheduled to appear on TV at all.

Another hint: They star Dean Cain, who is best known for his work in “Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman.” And that show went off the air in 1997.

The ads come to us courtesy of Bradley & Montgomery, the Indianapolis shop that also made the much-buzzed about “Mojave” spots for Windows Vista last year. But I don’t think the buzz translated into many happy Vista users, and I don’t know that these new spots will prompt people to rethink their browser choice.

You know what, though? I don’t care. If I used a computer that ran Windows, I would totally download IE8 just to support the ad’s director: Bobcat Goldthwait.

Many of you may have a vague memory of Bobcat as the screamy comedian from the 80s who wasn’t Sam Kinison and who appeared in a bunch of “Police Academy” movies. But he’s also the writer, director and star of “Shakes the Clown,” which is awesome and dark and truthful and also really funny. Go watch it! Or download IE8.

I am utterly fascinated with the iPhone. Dying to get one. I’ve been a Verizon Wireless person for 15 years and have never had a coverage problem in the metro Boston area. I don’t hear great things about AT&T’s 3G. Do you think it’s worth the switch?

While I believe the iPhone is a marvelous device, I have always advised that nobody should get any phone unless it is on a network that they are sure works to their satisfaction in the areas where they will use it. Personally, I find AT&T’s network adequate where I use it, and getting better, so I am happy with my iPhone. But there are many others who have either given up their iPhones out of frustration with AT&T, or who have decided against buying one because they prefer another carrier, or want to avoid AT&T.

So, my advice is to ask friends around Boston who have iPhones or other AT&T 3G devices how they feel about the network. You might also enter your ZIP Code at some Web sites that track overall carrier coverage and dead zones, like cellreception.com, or deadcellzones.com.

If this research suggests you should avoid AT&T, but you are still “dying” for an iPhone, you might consider the iPod Touch, which is essentially an iPhone without the cellphone inside. It lacks the iPhone’s camera, GPS and built-in microphone, but it does connect to the Internet via Wi-Fi and runs the vast majority of iPhone apps. It doesn’t carry any monthly fee or require a carrier contract.

How do I forward an email from Gmail? I don’t see any icon for forwarding messages like I do on other email programs.

Gmail hides a bunch of menu choices under the Reply icon in the upper-right-hand corner of open emails. If you click on the small downward arrow next to the Reply icon, you will see more actions you can take on the message, including Forward, Reply to All, Print and others.

I read your recent article on IE8 and installed it on my desktop. I did not notice in your article any mention of IE8 slowing the computer down significantly, but it has had this effect on my PC. Why didn’t you mention it? Can I uninstall IE8 and return to the prior version?

I didn’t mention the problem you are having because I never observed that Internet Explorer 8 caused any general slowdown of any of the multiple Windows PCs on which I tested it. I did warn that IE8 itself grew sluggish when it had a large number of Web sites open simultaneously in tabs, but, in my tests, even that didn’t slow down the whole computer.

However, you can indeed uninstall IE8 and return to the previous version. Microsoft has provided complete instructions, and even an automated uninstall program, at: support.microsoft.com/kb/957700.

• You can find Mossberg’s Mailbox, and my other columns, online free of charge at the new All Things Digital Web site, http://walt.allthingsd.com.

On the revenue-seeking side, BoomTown’s Twitter Business Plan Count-Up hasn’t yielded any real keepers yet. There is a real contender, though–since Jennifer Aniston so publicly broke up with her boyfriend, John Mayer, on account of his Twitter “addiction,” BoomTown suggests offering “Twitter rehab” for those not willing to lose their relationships just yet. Not sure how zoning would work on that one, but the profit margin could be nice. The Guardian’s Changing Media Summit in London didn’t provide a lot of hard answers to the revenue question either, but it did gather the curious together to discuss the matter further, ponder the Next Big Thing, and talk about what the media company of tomorrow looks like. And, perhaps proving that during hard times Americans love an unlikely hero (a Seabiscuit for our own economic disaster?), Steve Wozniak escaped elimination from “Dancing With The Stars” for yet another week–undoubtedly due to the will of the people and their appreciation of his determined and goodhearted willingness to look silly on national television. The Pillsbury Doughboy bit probably didn’t hurt, either.

On the cost-saving side, MediaMemo wrote about job and salary cuts at the New York Times (NYT). The job cuts were on the business side, but the company slashed all of its nonunion salaries by 2.5-5 percent. It will ask for similar cuts from its unionized newsroom employees, in a spirit of “shared sacrifice.” Google (GOOG) sacrificed 200 more jobs, this time from sales. One of the most drastic signs of recession, however, may be the fact that Condé Nast’s higher echelons are cutting back on chauffeured cars to get them around Manhattan.

According to Digital Daily, It was Black Thursday at IBM (IBM) on the 26th, with 1,674 job losses (and counting). 5,000 jobs are expected to be cut overall, with many of the lost U.S. positions being transferred offshore. Better news over at Viacom’s (VIA) MTV games–according to new statistics, the company’s Rock Band franchise recently surpassed $1 billion in North American retail sales, making it the number one title of 2008 across all genres, based on revenue. And that’s before Beatles: Rock Band even comes close to shipping. That’s the kind of magic shown so far by Palm’s (PALM) forthcoming Pre handset, which–without a price or a release date–has boosted the company’s share price more than $7 based on little more than a CES debut and some enthusiastic analysts. Digital Daily noted that not everyone feels magical, but the launch will tell.

Over in Personal Technology, Walt Mossberg offered quick reviews of the iPhone apps he uses most often and that make the shiny Apple (AAPL) gadget worth the price. In Mossberg’s Mailbox, Walt pointed out the usefulness of IE8′s compatibility button, which makes the browser act like IE7 in certain instances, on Web sites that were coded around the peccadilloes of the earlier versions of the Microsoft (MSFT) software. Other readers had questions about ordering broadband service without a land line and burning movies to Blu-ray discs using an iMac. Katie Boehret spent the week testing out a new TV from Samsung–the first to integrate with the Yahoo (YHOO) Widget Engine, which enables viewers to watch shows and access the Web on the same large screen. Her thoughts are in The Mossberg Solution.

More next week.

BoomTown posted from various spots in Europe this week, yet managed to follow the geek-tastic goodness of Silicon Valley’s own contender, Apple (AAPL) co-founder Steve Wozniak, who competed while injured this week on “Dancing With the Stars”–and escaped elimination via the love of viewers in Silicon Valley and elsewhere. Another founder made the headlines this week–BoomTown noted that Steve Case appeared at a huge pep rally at Time Warner’s (TWX) AOL. Case and former AOL exec Ted Leonsis gave their support (and a lucky green tie) to new CEO Tim Armstrong. Elsewhere, Pure Digital, the maker of BoomTown’s favorite gadget–the ever-present Flip digital video camera–sold itself to Cisco (CSCO) for $590 million in stock, and BoomTown urged Silicon Valley to remember it’s not immune to the recession, to put its nose to the grindstone and to avoid party-hearty inanity.

Guess no one’s taking heed of the warning, though: MediaMemo reports that no one’s getting anything done at work–CBS (CBS) says its March Madness Web traffic is up 57 percent compared to last year. On top of that, television viewership rose various percentages throughout the week. MM wasn’t watching much basketball this week, though–there was plenty to blog about: The New York Times (NYT) cracked down on unauthorized use of its photos; Discovery Communications (DISCA) announced a patent infringement suit against Amazon and its Kindle Reader; Palm (PALM) delivered dismal third quarter results, putting even greater pressure on the success of the Pre; and in a Q&A with BusinessWeek editor Stephen Adler, Steve Ballmer said he’s open to a phone call from Yahoo (YHOO) CEO Carol Bartz whenever she’s ready to talk. Oh, and in case you were wondering what happened at SXSW, MediaMemo got a Google (GOOG) guy to explain it.

Digital Daily’s March Madness started with a liveblog of Apple’s St. Patrick’s Day press event to unveil version 3.0 of its iPhone OS, a chronicle of the myriad features displayed onstage and a live photoblog to back it up. DD noted that sales of the iPod touch and iPhone have outstripped RIM’s (RIMM) combined BlackBerry sales by a factor of… well, by a LOT. Kind of supports the data that say mobile Web use doubled over the last year. Which is good, because Mac sales were no good in February.

In Personal Technology, Walt Mossberg reviewed the latest release of Microsoft IE8 (MSFT), its most comprehensive release in many years. His verdict? Mixed, of course. In Mossberg’s Mailbox, Walt talked to readers about the many models of BlackBerry phones and how they differ from one another, the new iPod shuffle and its earphone compatibility and upgrading Vista to Windows 7. In the Mossberg Solution, Katie Boehret reviewed the Ee Top, Asus’s first foray into the all-in-one PC market.

More next week. Go Woz!

And, among Web browsers, by far the most popular is Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, or IE, which comes on every new Windows computer. So when Microsoft (MSFT) changes Internet Explorer, those changes affect vast numbers of people, and the Web itself. This week, Microsoft is changing its browser in a major way. On Thursday, the company will release IE8, the biggest overhaul of Internet Explorer in years.

I’ve been testing IE8 for months, first using its prerelease versions and, more recently, the final version. I’ve found it to be a big improvement over its predecessor, IE7, and a much closer competitor to its main rival, Mozilla’s Firefox. IE8 is more stable than IE7, more compatible with industrywide Web standards, and packed with new features that improve navigation, search, ease of use, privacy and security.

Some of these features can’t be matched out of the box by its main rival browsers. For instance, related tabs are color-coded, the search field can show images along with text, you can get instant fly-out maps of place names in Web pages, and you can easily hide your tracks online from the prying eyes of advertisers.

But, in my tests, IE8 wasn’t as fast as Firefox, or two other notable browsers — the Windows version of Apple’s (AAPL) new Safari 4 and Google’s (GOOG) Chrome. IE8 loaded a variety of pages I tested more slowly than any of the other browsers, and it grew sluggish when juggling a large number of Web pages opened simultaneously in tabs.

For that reason, I can’t say that IE8 dethrones my previous browser champ, Firefox. If you’re a light-duty user and attracted to the new IE’s strong suite of fresh features, you might prefer it to Firefox. But if you would be bothered by the speed difference, or the slowdown I saw under a heavy load, Firefox would still be better.

The new IE8 lets you see images in results from the built-in search box and quickly switch sources.

Microsoft is making IE8 available, free, at noon EDT Thursday, for both Windows XP and Windows Vista, at microsoft.com/ie8. A version also will be tailored for the forthcoming Windows 7, the next edition of the company’s operating system. But that version won’t be available until the next prerelease iteration of Windows 7 comes out. It will also be automatically offered via the Windows Update system over the next few months.

Unlike its competitors, IE8 won’t be available in a Macintosh version, though I found it worked fine on a Mac that is running Windows alongside the Mac’s own operating system.

Favorites and Tabs

This new Internet Explorer looks a bit different, right away. It finally displays, by default, the old Links bar, now renamed the Favorites Bar. This is a toolbar near the top of the screen where you can store your most-used Web sites or folders containing groups of frequently visited sites, for convenient access. It’s like the Bookmarks Toolbar in Firefox or the Bookmarks Bar in Safari. This bar was available in older versions of IE, but was hidden unless you turned it on.

And this Favorites Bar has a couple of nice features. There’s a one-click button that will add any Web site to the bar, as opposed to adding it to the longer Favorites list of less-frequently visited sites. And, to help fit as many sites as possible on the bar, IE8 has a command that automatically condenses the titles of the entries.

There are also big changes in the way tabbed browsing works. In IE8, tabs you open from links on the same Web site are grouped together and color-coded. And when you have too many tabs to see at once, you can click on a button to see mini images of the pages they represent, or, alternatively, you can get a quick text list of all of them.

In addition, when you create a new, empty tab, IE8 displays a number of choices inside the page. These include the ability to reopen tabs you’ve closed or to perform various actions on text you’ve copied, such as emailing or blogging it.

There also is an optional Suggested Sites feature, which pops up a list of other Web pages that might be similar to, or related to, the page you’re viewing. This feature doesn’t always do a great job, but when it works, it’s handy. For example, when I was reading the BBC’s Web site and clicked Suggested Sites, IE8 listed a variety of other British news sources I hadn’t bookmarked.

Addresses and Search

Like the other major Web browsers, IE8 now also makes smart suggestions about what you might be looking for when you type something into its address bar or its search box. In the address bar, these are based on your history and your Favorites. In the search box, they are based on suggestions from whatever search engine you choose to view in the box, plus your history. All of these suggestions are organized nicely. (If you are using Windows XP, you must install Microsoft’s desktop search product for all of these features to work.)

But the IE8 search box does two cool things the other browsers don’t. First, it allows search engines to show images in the search results that drop down from the box, something Microsoft calls Visual Search. With some providers, like Google, you don’t see images, at least not today. But with others, such as Wikipedia and Amazon (AMZN), images show up.

Microsoft’s new browser IE8 includes a feature called Accelerators, which can perform specific tasks on Web pages.

Second, and more important, IE8′s search box lets you switch search providers on the fly by just clicking on an icon at the bottom of the results list. So, for instance, you could type in Red Sox, see the results in, say, Google, and then without retyping your search term, almost instantly get different results from Yahoo (YHOO) or from Microsoft’s Live Search engine, by just clicking their icons.

Surfing Tools

IE8 includes a new feature called Accelerators, which can perform specific actions on any text you select in a Web page, often without taking you to a new page. When you select text, a light-blue icon appears near it. When you click on that icon, you get a list of options. For instance, you can translate the text to another language, email it, blog it or, if it’s a place name, map it.

Depending on which company’s services your chosen accelerator is using, these actions can happen right on the page you’re viewing, in a fly-out panel. For example, I selected the word “Beijing” in a news story, chose Map with Yahoo from the Accelerator list, and got a map showing Beijing in a small window atop the same page.

When you install IE8, Microsoft suggests you use its own set of accelerators, but gives you the option to choose from Google, Yahoo and other competitors. A full list of accelerators, search engines and other add-ons for IE8 is at ieaddons.com at the bottom left of the page.

Another nice feature is called WebSlices. This requires some effort on the part of Web page publishers and is on only a small number of pages right now. But it allows a user to add to her Favorites bar a constantly updating section of a Web site, complete with graphics, by just clicking a green icon that appears on the site. For instance, I added to my Favorites bar a slice that shows the top stories on digg.com.

Speed and Stability

Microsoft claims IE8 is very fast, but in my tests, speed and performance were its worst attributes. Using two computers, one running Windows XP and one running Windows Vista, I timed the loading of a half-dozen popular Web sites, plus two folders containing numerous news and sports sites. I repeated the test in IE8, and in Firefox, Safari 4 and Chrome. In every case, IE8 loaded the pages and folders more slowly than most of the other browsers, and in most cases it came in dead last.

In some instances, the differences were tolerable — a few seconds. In others, primarily the folders containing nine or 21 sites, respectively, IE8 took two or three times as long as one or more of the other browsers to complete the task. Microsoft conducted its own tests, which show IE8 winning similar tests, but I rely on mine, which I also use when evaluating its competitors. You can judge for yourself.

IE8 never totally crashed on me. This is partly because when one tab crashes, it’s designed to leave the others unaffected. However, in my tests on both machines, I found that IE8′s general operating speed — things like opening menus or switching among tabs — slowed down noticeably when I had 15 or 20 sites opened in tabs, even after they finished loading.

Security and Privacy

By contrast, IE8 shines in the areas of protecting you on the Web. Like other browsers, it warns you when a Web site you’ve reached might be a phishing page, designed to steal your identity, or a page that’s known to distribute malicious software. And, like others, IE8 allows you to conduct a private browsing session that won’t leave any history or other evidence on your own PC.

Color-coded tabs make it easy to organize searches.

But IE8 also has a feature, called InPrivate Filtering, that the company says will optionally allow you to surf multiple Web sites without leaving the kinds of tracks on Web servers that allow advertisers and others to know where you’ve been and what you did there. I was unable to test the effectiveness of this feature, but assuming it works, it’s a step forward in privacy.

Compatibility

IE8 had good compatibility with most Web sites I visited. But in some cases, it didn’t render a page properly. This is mainly because some sites were designed for older versions of IE, which used proprietary page-rendering features that made some sites look good only in IE. With the new version, Microsoft is moving away from those proprietary features.

To solve this problem, IE8 includes a compatibility button you can click that will cause the browser to behave like older versions of IE and render the page properly. You have to click the button only once for each page, and IE8 will automatically do it for you on subsequent visits.

Bottom Line

Internet Explorer 8 is a well-done advance on an important product used by most people to surf the Web. If it were faster, I would say it was the best browser currently available for Windows. But even so, it will be an improvement for current Internet Explorer users, and might even tempt some folks to switch.

Find all of Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos online, free, at the All Things Digital Web site, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090318/microsoft-ups-ante-with-new-browser/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20080902/liveblogging-from-the-google-chrome-launch-hello-larry-wake-up-sergey/ http://allthingsd.com/20080902/liveblogging-from-the-google-chrome-launch-hello-larry-wake-up-sergey/#comments Tue, 02 Sep 2008 20:06:29 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=3210

Finally, Google Co-Founder Larry Page takes the microphone and thanks the Chrome browser team and compliments them for their efforts.

This is–as anyone on the receiving end of Page’s sometimes pointed manner knows (and BoomTown has been)–a big deal.

Page also starts to talk about how browser choice and innovation could make the planet a better place.

Of course! World peace through better browsing!

Then he moves on to questions from the media, bringing some of the Chrome team up to the stage.

There’s a sequence of very serious questions on how to move tabs, privacy, mobile issues, WebKit, bug testing, Incognito, distribution plans and ongoing support for Mozilla’s Firefox (yes, it will continue–plus, Mozilla HQ is across the street! Hmmm…).

Ooops–the other Google (GOOG) Co-Founder, Sergey Brin, suddenly arrives late. He slips into the lineup of “Inside the Actors Studio”-type chairs, looking like he just woke up, in what is a classic move by Microsoft’s Bill Gates that I like to call the “bed-head maneuver.” (I like the spanking red Crocs though!)

It’s a sleepy ruse, as it turns out, as Brin deftly deflects a question about whether Chrome is an operating system for the Web, given that Internet navigation software has become so integral to consumer behavior.

As in, a Windows killer!

Nope, says Brin (full video answer to come), totally ignoring my dubious look.

The distribution question is key, of course, since Google will want to get Chrome out there. So what’s the secret sauce? Because it is a “great product,” says Page.

As to why Google was doing this, VP Sundar Pichal said the search giant wanted to “start from scratch” in the browser game. Like baking a really good cake, one would assume.

When no reporter would get up and ask the obvious what-about-tweaking-Microsoft question, I finally did and also asked about the business plan for Chrome–as in, how will it help Google make more money?

Both Brin and Page answer again that it’s all about providing choice and also keeping the Web open, which will spur usage, which will rain more magical moolah down on the Googleplex.

Also (and video to come on this too), Brin later adds, Google never thinks of Microsoft (MSFT).

Well, at least on that issue it seems we’re back to Pinocchio–the long-nosed version–again.

Soon to come: BoomTown’s Chrome Launch video and one of just the sleepy-as-a-fox Brin on Chrome!

Until then, here’s the exclusive review in his Personal Technology column of the new Google Chrome browser by AllThingsD.com’s Walt Mossberg, which was published at the same time as the news of its product launch was announced by the search behemoth this morning.

Walt’s reaction is mixed:

“My verdict: Chrome is a smart, innovative browser that, in many common scenarios, will make using the Web faster, easier and less frustrating. But this first version–which is just a beta, or test, release–is rough around the edges and lacks some common browser features Google plans to add later.”

Anyone can now download Chrome, but Walt has been testing it for a week. He also reviews Microsoft’s newest version of its powerful Internet Explorer, called IE8, which he likes better than Chrome.

Money quote: “The second beta version of IE8 is the best edition of Internet Explorer in years. It is packed with new features of its own, some of which are similar to those in Chrome, and some of which, in my view, top Chrome’s features.”

A little tarnish on the Chrome, it seems.

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20080902/liveblogging-from-the-google-chrome-launch-hello-larry-wake-up-sergey/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20080902/first-test-of-googles-new-browser/ http://allthingsd.com/20080902/first-test-of-googles-new-browser/#comments Tue, 02 Sep 2008 19:01:08 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20080902/first-test-of-googles-new-browser/ Google has introduced a new Web browser, called Chrome, aimed at wresting dominance of the browser market from Microsoft‘s Internet Explorer. The move takes the Google-Microsoft rivalry to a whole new level. If Google succeeds, it will be a big deal, with major ramifications for the future of the Web.

But just how good is Chrome? How does it differ from IE and from less popular, but still important, browsers like Mozilla’s Firefox and Apple‘s Safari?

I’ve been testing Chrome for about a week, trying out all its features and using it side by side with Microsoft’s latest iteration of IE, which came out just last week.

[ See post to watch video ]

My verdict: Chrome is a smart, innovative browser that, in many common scenarios, will make using the Web faster, easier and less frustrating. But this first version — which is just a beta, or test, release — is rough around the edges and lacks some common browser features Google plans to add later. These omissions include a way to manage bookmarks, a command for emailing links and pages directly from the browser, and even a progress bar to show how much of a Web page has loaded.

Chrome’s interface has some bold changes from the standard browser design. These new features enhance the Web experience, but they will require some adjustment on the part of users. For instance, Chrome does away with most menus and toolbar icons to give maximum screen space for the Web pages themselves. Also, Google has merged the address bar, where you type in Web addresses, with the search box, where you type in search terms. This unified feature is called the Omnibox.

One striking difference in Chrome is how it handles tabs, which display a single Web page. In Chrome, each tab behaves as a separate browser. The bookmarks bar, Omnibox, menus and toolbar icons are located inside the tab, rather than atop the entire browser. The tabs appear at the top of the computer screen. Chrome also groups related tabs. If you open a new tab from a link in a page that’s already open, that new tab appears next to the originating page, rather than at the end of the row of tabs.

Despite Google’s claims that Chrome is fast, it was notably slower in my tests at the common task of launching Web pages than either Firefox or Safari. However, it proved faster than the latest version of IE — also a beta version — called IE8.

Meanwhile, Microsoft hasn’t been sitting still. The second beta version of IE8 is the best edition of Internet Explorer in years. It is packed with new features of its own, some of which are similar to those in Chrome, and some of which, in my view, top Chrome’s features.

Google’s Chrome browser displays thumbnails of a user’s most-visited pages when a new tab is opened, rather than a blank page.

For example, while IE8 also groups related tabs, it assigns a different color to each such tab group and allows you to close them all with one click. It has a “smart” address box of its own, that drops down a list of suggestions as you type, though it retains a separate search box.

IE8 also has breakthrough privacy features that exceed Chrome’s, and includes a new technology called Accelerators, which allows you to take rapid action on any selected word or phrase on a Web page, such as generating a map for a place name, without switching to a new page.

As they develop, each of these browsers has a good chance of besting Firefox 3.0, which I have regarded as the best Web browser for Windows, the only operating system on which Chrome currently runs. But they will have to get faster at loading pages. And, to best Firefox on the Macintosh, Google will have to make good on its promise to produce a Mac version of Chrome, something it says it will do in the coming months. Microsoft has no plans to produce a Mac version of IE8.

Chrome and IE8 are far more advanced than Apple’s Safari. Safari is speedy on both Mac and Windows platforms, but lacks many of the key intelligent features of its newer Google and Microsoft rivals.

Why is Google igniting a new browser war? There are two main reasons, and both involve competing with Microsoft. First, the search giant fears that because its search engine and other major products depend on the browser, Microsoft — with its rival online products — might be able to gain an advantage by altering the design of IE, which has roughly a 75% market share.

Second, and more important, Google sees the Web as a platform for the software programs, or applications, that currently run directly on computer operating systems, notably Microsoft’s Windows. It says current browsers lack the underlying architecture to enable future, more powerful Web applications that will rely more heavily on a common Web programming language called JavaScript. Chrome was designed to be the world’s speediest browser at handling JavaScript.

That move might one day make Chrome a sort of online operating system that competes with Windows. “Think of Chrome as more than a simple Web browser,” Google declares. “It’s a platform for running Web applications.”

Microsoft’s IE8 has an “Accelerator” feature that lets users select any Web text and then map, translate, search or email their selection without leaving the page.

I tested Chrome, and IE8, on a plain-vanilla Lenovo ThinkPad laptop running Windows XP, and equipped with a modest processor and one gigabyte of memory.

To gauge Chrome’s speed at loading Web pages, I launched two large groups of typical Web pages simultaneously, each site opening in its own tab. One group included 15 sports sites, the second 19 news sites. In both tests, Chrome’s speed fell in the middle, at 35 and 44 seconds, respectively. IE8 was slower, taking 49 and 75 seconds to open the two groups of sites. But Firefox and Safari were much faster, notching identical speeds of 19 seconds for the 15 sites and 28 seconds for the 19 sites.

Google claims that future, more sophisticated Web applications relying more heavily on JavaScript than today’s sites do would run faster on Chrome. Of course, I couldn’t test any claim about future scenarios, but I did run Chrome on several JavaScript test sites, used by developers. It handily beat the other browsers. However, Google doesn’t claim users would see much difference on current Web application sites.

I also tested Chrome’s compatibility with scores of common Web sites. In general, it did well, rendering the sites properly. But I ran into problems with video. Some video sites refused to recognize Chrome, because its development has been a secret. On others, like Major League Baseball’s site, videos mostly played properly, but sometimes didn’t.

IE8 also has some compatibility issues, for different reasons. It’s the first version of Internet Explorer to hew closely to Web standards. Earlier versions used some nonstandard ways of rendering Web sites, prompting some site designers to adopt techniques that made their pages work in IE, but look odd in Firefox and Safari. Now, ironically, these pages also look strange in IE8. So Microsoft was forced to build in a special Compatibility View button that users must click to see the sites properly.

Chrome is built on three core design principles. The first is its spare user interface: just two menus and a handful of toolbar icons. IE introduced a similar approach in its version 7, but with a difference. Microsoft allows users to restore a traditional menu bar; Google doesn’t. The only toolbar icon you can add in Chrome is a Home button.

The second principle is that a user can type anything into a single place, the Omnibox, and instantly get suggestions on where to go, gleaned from the user’s own browsing history and Google’s rankings of popular sites. Whether you type in a Web address or a search term, the Omnibox is very smart. In my tests, it sometimes came up with the right destination after I typed only one or two letters of the name of a site I often visited.

The Omnibox has another cool feature: Tab-to-Search. If you type in the name of another site that includes its own search feature, like Amazon.com, the Omnibox lets you just press the tab key to search within that site, without opening it first. Chrome, through its Options settings, also lets you change the default search engine used by the Omnibox. Instead of Google’s own search service, you can use Microsoft’s Live search, Yahoo search, or others.

The third big principle behind Chrome is that each tab runs, under the hood, as a separate browser. Tabs can be dragged off the main browser and turned into separate windows. If one tab crashes, the rest of the browser keeps running. But this doesn’t work perfectly. In my tests, all of Chrome died on me when I tried watching an Olympics video on the NBC site.

You can even make a tab a standalone application that runs from the Start Menu, or the desktop, as if it was a separate program.

Chrome has a few other key features. When you open a new tab, you don’t get a blank page, but a set of thumbnails for your most-visited pages, plus lists of recent search engines you’ve used, recently used bookmarks and recently closed tabs.

Like other browsers, Chrome puts up a warning when you try to visit a malicious or phony Web site, and it has a private browsing mode, called Incognito, which allows you to browse without leaving any history on your computer — a feature popularized in Safari.

Chrome also has a pop-up blocker, but it’s annoying because it flashes a notice that a pop-up has been blocked. IE also does this, but unlike in Chrome, the warnings are much less intrusive.

Internet Explorer 8 has some new features Chrome lacks. Its private browsing mode, called InPrivate, is the first I’ve seen that not only leaves no traces on your own computer, but also bars Web sites from collecting some types of information on where you’ve previously been surfing.

While IE8′s address box and search box remain separate, each also offers rapid suggestions; and both are organized better than Chrome’s. For instance, the suggestions that drop down from its address bar are divided neatly into categories drawn from the browser’s own guess, your history and your favorites. One downside: For this to work in Windows XP, you must first install Microsoft’s desktop search product.

Like Chrome, IE8 lets you switch your default search provider, but it also allows you to switch search engines on the fly. When you type in a search term, icons for alternate search engines appear at the bottom of the suggestion list, and you need only click on these to see search results from, say, Google, instead of Microsoft’s own Live search engine.

IE8′s Accelerators feature presents a blue-arrow icon above any text on a Web page that you have selected. Clicking on the icon brings up a list of actions you can take using the selected text, such as posting it to a blog, emailing it, mapping it or searching it. While these actions are set by default to use Microsoft’s own Web services, you can change them to use Google’s, Yahoo’s, or those from other companies.

Microsoft also has built in a feature called Web Slices. These are portions of a Web site that a site developer can designate to appear in the IE8 Favorites bar and to constantly update themselves. An example might be bidding on eBay.

Like Chrome, IE8 also displays useful information whenever you create a new tab, including a list of recently closed tabs and a list of Accelerators.

With the emergence of Chrome, consumers have a new and innovative browser choice, and with IE8, the new browser war is sure to be a worthy contest.

Find all of Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos online, free, at the All Things Digital Web site, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20080902/first-test-of-googles-new-browser/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20080901/google-ignites-a-new-browser-war-with-microsoft-by-unveiling-one-of-its-own/ http://allthingsd.com/20080901/google-ignites-a-new-browser-war-with-microsoft-by-unveiling-one-of-its-own/#comments Mon, 01 Sep 2008 17:41:55 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=2967

In its most frontal and aggressive attack on Microsoft yet, sources with knowledge of the project said Google is preparing to unveil a new browser–ready for download to users as early as tomorrow–to try to loosen Microsoft’s iron grip on the most important piece of software for navigating the Internet.

In addition, Google Blogoscoped has published a comic book that Google is apparently using to explain the technical aspects of its open-source browser, which is called Chrome.

[UPDATE: Here is a post on Google's official confirmation of the browser launch in 100 countries tomorrow, which was released on its blog this afternoon. The beta version will be initially available only for Windows, but Google said Mac and Linux versions were coming soon.]

Until now, the Google-Microsoft battles felt more like a Cold War, mostly limited to Google (GOOG) poking at Microsoft (MSFT) via the development of small-scale Web-based software to compete with Microsoft’s dominant Word, PowerPoint and other such products, and Microsoft’s thus-far unsuccessful attempts to break Google’s lock on the search market.

But with this move, which has been rumored since 2004, the war most definitely has gone red-hot, as Google aims to grab a chunk of Microsoft’s huge browser market share, which various surveys put at about three-quarters of the market.

The efforts to do this have been well known within the company for a long time, although the timing of its launch has not.

But Google FedExed the comic too early to Blogoscoped–who is based in Germany–and possibly others, which makes BoomTown really appreciate express mail more than ever.

(I also obtained a copy and have posted the comic book here, and Digital Daily’s John Paczkowski has written a quick executive summary of it.)

Sources said Google has made the move to create and distribute a browser due to worry about what new features in IE8 could do to its search business.

These features include privacy changes that could prevent Google from collecting information related to the effectiveness of its ads, quick-linking to Microsoft mapping and other offerings, and a more robust search bar that is also more Microsoft-centric.

To combat Microsoft’s IE dominance in recent years, Google has been backing Mozilla’s Firefox browser, which grew out of the ashes of the once-powerful, now-irrelevant Netscape browser like a phoenix to claim an astonishing 18 percent of the market.

That market share has climbed from 11 percent just two years ago–even against Microsoft’s IE juggernaut with 74 percent and Apple’s Safari browser with six percent.

Mozilla’s recent launch of Firefox 3 had a record-setting debut day in mid-June, with 8.3 million downloads in 24 hours.

Google recently renewed a deal with Mozilla making its search engine the homepage and search bar default until 2011. In return, Google pays Mozilla royalties for Google ad clicks that come from searches originating in the Firefox browser.

(Here’s a recent post I did about a visit I made to Mozilla’s HQ, right around the corner from Google, as well as a video interview I did with its CEO John Lilly.)

But obviously, Mozilla’s efforts were not enough for Google, which clearly has decided it must own and distribute a browser, especially since the browser has become the most significant piece of software related to the Internet, and the fulcrum on which most of Google’s business lies.

In other words, Google is declaring the browser critical to its future and, in this regard, it is entirely right.

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20080901/google-ignites-a-new-browser-war-with-microsoft-by-unveiling-one-of-its-own/feed/ 5