Dwight Watt Georgia Kiwanian Article

April 2009

New technology to help you connect with Kiwanians and the world

The Georgia Kiwanis now has a Facebook page where you can share information and share pictures. I will try to keep monitored to keep inappropriate items off the page and remove members (friends) if needed. The page is at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Georgia-Kiwanis/77529748268

We also have a listserv account where you can join and share information with other members or ask questions and hopefully others will share their experiences. You can sign up for it at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gakiwanis/join You will then receive e-mails from members. I have set it as monitored to keep spammers out so I will approve people joining and their first message. I will assume requests to join are from Kiwanians unless suspicious looking. If first message is spam I will remove the member.

Question: Should I get the new Internet Explorer 8?

Answer: You may want to. It has some nice new features and is not drastically different than previous versions. If you are using Firefox or other types of browsers you will probably want to stay with them as Microsoft appears mainly to be catching up to them.

Internet Explorer (IE) 8 is the latest version of Internet Explorer (Microsoft’s web browser program) and was just released in April. I have used the beta version for over a month on one of my machines.

IE 8 has several improvements over the previous versions. It resembles the competitors (Firefox, Safari and others) much closer than previous versions. My experience is that it appears to load web pages quicker than previous versions.

Microsoft says it is a more secure browser. It may be, but I am sure in the coming months we will hear of security holes in it. Smart screen Filters is a new item in it to help make browser safer for normal Internet users. AVG and Firefox and others already offered it (and IE on a lesser degree). It checks sites that you are either hovering over links for or sites you have browsed to for frauds and phishing. However it will not catch all.

Suggested Sites is a new feature to IE when you type in a word or letters in the address bar IE will start suggesting sites based on that and your history of visited sites or entered addresses.

Accelerators will give a number of different features if you install them. One of them when an address is entered will give a map of the location or definitions of words.

IE 8 is different than previous versions and some web pages may not appear correctly in it. I have only encountered a few, but Microsoft included a solution. There is a Compatibility Button which allows you to look at sites that do not work correct in IE8 in a previous version of IE so they will work correctly. I have used on the few sites when they came up weird and I clicked the compatibility button beside the arrow at the end of address entry area and they worked like they used to in IE 7. It is an important feature now but in a few months you will probably rarely find sites not upgraded to IE8. I have checked pages on the sites I develop and maintain and have found they work ok in IE8.

Dwight

Copyright 2009 by Dwight Watt Keywords: New technology to help you connect with Kiwanians and the world, Georgia Kiwanian, technology, tech updates, facebook, ie8, tech tips, HTML, kiwanis, Arthur Dwight Watt Jr., Dwight Watt, lafayette, Emanuel County, Swainsboro, Watt Thoughts, Georgia, USA, web sites,LaFayette