IE8 Gets New Functionality in Windows 7 RC

The evolution of Internet Explorer 8 did not stop with the release to web in mid-March 2009 for Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008. Fact is that the development process continued as Windows 7 moved from Beta to Release Candidate stage. Now, with the public availability of Windows 7 RC Build 7100 downloads, testers will also be able to play around with a new milestone of IE8, also Build 7100, in accordance with the underlying platform. IE8 in Windows 7 comes to the table with new functionality designed to increase the browser's reliability.

“For the Win7 RC, we added functionality to IE8 that lowers the threshold for identifying delayed responsiveness that might be a hang. Basically, IE’s frame uses a timer, and if the tab doesn’t respond within a given interval of time, the frame gives the user the choice to recover the page, close the page, or wait for the tab to respond. If the tab responds on its own, IE takes down these choices,” a member of the IE team stated.

Because of the tab isolation in Internet Explorer 8, the browser is capable of dealing with issues from crashed tabs to unresponsive items separately from one another. When it comes down to tabs that hang, IE8 will offer three options to end users: either wait for the tab to become responsive again, recover the page or close it down entirely. IE8 will do this both in delayed responsiveness (hangs) or non-responsiveness (hard hangs) scenarios, with the Redmond company promising that the feature was tested to be unobtrusive.

“While we continue to track the telemetry, if you are debugging IE either with the IE Developer Tools or a debugger, and you attempt to interact with the IE window, there is a chance that you will see this dialog. Although this will not impact your debugging it may be more convenient to turn this dialog off. Or if you’re running Win7 RC and are seeing this prompt more than you should or would want to, you can turn it off by changing the following registry key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main!HangResistance, DWORD, 0” the IE team representative added.

Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) RTW is available for download here (for 32-bit and 64-bit flavors of Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008).