In pictures: Internet Explorer 8

The first time you run IE8 after installing, this welcome page highlights some of the new features such as Accelerators and Web Slices.

Accelerators allow users to link directly to functions based on content in a web page. This example shows how you can see a pop-up map by highlighting a postcode.

Web slices bring up to date information right to the Favourites bar in a similar way to RSS feeds. Shown here is a Slice that lists the top sites on Digg.com.

Visual Search suggestions are designed to be more helpful than simply linking to a search engine's web page, and can even show images associated with results.

The Safety button provides access to protection tools, such as InPrivate browsing mode which stores no details of the sites you visit, and SmartScreen filtering.

Turning on SmartScreen provides more security, warning users if the page they are trying to view appears to be unsafe.

Users are left in no doubt if the site they are visiting has been reported as unsafe. This is what happened when we followed a link sent in a phishing email.

Some web pages may not display correctly in IE8, so the browser supports a Compatibility View that renders them as they would look in IE7.