image source: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/beta/

The IE 8 Release Candidate is the third pre-release version of Microsoft’s browser but the first to include a list of web sites that Microsoft says actually work with its browser.

The Compatibility View List was announced last month by Microsoft after it found users testing the second beta had been unable to view websites without IE 8 scrambling them.

IE 8 introduces two modes for viewing sites: default and compatibility. Default supports the latest web standards, like CSS 2.1. Compatibility is designed to let you view the millions of sites and applications built for old versions of IE that were not compliant with web standards.

The idea was that a button would let users flip over to viewing such sites, but many forgot to make the switch, resulting in scrambled sites. Even sites supposed to work in default mode were getting scrambled.

Source & More: The Register

Download IE8 Beta

Songsmith generates musical accompaniment to match a singer’s voice. Just choose a musical style, sing into your PC’s microphone, and Songsmith will create backing music for you. Then share your songs with your friends and family, post your songs online, or create your own music videos.

More info: Microsoft Research

Image Source: Mrbass

Users of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer are being urged by experts to switch to a rival until a serious security flaw has been fixed.

The flaw in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer could allow criminals to take control of people’s computers and steal their passwords, internet experts say.

Microsoft urged people to be vigilant while it investigated and prepared an emergency patch to resolve it.

Internet Explorer is used by the vast majority of the world’s computer users.

Browser bait

“In this case, hackers found the hole before Microsoft did,” said Rick Ferguson, senior security advisor at Trend Micro. “This is never a good thing.”

As many as 10,000 websites have been compromised since the vulnerability was discovered, he said.

“What we’ve seen from the exploit so far is it stealing game passwords, but it’s inevitable that it will be adapted by criminals,” he said. “It’s just a question of modifying the payload the trojan installs.”

Said Mr Ferguson: “If users can find an alternative browser, then that’s good mitigation against the threat.”

But Microsoft counselled against taking such action.

“I cannot recommend people switch due to this one flaw,” said John Curran, head of Microsoft UK’s Windows group.

He added: “We’re trying to get this resolved as soon as possible.

“At present, this exploit only seems to affect 0.02% of internet sites,” said Mr Curran. “In terms of vulnerability, it only seems to be affecting IE7 users at the moment, but could well encompass other versions in time.”

Richard Cox, chief information officer of anti-spam body The Spamhaus Project and an expert on privacy and cyber security, echoed Trend Micro’s warning.

“It won’t be long before someone reverse engineers this exploit for more fraudulent purposes. Trend Mico’s advice [of switching to an alternative web browser] is very sensible,” he said. 

Source: BBC Latest News on the web

Here’s a list of our favorite keyboard shortcuts from Microsoft’s List of keyboard shortcuts for Word 2002 and Word 2003:

• Apply Heading To apply heading 1, 2 or 3, press ALT+CTRL+1, ALT+CTRL+2, and ALT+CTRL+3, respectively. Headings are an excellent way to start of sections of a document, and can later be used to automatically generate a table of contents.
• Apply List Bullet To start typing a bulleted list, press ALT+CTRL+L.
• Bold Text Press CTRL+B to bold text.
• Copy Use CTRL+C to copy the current selection.
• Delete WordTo delete the entire word preceding the cursor, press CTRL+DEL.
• Find Text Press CTRL+F to bring up the Find Text dialog box. Using a program’s Find feature is always faster than manually scanning for something.
• Italics Press CTRL+I to italicize text.
• Paste Press CTRL+V to paste the contents of the clipboard.
• Print Use CTRL+P to print the current document to the default printer.
• Quick Text Selection Different combinations of the ctrl, shift and arrow keys enable you to select blocks of text without dragging the mouse around.
  • Select A Word Hold CTRL+SHIFT and press the left/right arrow keys to select text word by word.
  • Select Line(s) Hold CTRL+SHIFT and press the up/down arrow keys to select all the way to the beginning or end of the current line. Pressing the arrow key more than once will let you select multiple lines.
• Save Press CTRL+S to save the current document.
• Underline Press CTRL+U to underline text.