• BBC News, Tuesday, January 27, 2009 11:30 AM

Microsoft has unveiled Internet Explorer 8, which it says is faster, easier to use and more secure than Mozilla's Firefox, Apple's Safari and Google's Chrome. IE 8 offers performance upgrades to speed up page loading, new navigation features and tab isolation so that if you hit a bad site, only that tab closes and not the whole browser.

A feature called WebSlices updates users about particular items on another page like stock prices, the weather or an eBay auction. So-called accelerators allow users to access services like maps or language translations in a small window without leaving the page you're on. "We have made IE 8 the best browser for the way people really do use the web," said Microsoft's Amy Barzdukas.

"Microsoft needs to say these things because it continues to lose market share to Firefox, Chrome and Safari," said Gartner analyst Neil MacDonald. Indeed, recent figures show that Microsoft's dominance of the Web browser market is eroding. According to Net Applications, at the end of 2008, IE's market share fell below 70% for the first time in eight years, to 68%. Conversely, Mozilla's Firefox, the No. 2 Web browser, broke 20% for the first time, with a 21% share.

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