Earlier I wrote about hints that IE8, soon to be released in beta 2 form, would get a “private browsing” (AKA “porn”) mode. On Monday, Microsoft confirmed that IE8 would indeed provide a private browsing feature, called “InPrivate.”
While most think of “private browsing” as simply browsing the web without leaving “tracks,” such as cookies, history, cache data, etc., etc., IE8’s version gets much more granular than is usually thought of. In their blog post detailing the new feature, Microsoft detailed the following “private browsing” features:
InPrivate Browsing lets you control whether or not IE saves your browsing history, cookies, and other data
While InPrivate Browsing is active, the following takes place:
- New cookies are not stored
- All new cookies become “session” cookies
- Existing cookies can still be read
- The new DOM storage feature behaves the same way
- New history entries will not be recorded
- New temporary Internet files will be deleted after the Private Browsing window is closed
- Form data is not stored
- Passwords are not stored
- Addresses typed into the address bar are not stored
- Queries entered into the search box are not stored
- Visited links will not be stored
Delete Browsing History helps you control your browsing history after you’ve visited websites. But unlike the feature in IE7, you can keep cookies and temporary Internet files from websites saved in your Favorites list.
That’s pretty cool, as typically I’d rather keep all my cookies rather tha lose some of the cookies for my favorite sites.
To avoid having your favorite sites “forget you”, simply add them to your Favorites, and make sure the “Preserve Favorites website data” checkbox is selected. IE will preserve any cookies or cache files that were created by websites in your favorites.
InPrivate Blocking informs you about content that is in a position to observe your browsing history, and allows you to block it
InPrivate Blocking keeps a record of third-party items like the one above as you browse. When you choose to browse with InPrivate, IE automatically blocks sites that have “seen” you across more than ten sites.You can also manually choose items to block or allow, or obtain information about the third-party content directly from the site by clicking the “More information from this website” link. Note that Internet Explorer will only record data for InPrivate Blocking when you are in “regular” browsing mode, as no browsing history is retained while browsing InPrivate. An easy way to think of it is that your normal browsing determines which items to block when you browse InPrivate.
InPrivate Subscriptions allow you to augment the capability of InPrivate Blocking by subscribing to lists of websites to block or allow.
Under the covers, InPrivate Subscriptions are simply RSS feeds of Regular Expressions that specify sub-downloads to block or allow. Anyone can publish an InPrivate Subscription on their website, just as they can offer an Accelerator or Web Slice on their website.
Safari already supports “private browsing,” but Firefox does not. IE8 is expected to go to testers later this week.
