SEATTLE • Microsoft Corp. released a new version of Internet Explorer on Thursday, adding features meant to speed up common Web surfing tasks.

Internet Explorer 8, which marks Microsoft’s first major browser update since August 2006, takes a stab at fixing many of the small annoyances people encounter every day on their computers.

For one, IE 8 aims to reduce the need to copy something from one Web page and paste it into another – mapping a restaurant address, Googling a celebrity name, looking up an unknown word in Wikipedia or sharing a story by e-mail, Twitter or Facebook.

A list of those little actions, which Microsoft is calling Accelerators, can be brought up by highlighting the text on a page and clicking on a small blue icon that appears. People can add new Accelerators to reflect their own search, e-mail and other habits.

Microsoft also has expanded on a feature present on some browsers today – a toolbar button that opens a menu of the most recent news headlines. IE 8 users can add “Web slices” to keep track of eBay auctions, stock quotes, blog posts, weather forecasts and other information that is frequently updated.

Microsoft also made some much-needed security improvements in Internet Explorer 8, many of which are already employed by competing products.

It beefed up protection against malware and known “phishing” scam sites and built in technology to protect against another kind of threat, “cross-site scripting,” in which hackers insert code into legitimate Web pages that compromise peoples’ computers without them knowing it.

IE 8 disables the bad scripts but in most cases allows others needed for a Web page to run as usual.

Parade of “horseless carriages” through downtown Colorado Springs passes past crowds in front of the First National Bank Building. The Antlers Hotel is visible in background. Photo by Pikes Peak Library District Special Collections