Microsoft has released Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 to the public. Internet Explorer 8 will bring many new features to the table, not just security, which was the main reason for upgrading to Internet Explorer 7. You need at least Windows XP SP2 to install Internet Explorer 8, but it’s also available for Vista SP1, Server 2003 and Server 2008. Beta 1 is of course not recommended for the everyday users, but webdesigners, developers and testers. Below is a list of feature new to IE8;
Activities are contextual services to quickly access a service from any webpage. Users typically copy and paste from one webpage to another. Internet Explorer 8 Activities make this common pattern easier to do.
Activities typically involve two types of scenarios: “look up” information within a webpage or “send” web content to a web application. For example, a user is interested in a restaurant and wants to see the location of it. This is the form of a “look up” Activity where the user selects the address and views an in-place view of the map using his favorite map service.
WebSlices is a new feature for websites to connect to their users by subscribing to content directly within a webpage. WebSlices behave just like feeds where clients can subscribe to get updates and notify the user of changes.
Internet Explorer 8 Users can discover WebSlices within a webpage and add them to the Favorites bar, a dedicated row below the Address bar for easy access to links. Internet Explorer 8 subscribes to the webpage, detects changes in the WebSlice, and notifies the user of updates. Users can preview these updates directly from the Favorites bar and click-through to the website to get more information.
Favorites Bar – In Internet Explorer 7, the Links bar provided users with one-click access to their favorite sites. The Links bar has undergone a complete makeover for Internet Explorer 8. It has been renamed the Favorites bar to enable users to associate this bar as a place to put and easily access all their favorite web content such as links, feeds, WebSlices and even Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents.
Automatic Crash Recovery is a feature of Windows Internet Explorer 8 that can help to prevent the loss of work and productivity in the unlikely event of the browser crashing or hanging. The ACR feature takes advantage of the Loosely-Coupled Internet Explorer feature to provide new crash recovery capabilities, such as tab recovery, which will minimize interruptions to users’ browsing sessions.
Improved Phishing Filter – Internet Explorer 7 introduced the Phishing Filter, a feature which helps warn users when they visit a Phishing site. Phishing sites spoof a trusted legitimate site, with the goal of stealing the user’s personal or financial information. For Internet Explorer 8, we are building on the success of the Phishing Filter with a more comprehensive feature called the “Safety Filter.”
If you’re running Windows XP SP2, Vista SP1, Server 2003 SP2 or Server 2008 you can fetch Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 from Microsoft’s Windows Internet Explorer 8 Readiness Toolkit site.
