Microsoft has released Internet Explorer 8 beta 1 today. The new browser shows many improvements, standards compliance.

New features

Activities: “Activities are contextual services to quickly access a service from any page.” It works like this, suppose you are on a restaurent web page and wants to see where it is located, this is a form of “look up” activity where you can select the address and view it in-place in a Map. This is great feature.

WebSlices: “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.”

Favorites Bar: An improved favorites bar allows users to add quick bookmarks like feeds, webslices, word files, powerpoint presentations etc.

Automatic Crash Recovery: “Automatic Crash Recovery (ACR) 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.”

Improved Phishing Filter: Internet Explorer 7 introduced the Phishing Filter, a feature which helps warn users when they visit a Phishing site.

Download Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1