Microsoft Releases IE8 beta 1

A surpise move from Microsoft! They have released the new version of Internet Explorer, IE8. And its available for download. This shows the software giant is
not going to allow Firefox creep into its market share. You can download the latest version (beta 1) but now lets have a look at what features will IE8 provide.

Microsoft had promised the availability first beta version in first half of 2008. They also promised that it will have full support for web standards. With this beta release, Microsoft is looking at web developers and designer community and detailing some of the investments in the product for this audience. That means, They are trying to avoid broken pages! IE7 broke pages that used to work in IE6, so did the other older versions.

With IE8, Microsoft wants to improve the standards conformance of the browser and bring it up to a level that's comparable to Firefox and others. Plus make it backward compatible! IE8 will have three rendering engines, two of which are the already familiar "quirks mode" and "(not so) standards mode." used in IE7 and a new engine. This mode will be activated through
<meta> tag. So you will have to add:
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=8" />

IE will claim to be faster and will have some exciting features like

Activities
Activities are contextual services to quickly access a service from any web page. Some commonly use tasks like "Add to Digg", send as email etc.Activities are services that the user can install and manage. They are some what like add-ons in Fire fox, but with a specific use.

WebSlices
This is a new feature for where users can get information by subscribing to content directly within a web page. They behave like feeds in short! Internet Explorer 8 Users can discover WebSlices within a web page and add them to the Favorites bar(just like fire fox).

Favorites Bar
In IE7, User where able to access their favorite with a single click. Now you will get dedicated bar on top of tabs.The favorite bar can have links, feeds, WebSlices and even Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents.

Automatic Crash Recovery
Another new feature that is already present in IE's competitors. A crash recovery functionality to prevent the loss of work and productivity in the event of the browser crashing or hanging.

Phishing Filter
This is not a new feature, but Microsoft says its improved and will have some new features added to phishing filter.

IE8 doesn't bring much of a innovation. Its competitor like Firefox 2.0 and Opera already have these features. Microsoft is bound to loose its browser market if IE8 can't make up to the features provided my others.