Internet Explorer 8

Windows Internet Explorer 8 is the next version of Microsoft’s popular browser. Internet Explorer 8 is currently available in English and will soon be available in German and Simplified Chinese. You may already be aware of this, but if not, Internet Explorer 8 is currently available in beta today. Bill Gates in his last public speech as Chairman of Microsoft announced that his company is going to release a feature complete test-version of their next-gen web browser ( Internet Explorer 8 ) aka IE 8 in Quarter of 2008.

Participation in the Technical Beta will enable you to evaluate a common release of Windows Internet Explorer 8, the ability to submit feedback, post bug reports, download software answer surveys on product quality as well as vote on top bugs filed by others from the technical beta program. At the end of the past week, Eric Lawrence, IE Program Manager, revealed the need for websites sensitive to User-Agent string modifications to be tweaked in order to support the upcoming version of Internet Explorer.

The first time you launch Internet Explorer 8, besides the traditional welcome page, the browser also opens a basic configuration tool from where you can import bookmarks, select your default search engine and also add plugins. They’re special commands you access from the browser’s contextual menu to use special web services such as locating a place in online maps, looking up a word in a dictionary, translating a text snipped or querying any search engine or Internet thematic directory with the selected keywords. It works just like the Firefox session saving utility: if your Internet Explorer happens to freeze, it’ll try to recover all the opened tabs and other data from last session next time to try to launch it.

From Computer World review: “IE8 now includes a Developer Tools feature, which includes tools for HTML, CSS, scripting and debugging. And in the final version, although not this one, Microsoft claims that IE8 will have full CSS 2.” Internet Explorer Administration Kit (IEAK) face-lifted to fix bugs and support custom IE8 builds for new platforms.
The other big new feature included in Internet Explorer 8 is support for web slices. Summing up, Internet Explorer 8 is the proof that Microsoft is getting on the right way: customizable plugins, more ways to interact with other online services, standard compliance.