Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1: Promising New Features

Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) Beta 1 for developers, released by Microsoft on March 6th, offers some fascinating new capabilities. For example, it introduces two new features called Activities and WebSlices that extend the capabilities of the browser by interacting with other Web sites and services.

There are also a variety of other changes, including some much-needed additions, such as a feature that will restore crashed browser sessions and tabs like Firefox does. You also have the option to import your favorites from existing installed browsers when you first install IE8.

IE8 now includes a Developer Tools feature, which includes tools for HTML, CSS, scripting and debugging. Microsoft claims that the browser includes better scripting performance, and support for HTML5. And in the final version, although not this one, Microsoft claims that IE8 will have full CSS 2.1 support.

A particularly nice new feature, and one that I hope makes it into the final version of IE8, is the small Emulate IE7 button near the top of the screen. If there are any compatibility issues between IE8 and a Web site -- with a new browser, you never know -- just click the button, and it will fool the site into thinking you're running IE7.

WebSlices is among the most important features of IE8. WebSlices are something like RSS feeds on steroids. As with an RSS feed, you subscribe to changing content that you find on a Web page. But WebSlices are graphically richer and interactive. In addition, they will alert you when content in a specific portion of a Web page changes -- for example, a stock price, or the current high price on an auction.

Activities feature gives extra power to the Internet Explorer right-click menu. Hover your mouse over an item or highlight it, right-click and a list of actions appears. These include viewing the highlighted term in a map, translating it, blogging it, defining it and so on.

IE8 introduces some smaller features that may not be earthshaking, but that can be useful like making it Easier-to-identify domains. For example, some URLs are so long and complex that it can be tough to immediately decipher which domain you're currently visiting. In IE8's Address bar, only the domain (for example, fahad.com) is black; everything else is gray. That way, you can see immediately where you are.

Read Also:
Internet Explorer 8 Beta (Microsoft Windows Products)
First look: Internet Explorer 8 beta (Computerworld)