Internet Explorer 8: New Features Revealed, Download Links Available
Microsoft is taking the wraps off Internet Explorer 8 with a sneak peak at some new features in the soon-to-be-released public beta. Although the download links aren’t active yet, the new features page offers a glimpse of what’s coming in IE 8.
The two standout features are something called “Activities” and another known as “WebSlices.” Activities are, according to the site, “contextual services to quickly access a service from any webpage.” The example image shows a contextual menu with options to post something to Digg, share on Facebook, look up on Dictionary.com and more.
Some of the options are for Microsoft web properties like Live Spaces and Live Hotmail, but there are a respectable number of third-party options in what we assume is the default configuration (see screenshot above).
Of course you can customize your “Activities” to suit your needs — we’re picturing this working somewhat like managing search engines in Firefox, though we’ll have to wait and see.
WebSlices are another nice looking feature. They seem to work somewhat like Apple’s customizable Dashboard clippings, except in this case the clipping lives in the browser.
Say there’s a part of a page you’d like to track, but you don’t care about the rest — a weather widget for example — the WebSlice would allow you to bookmark just that element. IE 8 will then track changes to that portion of the page, alerting you when new info is available.
Other new features highlighted on the page include a revamped Favorites Bar, automatic crash recovery and better phishing protection.
Obviously we haven’t actually used IE 8 yet, but the well thought out new features (even if they aren’t necessarily groundbreaking, they’re useful) combined with the improved web standards support, could make version 8 the Internet Explorer you’d been waiting for all these years.
[image courtesy of Microsoft]
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