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Microsoft has released IE 8 Readiness Toolkit, which outlines some of the exciting new features of IE 8. The toolkit also contains links to download IE8 Beta 1, but they show-up an error page if you try to download. Let’s just wait until the links become active. I have a strong feeling that it’s going to happen pretty soon. Let’s move on to the new features of IE 8.
- Activities: Activities are contextual services to quickly access a service from any webpage. Users typically copy and paste from one webpage to another. Internet Explorer 8 Activities make this common pattern easier to do. Say for instance, a web page contains the address of a restaurant. You can select the address and view the map using your favorite map service. You’ll get a better idea, if you see the screenshot below:
- 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. Users can add and preview these updates directly from the Favorites bar and click-through to the website to get more information.
- Favorites Bar: Links Bar has gone through a complete makeover and renamed as Favorites Bar. Users can put and easily access all their favorite web content such as links, feeds, WebSlices and even Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents.
- Automatic Crash Recovery: Automatic Crash Recovery (ACR) provides new crash recovering capabilities to IE 8. To minimize browsing interruption, ACR can recover any individual tab. This is probably the coolest features of all time! See the screenshot below.
- Improved Phishing Filter: IE 7’s phishing filters have been stepped up. It is now called as Safety filter because it not just stop phishing sites, but also blocks malicious sites which may harm your computer.
Here’s a list of all available download links for IE 8. None of them work at the moment, but let’s just keep our fingers crossed.
- Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008
- Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 for Windows Vista x64 Edition and Windows Server 2008 x64 Edition
- Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 for Window XP SP2
- Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 for Windows Server 2003 SP2
- Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 for Windows Server 2003 SP2 x64 Edition and Windows XP SP2 Pro x64 Edition
[Update: Downloads links are now working]
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wrote, on March 6th, 2008
I tried the link and it worked! Thanks Thilak! I like the new features too!
wrote, on March 6th, 2008
there active now
wrote, on March 6th, 2008
[...][Techbuzz] wrote a great article about this.[...]
wrote, on March 7th, 2008
Yeah, thanks for the download links. I will see how IE 8 is but I doubt I will be using it for a prolonged period of time. I just love firefox too much!
wrote, on March 11th, 2008
[...] can get the links to download IE8 Beta 1 from this useful post by [...]