New Features in IE8

What's been cooking at microsoft lately?
New Features for Internet Explorer. Here are some of those new feature:

Accelerators

Accelerators let you map directions, translate words, email your friends, and more in just a few mouse clicks. Learn more.

Common accelerator showing driving directions

InPrivate Browsing

Browse the web without saving your history with Internet Explorer 8's InPrivate Browsing. Now you can shop for that special gift with confidence knowing your family won't accidentally find out or use a shared computer without leaving a trace. Learn More.

The InPrivate button on the Address Bar

Web Slices

Keep up with changes to the sites you care about most. Add a Web Slice and you won't have to go back to the same website again and again for updates on news, stock quotes, online auctions, weather, or even sports scores. Learn more.

A common Web Slice

Search suggestions

Search smarter with detailed suggestions from your favorite search providers and browsing history. See visual previews and get suggested content topics while you type in the enhanced Instant Search Box. Learn more.

A search showing visual content

SmartScreen Filter

New security features help to protect you against deceptive and malicious websites which can compromise your data, privacy and identity. Learn more.

[Taken from Microsoft blog]

Microsoft requires IE8 Beta Testers

Microsoft is looking for beta testers to test IE8 beta. Currently the only way to directly file a bug with the IE Team is to be a part of the IE8 Technical Beta program on Microsoft Connect. The next beta version will be released sometime in August.

If you wish to be a part of making IE better by contributing great bug reports then you can email microsoft's IE team at IESO@microsoft.com and tell them a little about yourself including why you’d be a great beta tester.

Microsoft released the first beta of IE8 in March at its MIX 08 conference. The company plans to add more support for industry standard protocols, such as CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), in the browser and has responded to developer feedback that it needs to bring them in to test IE8 as much as possible so they can prepare Web sites for these changes.

Microsoft made IE 7, the current version of its browser, more standards compliant when it was released in October 2006. However, many Web sites that had been developed to work with older versions of IE that did not support open standards did not work on IE7 and had to be recoded. Microsoft hopes to avoid a similar problem with IE8.