FILEnetworks Blog: Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 Build 8.0.6001.17184 Download

Warning: This program is still in beta test stage. There may be undiscovered or unfixed bugs present. Use at your own risk.

Internet Explorer 8 takes the Web experience beyond the page and introduces a new way to seamlessly experience the power of the Web whether you are a Web developer writing to standards, or an end user discovering a new online service. This beta release is available to everyone, but is primarily for Web developers and designers to test the new tools, layout engine, and programming enhancements.

Features

Activities - Activities are contextual services that provide quick access to external services from any webpage.
WebSlices - Web sites can expose portions of their page as a WebSlice, which users can subscribe to. And users can bring that content with them on their links bar wherever they are on the web. Users receive update notifications when the content changes.
Choice of layout engine - Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 will ship in standards mode by default. However, users can set three different rendering modes using the X-UA-Compatible header
Cascading style sheets 2.1 compliance - The Internet Explorer 8 layout engine is built to be cascading style sheets 2.1 compliant, enabling web developers and designers to write their pages once and have them render properly across all cascading style sheets 2.1 compatible browsers.
HTML improvements - Many cross-browser inconsistencies have been fixed in Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1
Improved namespace support - Internet Explorer 8 simplifies the use of standards-compliant XML-based webpages that support namespace features like scalable vector graphics, XML user interface language, mathematical markup language, and others.
Platform performance improvements - Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 improves performance in many Internet Explorer subsystems, such as the HTML parser, cascading style sheets rule processing, markup tree manipulation, the JScript parser, garbage collector runtime, and memory management. More performance work is planned for later beta releases.
Developer tools - Microsoft has heard your feedback that Internet Explorer needs its own built-in Developer Tools, so the new Developer Toolbar enables developers to quickly debug HTML, cascading style sheets, and JavaScript in a visual development environment that is included with the web browser.
Compatibility for existing sites - Internet Explorer 8 includes a more standards-compatible layout engine by default, which allows developers to build a single standards compatible website for multiple browsers.
Improved security - Internet Explorer 8 has been designed on Microsoft security and privacy investments. Internet Explorer 8 delivers an end-to-end approach to protection with security features that focus on three major areas: