Microsoft unveils IE8 Beta 1

Computerworld - Microsoft Corp. today unveiled Internet Explorer 8 (IE8), and posted links to what the company called "Beta 1 for developers." Anyone, however, can download and install the preview.

"I am pleased to announce that Beta 1 for developers is available now," said Dean Hachamovitch, the IE group's general manager, in a presentation from Mix08, a Microsoft Web development conference that opened today in Las Vegas.

According to the download page published early Wednesday, IE8 Beta 1 will be available in separate versions for Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008.

Although Hachamovitch pegged Beta 1 as fit for developers, there's nothing to stop the general public from downloading and installing the browser. "This beta release is available to everyone," Microsoft's download notes read, "but is primarily for Web developers and designers to test the new tools, layout engine and programming enhancements."

Among the new features Microsoft touted in other sections of the subsite dubbed "Internet Explorer 8 Readiness Toolkit," were tools called "WebSlices" and "Activities." The former somewhat resembles the "Web Clip" feature introduced in Apple Inc.'s Safari Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard," and the latter appears to be a small-scale mashup tool. Both will be developer-created, not user-created.

WebSlices and Web Clip let users designate content within a page -- dynamically-updated stock prices, for example -- and then monitor changes to that content. But while Safari's Web Clip lets users create desktop widgets for easier access, IE8's WebSlices allows users to add them only to the Favorites bar or to a new row below the browser's address bar. In other words, IE8 users must still click to see the content after they're notified that changes have occurred.

Activities, meanwhile, are predesigned mashups that Microsoft and third-party sites and services will offer free of charge. A dedicated Activities page currently lists a dozen samples, ranging from one that helps users find and preview items on eBay Inc.'s auction site to another that maps addresses on Windows Live Maps.

"Activities are how developers can integrate the content of their sites with the Web," said Hachamovitch.

Other enhancements and additions to IE8 include a revamped Favorites bar, automatic crash recovery and an improved antiphishing filter. By comparison, Mozilla Corp.'s Firefox and Apple Inc.'s Safari both currently offer crash recovery of one sort or another, while Firefox also sports antiphishing protection.

Earlier this week, Microsoft's IE development team announced that IE8 would support a new "super standards" mode by default, rather than optionally, to stress Web standards over backward compatibility.