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Microsoft Released Internet Explorer 8 beta 1 For Public Download!

Wednesday, March 5th, 2008 | Beta, IE8, Microsoft, Software Update, WebApps | No Comments

Microsoft just released their latest version of Internet Explorer 8 beta 1 to the public on their “Internet Explorer 8 Readiness Toolkit” site.

On the main page is a message from Chris Wilson, IE Platform Architect:

This release contains some great advances in Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and layout, programming model, performance, reliability, usability and service integration. We are eager to ensure that the transition to Internet Explorer 8 is seamless for you and your audience, and to give you a head start on using many of the new features with your sites and services. We encourage you to test your sites and services, and our platform implementation, and give us feedback!”

One of the interesting new features they talk about is something called “Activities:”

“Activities typically involve two types of scenarios: “look up” information within a webpage or “send” web content to a web application. For example, a user is interested in a restaurant and wants to see the location of it. This is the form of a “look up” Activity where the user selects the address and views an in-place view of the map using his favorite map service.”

“An example of a “send” Activity is a user reads an interesting article and wants to blog about a portion of the article. The user can select a portion of the article and uses the blog Activity. This navigates to the user’s blog site with the selection already available in the edit field.”[source]

These activities/services are supposedly going to be available to developers to tweak enabling 3rd parties to offer mini-web-apps to integrate within the browser. There are a few other “features” they highlight on the site, so go check it out if you have any interest.

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For direct download links:
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

Tags: download, ie8b1, internet explorer 8 beta 1, Microsoft