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Microsoft releases Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2

James Thornton

James Thornton

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Some more enhancements to Internet Explorer 8 BetaMicrosoft today gave us a further glimpse of how it aims to shoot down Firefox with the release of Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2. As we revealed when we looked at the first beta release, it seems Microsoft is getting its waning browser back on track, adding some neat functionality and ramping up standards support.

Beta 2 includes even more functionality as well as some interesting performance enhancement. According to the IE Team blog, the developers have been careful to look at both lab and real world performance. And so, instead of just focusing on how long it takes the browser to collect and render a web page, it’s been optimised to help people get tasks done more quickly. A good example of this seems to be the new Web Slices feature, which allows you to bookmark a single part or section of a web sit, tracking only the particular content that you’re interested in.

Beta 2 introduces other new functionality, such as the enhanced Find, which now has results highlighted. There’s also the system called InPrivate browsing, also dubbed ‘porn mode’, which lets you browse sites (i.e. your bank account) without IE storing any data such as URLs, cookies, temporary Internet files, etc. Another neat addition is the ‘Reopen last browsing session’ option, which is something Firefox users have enjoyed for a while now.

James Thornton

James Thornton

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