Well San Francisco and Las Vegas were fantastic, but even better Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 (IE8) is now available. You can download it here.
Well I will try to cover in a series of postings my experiences with it.
Installation
Not much changed here yet. As a matter of fact not much has changed generally with IE8's UI.
First Run
A new first run settings wizard walks you through the various different old and new settings available, such as Search, Apps and Safety Filter (aka Phising Filter).
Once you have completed the settings wizard you are prompted with the new IE8 Welcome Page, introducing you to the new features available such as IE7 Emulation mode and WebSlices.
IE7 Emulation
IE7 introduced a lot of "hacks" in order to maintain compatibility with previous versions. Subsequently this meant lack of Web Standards. IE8 now runs in Standards mode by default, but if you need to browse the Internet like IE7 then click the big IE7 Emulation button.
WebSlices
Another new feature, similar to that Safari offers on Mac OS X, is WebSlices. Developers can mark parts of web pages as "WebSlices" and enable users to monitor information they rely on as they move about the web. With a click in the Favourites bar, users see rich "WebSlice" visuals and developers establish a valuable, persistent end-user connection.
Finally when you browse to a web site, IE8 ensures you are sure of where you are by highlighting the domain name of the site - so hopefully Phising will become even more difficult.
I will keep you posted with more as soon as I start using it more and more. So far my main work website works!!!