Tech Shout!

On Wednesday, Microsoft released a test version of Internet Explorer 8 for web developers and designers at the annual MIX08 conference in Las Vegas.

IE 8 incorporates enhanced interoperability and offers developers improved predictability when designing sites, along with full support for cascading style sheet (CSS) 2.1, which is a standard for web document presentation.

In addition, the latest version also packs in tools through which developers will be able to cut down on the amount of errors found in the web pages.

The newly incorporated “Activities” and “Webslices” feature, offers ways to interact with web content to save users time. The latest slew of features offer the same nature of functionality to toolbars, however in a slightly more light weight, easily manageable form.

While Webslices will enable users to subscribe to a particular portion of the web page and get updates directly from the browser, Activities is a new innovative way to access services from anywhere on the internet. For instance, highlighting text of an address and right clicking provides a pop up window through which users can go ahead and connect to a map search web page.

Another interesting feature dubbed “Automatic Crash Recovery” is a tab recovery, through which tabs will to be recovered without breaking up a user’s activities.

In addition, IE7’s “Phishing Filter” feature has been enhanced. Users can now turn on and off a “safety filter,” which will block websites that have apparently contain malicious software or phishing devices.

Mozilla’s Firefox 3.0 web browser, which is currently in the Beta 3 phase is predicted to be IE8’s competitor.