Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 is out on release. This follows a spate of announcements and releases from Microsoft in what is turning out to be a busy time for the software company.

Two new features of the release are Activities and Slices. Activities are described as "…contextual services that provide quick access to external services from any web  page" whilst Slices are describes as "Web sites can expose portions of their page as a WebSlice that users can subscribe to and bring that content with them on their links bar wherever they are on the web" – a little more Web 2.0 perhaps? Standards Compliance leads a number of other features include compliance with CSS 2.1, XML, and a more standards compatible layout engine. Enhancements to security have also been added with improvements to the phishing filter and domain highlighting which will make it quicker and easier to identify the domain serving a web page.

PC Pro have reported on this release in their article Microsoft launches IE8 beta, so too have Computer Active! who also talk about Silverlight in their article Microsoft shows off IE8 and Silverlight betas. Before jumping into a download it might be worth checking out this post by Preston Gralla Beware: IE 8 hosed my system!. IE8 is a Beta product so like all Beta products don’t install it on any system you depend on as there may still be a few issues that need ironing out.

More information can be obtained from Microsoft at their site: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/ie/ie8/default.mspx