After spending in excess of a year cooking, Internet Explorer 8 beta1 is here. Microsoft has released the first beta version of Internet Explorer 8.

A full features page has been revealed which lists the following additions to Internet Explorer:

• Activities
• WebSlices
• Favorites Bar
• Automatic Crash Recovery
• Improved Phishing Filter

Activities allow users to lookup/send information in a right-click contextual menu, such as retrieving an address map from Windows Live Maps, submitting a story to Digg, sharing a page on Facebook etc. WebSlices allows users to crop a specific area section of a site and bookmark it. Improvements have been made to the phishing filter which continues to block known Phishing sites and now blocks sites known to contain malicious software that could harm users’ computer or steal their information.

Perhaps one of the best new features is Automatic Crash Recovery which recovers your tabs if your browser crashes.

Downloads

X32
Windows Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008
Windows Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 for Windows XP
Windows Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 for Windows Server 2003 SP2

X64
Windows Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 for Windows Vista 64-bit Edition and Windows Server 2008 64-bit Edition
Windows Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 for Windows Server 2003 SP2 64-bit Edition or Windows XP Professional 64-bit Edition

More information & release notes
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/ie/ie8/readiness/default.htm