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Internet Explorer 8 beta 2 now available

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IE 8 beta 2 launched today in English, German, Simplified Chinese and Japanese. 21 languages in mid-September, download it from  https://www.microsoft.com/ie8.

To get a feel for the new IE8 experience, check out the videos here - to get you started here are just 5 of the new features in IE 8:

· Accelerators - Wave cut and paste from one website to another goodbye :-), just select text on the page and either click the blue button and hover over “Map” or try Right Clicking a Page and Choosing Translate with Windows Live. Check out the new IE Gallery that has cool accelerators and slices from Digg to FaceBook to Ebay. Here's what it looks like:

Accelerators

· Web Slices - These allow you to subscribe to portions of your favourite websites and, with a single click in the Favorites bar, view and interact with the latest updates. Note how rich the preview looks, very nice, no?

A Web Slice preview

· Search Suggestions - Go to your Instant Search Box (top right) and type a search to see search suggestions in action.

· Navigation - Use the new Smart Address Bar to quickly find sites you’ve visited before.  The Smart Address Bar searches your history, favorites and feeds for pages that match what you’re typing.

· Security:   From an updated Smartscreen phishing and malware filter to domain highlighting to the industry leading cross-site scripting filter.

There are also some really neat dev-focused features so you can immediately debug a site's Javascript, HTML and CSS from within the browser. You also get visibility into IE8's representation of the site rather than just a source view, with a view to helping you understand why your site is rendering / behaving a particular way. Just press F12 to pop up the tools.