Everyone seems to be liking the new version of Internet Explorer 8 and I must agree, it provides a very smooth and interactive browsing experience.

I wouldn't already compare it to Firefox 3 because IE8 is just in its beta 2 phase but the new features suggest that Firefox 3 is soon going to get a tough competition by its arch-enemy.

Below is a features preview of the new Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 which will allow you to preview and discover some of its amazing new abilities.

Smart Address Bar

The smart address bar in IE8 makes it easy for users to open previously browsed sites by just typing in a portion of the URL. The results are then grouped and the matching text is highlighted.

Furthermore, while browsing a site only the root domain is focused in the address bar while rest of the URL is grayed out.

Improved Tabbed Browsing

Tabs in IE8 have been improved to provide a much more easy browsing experience. In IE8 tabs are automatically grouped together using color codes belonging to the same site. This is much like the Colorful Tabs for Firefox.

Opening new tabs appends them to the group rather than adding them to the end of all the tabs.

Streamlined Finding Option

The new finding option in IE8 is in-line and streamlined much like that of Firefox. Kudos to Microsoft on getting rid of the annoying Find On Page popup dialog which has been bugging users in IE6 and IE7.

Accelerators and WebSlices

Accelerators are services that you access directly from the webpage in the context of what you are doing, letting you bookmark, define, email, map and more with a simple selection.

WebSlices, on the other hand, are Web 3.0 form of RSS Feeds. WebSlices allows user to subscribe to a portion of a website or blog and track any changes in the content.

Unlike web feeds, WebSlices in IE8 allow to track content changes for a part of a website rather than whole. I will be soon posting a tutorial on how to make a WebSlice.

Search Suggestions

The new Search (text) suggestions and Visual Search Suggestions make IE8 even more interesting.

As user searches for a keyword, relevant images and text is displayed which allows user to get single-click access to the web page without having to leave the Search box.

That was a review of some of the features I liked most in Internet Explorer 8, though there are lots more. Please share any of the features you like in the new IE8. Internet Explorer 8 can be downloaded using the link below.

http://www.microsoft.com/ie8