Microsoft says it’s the best browser for everyday browsing. IE 8 beta 2 is certainly better than its previous version, IE 7, much faster.

Microsoft is intelligently trying to take load off the browser by more visibly introducing the long existing plugin concept. 

Lot of new features and functionality can be added to the browser using the addons which are available on ttp://ieaddons.com

We thought following features offered by IE8 are certainly worth a post for IE users.

Faster!! IE 8 Beta 2 is certainly faster than all its successors. You will notice this in the first instance of launching the Browser after the installation is completed. It is noticeably fast (did I say that enough times? Just trying to give some credit to IE developers.)

InPrivate: IE 8 introduces this feature as part of the browser. Users can select this option if they don’t want their information to be tracked or history maintained.

InPrivate Browsing prevents Internet Explorer from storing data about your browsing session. This includes cookies, temporary Internet files, history, and other data.

InPrivate Blocking helps prevent the websites you go to from automatically sharing details about your visit with other websites. To help protect your privacy, some website content might be blocked.

To turn off InPrivate, close this browser window.”

Tab Grouping: This is a smart feature which groups your tabs by placing them next to each other and assigning them the same color based on the originating tab.

Domain Highlighting: Does not do much but it just highlights the main domain. This helps in identifying the domain quickly and saves us from falling for phishing sites.

Search Suggestions: This feature pulls the suggested search terms from the selected search provider in the real time. It gives you more options in terms of keywords and helps you find what you are looking for quickly.

Web Slices: Web Slices makes it easy for you to track the updates on a given site. Just mark the portion you are interested in on a page and Web Slices will updated you every time that portion on the site gets updated.

Using Web Slices, you can keep up with frequently updated sites directly from the Favorites Bar. If a Web Slice is available on a page, a green Web Slices icon will appear in the upper-right hand corner of the browser. You can then easily subscribe and add them to the Favorites Bar or delete Web Slices that are no longer desired.

Tab Isolation: This is one of the best features which single outs a trouble making Tab. If one of the tabs crashes it does not affect other tabs so that you can keep browsing.

IE 8 is superior in terms of performance from all its previous versions but it still misses the smartness, flexibility and the community support FireFox offers.

Click here to download IE 8 Beta 2 – You won’t be disappointed.

Click here to download FireFox 3 – You won’t go back to using IE

In case you want to uninstall IE 8 Beta 2, Just go to Add/Remove programs and Look for IE 8 Beta and remove it.