Microsoft Corp on Wednesday made available a test version of Internet Explorer 8, the next edition of its Web browser. At Microsoft's MIX08 online technology conference, Dean Hachamovitch, general manager of Microsoft's Internet Explorer team, provided a first glimpse at the successor to IE 7, which was released in October 2006.
Microsoft's presentation was catered heavily toward Web developers, but Hachamovitch showed some user features of IE 8. One feature allows users to save work being done on a Web site to the local computer when an Internet connection goes down.
Another feature lets users highlight an address on a Web site and then see a map within the Web site with a single click. Users can also highlight a product name and be able to see if the item is available for sale on eBay.
The new browser is available to developers at http://www.microsoft.com/ie/ie8.
Earlier this week, Microsoft announced the new browser would use the most-standards-compliant mode by default in rendering Web sites. That means Web-sites will essentially look the same regardless of browser and developers will not need to do multiple versions of Web sites for different browsers.
It's a departure from what Microsoft did in IE 7 and seen as a move to assuage developer, regulatory and legal concerns.
Microsoft also said it was making available a test or "beta" version of its Silverlight 2 multimedia technology. Silverlight 2 is the next version of Microsoft's competitor to Adobe Systems Inc.