Microsoft has released a public beta for Internet Explorer 8. I haven't tried it out myself, but  it adds a bunch of features including Activities, WebSlices, Favorites Bar, Automatic Crash Recovery and Improved Phishing Filter. FYI, 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.

Standards Compliance: There were hints that IE8 would be a remarkable offering on the IE Blog as they released tidbits about the browser's capabilities. For example, the announcement of IE8's passing of the Acid2 test (a test for standards compliance) marked a milestone in IE8's development. The standards mode was originally going to be turned off by default letting web developers code for it by including a "meta" tag to make use of IE8's new standards compliant mode. Later, Microsoft came to their senses and made the default the standards-compliant mode. Meanwhile, Firefox also claims to have passed the Acid 2 test, but an open bug on bugzilla.mozilla.org seems to say otherwise. (our coverage). One commenter on the thread notes, "So, we essentially do pass the test. However, in some situations, it might still fail, that's why this bug is open."

Facebook Integration: Yes, seriously! With a Flock-like feature as an unexpected surprise, Microsoft capitalized on their partnership with the popular social networking site, Facebook, to allow IE8 users the ability to get status updates from Facebook right from their browser toolbar.

eBay Integration: Like Facebook, this feature also uses IE8's new technology, called "WebSlices", which introduces a new way to get updates from other sites via the browser itself, without having to visit the web site. With WebSlices, IE8 beta users can subscribe to portions of a page that update dynamically, in order to receive updates from that page as content
changes. EBay will offer webslices, too, letting you track your auctions from the browser toolbar. Basically, WebSlices look like Favorites on your Links toolbar but they have a little arrow next to them - clicking on this arrow will show you a small window of live web content.

Live Maps Integration: Another WebSlice was integration with Live Maps. It appeared that you could even highlight text on a page, like an address, and then right-click and choose Live Maps from the context menu to get a WebSlice preview of that location on a map in a small pop-up window. How convenient!

Integration with Me.dium: Me.dium integration will be supported in IE8 via WebSlices. Me.dium will now help web surfers discover and view WebSlices directly from the sidebar. The Me.dium sidebar will alert users to the presence of WebSlices on any page – and even allows users to read each WebSlice, without leaving the Sidebar. In addition, Me.dium will make real-time recommendations for other WebSlices on other relevant web pages and provides direct links to them based on the real time activity of other Me.dium users.

Working with AJAX Pages: IE8 will offer better functionality when it comes to AJAX web pages. The example showed a page where you could zoom in using AJAX technology. Previously, hit the IE "Back" button would take you back to the last page you were on. Now, "Back" will zoom you out.