Internet Explorer 8 provides an simplidied programming model for AJAX development that spans browser, webpage, and server interaction.
Web developer can easilly build more functional webpages with better end-user experiences as well as performance.

Some of the AJAX Improvements in IE8 are explained below:

1. AJAX Navigation: This enables end-users to navigate back and forth without leaving the AJAX application and without performing a traditional full navigation.
2. DOM Storage: This is a simple-to-use method for storing and retrieving strings of key/value pair data in cache. This provides faster access and reduces the effect of network latencies.
3. Connectivity events allow websites to check when the user is connected to the network and receive notification of connectivity changes.
4. Six connections per host instead of two, which allows parallel downloads and in turn improved performance.
5. Cross-domain communication is an integral part of AJAX development and mashup Web applications. In IE8 Cross-domain Request(XDR) and Cross-document Messaging(XDM) API’s are provided for this purpose only.

In short, all these improves the AJAX Usage for developers as well as for end-users to move towards a better web experience with AJAX.

More discussion on this and an example can be found at the Microsoft Website mentioned below.
Detailed Information & Example

Developer Tools
Internet Explorer 8 includes tools for Web developers to debug their sites efficiently from Internet Explorer.
Developers can immediately debug a site’s HTML, CSS, and JavaScript from within IE8, in stead of switching between IE and separate development environment.

Versioning and IE Modes
Versioning and rendering modes in IE8 allows it to remain compatible with current web content.
Now IE8 has three different Layout modes.
1) Quirks provides backwards compatibility with IE5.
2) IE7 Standards provides backwards compatibility with IE7 JavaScript/layout etc.
3) IE8 Standards includes latest features like CSS 2.1 compliant layout engine, DOM/HTML breaking changes etc.

Versioning and Cross-document Interaction
Internet Explorer 8 introduces the IE8 standards mode by default. This allows the Web designers to use the latest rendering features in IE8.
In addition to the layout changes, IE8 standards mode also affects the behavior of scripted APIs (DOM).

More discussion on this and an example can be found at the Microsoft Website mentioned below.

Detailed Information & Example

In web development, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a stylesheet language used to describe the presentation(i.e. information like fonts, colors, spacing, positioning etc.) of a web document. In today’s highly visual web environment css is a very important aspect to look into.
Another important use of css is to separate data part from the visual part/style in html or other markup languages.

Now, the W3C CSS working group has decided the final specifications for CSS v2.1.
The idea is to enable web developers to write their pages once in such a way that it can be rendered properly in many browsers.

The new Web Developer Toolbar included with Internet Explorer 8 will help in this endeavor. Internet Explorer 8 supports the latest feature set as defined in the specification.

While one of Internet Explorer 8’s main goals is CSS 2.1 compliance, it is also looking forward towards CSS3. CSS3 is the next generation of Cascading Style Sheets. CSS 2.1 consists of one single document, whereas the CSS3 specification is broken down into different modules to make clear specifications and implementations of different other features.

Another aspect of CSS2.1 which is well-implemented in IE8 is Data URI Support.
Data URIs offer the web developers to embed small external resources (like CSS files or images) directly into a URL on a webpage. The primary use for data URIs is the encapsulation of a binary file inside an URL (a stylesheet or image).
Internet Explorer 8’s data URI implementation attempts to balance security with functionality.

Internet Explorer 8 also includes several Printing Improvements.
IE8 implements all CSS 2.1 pagination recommendations, and provide authors with more control and functionality in the print medium.

With IE8 support has been added for some extra printing constructs e.g. @page rule, Page-break-inside property, windows and orphans property etc.
These improvements give developers more control on content pagination.

More discussion on this and an example can be found at the Microsoft Website mentioned below.

Detailed Information & Example

In IE8 a new feature named “WebSlices” is added for websites to connect to their users by subscribing to the content directly within a web page.

Using WebSlice, users/clients can subscribe to get updates and notify changes to the user.
Even users can add the discovered WebSlices within a webpage to their Favorites bar.

Now, how to design it?
WebSlices are enabled by adding HTML annotations directly to the webpage.
The basic properties of WebSlice are the WebSlice container, Entry Title, and Entry Content.

WebSlice container represents the entire WebSlice containing the title, description, and other WebSlice properties and it is required property.

Entry Title is the title section of the Webslice and there can be multiple instances of Titles. This is also a required property.

Entry Content is an optional property, representing the content part of WebSlice and if blank, passed as an empty string.

More discussion on this and an example can be found at the Microsoft Website mentioned below.

Detailed Information & Example

Now that we have installed the new Internet Explorer 8 beta 1, developers need to make their site IE8 compatible.

There are several designer aspects to be taken care of in this new version. Let us take the points one by one to discuss this further.

First we will look into Activities.

Activities

Activities are contextual menu options which quickly access a service from any Web page. Users typically copy and paste from one Web page to another. Internet Explorer 8 Activities make this common pattern easier to do.

Activities are services that the user can install and manage. Users can install them from the Internet Explorer 8 Service Guide or through any website that advertises Activities.

Activities typically involve two types of scenarios: “look up” of information within a Web page, and “send” of Web content to a Web application. e.g. look up – You are in a blog where the users address is mentioned. Right click and View on Live maps and it will show a small window containing the map of the loacation. send – An user reads an interesting article and wants to digg it or add to his blog.

Activities are described using an XML file providing an interface to the browser to communicate with the service through URL templates.

More discussion on this and an example can be found at the Microsoft Website mentioned below.

Detailed Information & Example

Now that Internet Explorer 8 has come for almost a day, let us take a look at the First Look at it.
Before the video, few points to mention:

1. Installation time is almost the same as IE7 in Windows XP.
2. After Installation IE8 also prompts to restart the computer.
3. After you restart and open IE, it prompts to import Mozilla and Opera browser settings to Internet Explorer.
4. Lookwise it is somehow similar to IE7, however a bit slicker than the previous one.
5. There is an option to get back to IE7 look and feel.
6. One issue faced is: when I try to open browser homepage, it goes to MS site in the current tab and opens it in a different tab. Also the control remains in the current tab showing the Microsoft IE8 page.

Today Microsoft has launched the new Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 version for the public. They mention it as Developer Preview version and for Web developers and Designers only.

According to Microsoft, some of the new features designed for developers include a developer toolbar and improved interoperability and compatibility.

One good thing about this release is they have finally made IE standards compliant by default.

This topic is explained in the Internet Explorer Blog. Quoting from the blog, the reason behind this:

Microsoft recently published a set of Interoperability Principles. Thinking about IE8’s behavior with these principles in mind, interpreting web content in the most standards compliant way possible is a better thing to do.

We think that acting in accordance with principles is important, and IE8’s default is a demonstration of the interoperability principles in action. While we do not believe any current legal requirements would dictate which rendering mode a browser must use, this step clearly removes this question as a potential legal and regulatory issue. As stated above, we think it’s the better choice.

The rest of this blog post provides context around the different modes, the technical challenge, and what it means going forward.

More information about IE8 Beta 1 is available at MS site.

IE8 Beta 1 can be downloaded from the MS site:

Download Now

According to eWeek.com,

“With the release this week of the first beta of Internet Explorer 8, we are finally getting a good look at the next step in Microsoft’s Web strategy. And we also can finally start to put the next generation of the Browser Wars into focus with a new version of IE to compare with the recent betas of Mozilla’s forthcoming Firefox 3?. Click here for details.