With the release of Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 a few weeks ago, users were introduced to new features, such as Web Slices and Accelerators, as well as enhanced Search capabilities that make browsing the Web much easier. Users can now be exposed to specific bits of information they want quick access to – from the latest news to the latest weather to search for a new blue 8GB Zune. I’d like to take a moment to highlight just a few examples of partners who have taken advantage of IE8’s capabilities in Beta 2.
Search:
New York Times Instant Search – By adding The New York Times as a Search Provider in IE8, users can search the latest headlines from The New York Times directly from IE8’s inline search.
Web Slices:
Digg’s Main Page Top 10 – Find the latest popular stories that have been “dug” on Digg with this Web Slice.
freenetMail – Let’s subscribers check their freenetMail, or view meetings, tasks and birthdays.
And Me.dium offers several Search Providers, Web Slices, Accelerators and Add-ons for IE8 that users can enjoy – mixing browsing the Web with social networking! Click here to see Me.dium’s offerings.
More and more new Web Slices, Accelerators, Search Providers, and Add-ons are getting added to the Internet Explorer Gallery all the time.
Today we are also releasing IE8 Beta 2 in 21 more languages in addition to what we released last month (English, Germany, Japanese, and Simplified Chinese). The additional languages are: Arabic, Chinese (Hong Kong), Chinese (Traditional), Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Korean, Norwegian, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Polish, Russian, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish.
You can click here to download Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 today.
For more about Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2, be sure to check out my comprehensive overview or this series of very cool IE8 videos that showcase many of the features available in IE8 Beta 2 today.