What's new in IE8 beta 2?

Yesterday, an IE8 developer blog posted an overview of the new user interface for this product. I’ll briefly retell them, and let the readers decide for themselves where the team of interface designers draws inspiration from.

Smart Address Bar

It is known that 80% of transitions are carried out at already visited addresses. A new line allows you to search not only by the beginning of the address, but also by the favorites and history, as well as by parts of the address that are different from the beginning.

Favorites Bar

Now you can add pages, streams and web chunks (Web Slices) there with one click. In addition, when updated information appears, the link is highlighted in bold as the name of the folder when a new message arrives. Thus, you can even learn about updates without clicking.

Page when opening a tab (New Tab Page)

After opening a new tab, you can enter the address, go to your favorites or use the search with visual tips. Or you can use the page that appears to open the contents of the last closed tabs, enter private mode, or transfer the contents of the buffer to one of the configured Accelerators.

Tab Grouping

Now it’s more difficult to get confused in many tabs, as their grouping and color coding are applied. When you close a tab, you get to another tab of the same group, and when you open links from one page, new tabs appear in the radar, and not at the end.

Search on page (Find on Page)

Now the search box in the style of old versions of IE does not stand in the way, and all found expressions are highlighted immediately.

Search Box Suggestions

Now, when using the built-in search field, hints are displayed during the typing process, including graphic ones. The list of search providers supporting this feature is constantly expanding.

Accelerators

Copying and pasting (which we are so missing on the iPhone) is not very convenient. Now many services, such as dictionaries or search, will be available through the context menu. When you click on the result found, a full page opens. In addition to renaming this feature (formerly called Activities), now Accelerators can be grouped into categories and managed through options.

Web Slices

IE8 will allow you to subscribe to various parts of the pages of interest and receive their updates in a pop-up window directly from the favorites panel. In the new version, the “update” button appeared in this window.
If the page supports web chunks, a special icon appears in the address bar: The

ability is already supported by Digg, eBay, Live Search and, it seems, Afisha.ru (demonstrated even on ReMIX).

Streams in the Favorites bar (Feeds on the Favorites bar)

Now you can add a stream to your favorites and read new headers directly from the drop-down menu. With a click, you can go to the full version of the page.

Recommended Sites

Sometimes we sit on the same sites, not knowing that there is something new. This feature is turned off by default, but turning it on, the Habr user finally learns about Blogistan and Leprozoria, and Odnoklassniki regulars learn about Vkontakte, My Circle, My World, and maybe My Cosmos.

upd Thanks for the karma, transferred, with your permission, to the "Browsers".

upd2 This was to be expected after appearing on the main one: grabbed the cons from holivarschikov. Retell something from the Opera blog?