After leaving Internet Explorer 6 moribund for way too long, Microsoft is trying to stay ahead of the curve. The IE 8 beta looks nearly identical to its predecessor, but internally it handles page rendering differently, with support for CSS 2.1 and HTML 4.01. Thank god, we are finally getting stricter standards support.
Keep in mind that IE 8 is just a developer preview, not meant for general consumption. It crashed several times during testing (particularly when I opened the Favorites sidebar), but that is what you should expect from an early beta. Also be warned that Internet Explorer versions 7 and 8 can’t work side by side. If you install the developer preview beta 1, this becomes your primary browser.
The technology press rejoiced when Microsoft’s IE blog announced that the new browser would support established Web standards as its first page-rendering choice, and Microsoft-specific standards only after that. Sadly for the company, the same day this beta launched, the well-known browser standards test Acid was updated, and the new browser fails that test with crashing colors. It had come so close with Acid2, passing everything except for an call, which the browser’s designers intentionally handled differently than Acid expects, for better security. But again, these problems may be fixed by the time the IE 8 is ready for public consumption
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