The Redmond took us all by surprise by relasing their public beta of new browser which is available for download immediately. Its still in beta 1, but still a huge leap to of changes in standards support.

There are plenty of details available for interested developers. In CSS Improvements in Internet Explorer 8, Microsoft details the new style features in the browser.

In addition to the improvements already in beta 1, Microsoft has announced it plans to have full support for CSS 2.1 by the time Internet Explorer 8 is released! If it succeeds in this, it will be the first browser vendor to do so.

If you want to get up to speed, the best place to start is the What’s New In Internet Explorer 8 article at MSDN.

IE8 might be nice, but it is very important that Microsoft release IE8 in such manner that everyone get rid of IE6 and IE7 as soon as possible.