A beta version of IE8 is available today, starting at noon. Microsoft offers an overview of the new features here.

A couple of features in particular may prove to be very popular. "Activities" lets users select text on a Web page and then click on a button allowing them to easily do things like retrieving an address map, submitting a story to Digg, sharing a page on Facebook, and so on. "WebSlices" lets users subscribe to specific content within a Web site. To illustrate this, IE GM Dean Hachamovitch showed the ability to hover over a feed on his Facebook page to make a small icon appear. Then he could click on the icon to subscribe to that feed in his Favorites bar, which is basically a renamed IE7 Links bar. Both of these features will depend in part on Web developers offering the capability through their sites. Microsoft's Channel 10 site has video of the features.

No time frame has been given for general availability of IE8.