In case you haven’t heard Internet Explorer 8 was released yesterday. You can download it here:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/default.aspx
I played around with it a little last night. Unfortunately it’s the same user interface as IE7. Where IE8 really steps it up is with security and privacy. There’s a built in SmartScreen filter that notifies you if a page is known to be malicious.
You can also clear all of your browsing artifacts with one click. There is also a new context menu (right click) that lets you jump right to your blog or map an address. There is compatibility mode to render pages as IE7 — what would really be nice is IE6 which so many pages seem to still be built for. Also I noticed they more or less stole the improved Firefox address bar that doubles as a history search.
I recommend trying it at least to give you something to talk about this weekend!