Though details of changes in the second beta are vague, Microsoft has said it will include the Activities and WebSlices features.

The Activities feature lets you copy, navigate and paste when online - for example, if you want to find a location on a map, you can copy a postcode, click on the Activities button and choose a mapping service that you have already bookmarked.

This will bring up a preview tab of the location immediately. You can open the full page by clicking on it.

The WebSlices feature lets you select a certain area or part of a website that you like so you can get updates from that particular section without having to go back to the site.

Tony Chor, group program manager at Microsoft, said: "We've been working on great new features for consumers and IT professionals. I'm happy to announce that we're on track to deliver IE8 Beta 2 this August when you'll get a chance to see what we've been up to in these areas."

Microsoft is planning to release IE8 Beta 2 in more than 20 languages in an effort to get as many surfers as possible to download it. Feedback from the two million people that downloaded Beta 1 was central to the construction of Beta 2, Chor said.

Mozilla, Microsoft's main rival in the web browser market, is currently preparing the third version of Firefox for release sometime this month. There were five beta versions of Firefox 3 before Mozilla issued its first Release Candidate, RC1.

It is expected that another Release Candidate will be launched in the next few days and provided there are no major issues, the full version of Firefox 3 will be launched.

www.microsoft.com
www.mozilla.org

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