Yesterday, Microsoft released the latest beta of Internet Explorer 8, and this morning I installed it to see how it has improved since beta 1.

Well, I've not seen much in changes. The toolbar to the left of the tabs is a bit reorganized, and a few things are renamed (such as Activities, now called Accelerators), and there are now new Page and Safety drop-down menus. But again, much of this is simply rearranging.

The two real changes I've noticed are "InPrivate Browsing" (aka porn mode) and compatibility view can now be set to turn on automatically for sites of the user's choosing. That's a lot better than in beta 1, where it was all-or-nothing for IE7 compatibility. Unfortunately, for all the changes in IE8's features and user interface, it doesn't seem like the rendering has been improved. My site, which works perfectly in IE7, Firefox, and if I'm not mistaken (but not caring to find out) in Opera and Safari, doesn't render properly in IE8's default render mode.

It's a bit annoying, really, but hopefully Microsoft will get it together before the final release.