The official release of Internet Explorer 8 isn't too far off now, it appears. Microsoft, late last night, has offered the download of Release Candidate 1 of Internet Explorer 8.

Internet Explorer 8 offers the whole host of the usual browser improvements, including better performance, security and slicker U.I. New features include the oft-laughed at 'porn-mode' (private browsing mode where the cache is temporarily disabled), ability to better manage and save RSS feeds, and something called accelerators, which is sort of a advanced and adaptive auto-fill feature to access your commonly used websites quickly.

You can download it over here.

Even though it is a beta, it will probably be more on the stable side than the crashy-crashy side, as I.E is not exactly a new program. Share any of experiences of the new browser down below.

Update: Been using IE 8 RC1 for about an hour now. Seems good. I was wrong about the 'accelerators' feature though. Basically what it is, is sort of an advanced hypertexting. Like say you download an application on your computer, and then integrate into your shell, so whenever you right click a desktop shortcut, you have the option of opening it with that app. Accelerators is like the I.E browser equivalent; you can download 'accelerators' and then use them on any words on a website. So if there is an address on a web page, you can use an accelerator to automatically look up the address on Google maps. Or you can use a Wikipedia accelerator to quickly look up a word.