Microsoft is out with a preliminary version of Internet Explorer 8, a Web browser with an assortment of cool and useful new features, if we take their word for it.

What’s for sure is that Internet Explorer 8 has some catching up to do. Its global market share, according to Net Applications, is just 0.82%, compared with Google Chrome (all versions) at 1.04%, Mozilla Firefox (all versions) 21.34%, and Apple Safari (all versions) 7.93%.

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.

In other words this new updated browser could make Web surfing more productive than raw speed. As for what Microsoft calls accelerators, they let you highlight text on a Web page and, with a mouse-click, show a map of an address, automatically plop the highlighted material into an email and other common tasks – bypassing the traditional ritual of copy-and-paste.

Unfortunately on the Sunspider JavaScript performance test, despite all the performance improvements Microsoft says it's making, IE8 finished last by roughly 3,000ms.  It was narrowly bested by Opera 10 alpha, while bunched at the top of the performance ranks and separated by slight margins were Google Chrome 2.0.158.0, WebKit r40220, and Firefox 3.1 beta 1.  WebKit serves as the foundation of Apple's Safari browser.