Microsoft has released a test version of Internet Explorer 8, the latest version of its dominant web browser. Reflecting the company's recent strategic decision to make its products more interoperable, the new version is more compliant with web standards than previous versions.

The new features include "WebSlices", which allows users to subscribe to updates carried on part of the changing data contents of a page set up to work with it.

Think of it as a specialised data feed.

If you just want the weather portion of a site's page, then you just subscribe to be updated when that part changes.

Another new feature is "Activities", providing users the ability to download third party software, giving specialised functionality to the browser. Yes Microsoft is finally getting with the crowd.

There are also a variety of other changes, including some much-needed additions, such as a feature that will restore crashed browser sessions and tabs.

I will highlight what features are new and discuss how they may work when IE8 is finally released.

The most useful function, and one that copies from the best of the competing browsers out there - Firefox - is the built in automatic crash recovery.

If you browser or computer happens to crash while you have 20 pages open (sound familiar?) then all will theoretically be restored the next time you open Explorer.

The Favorites bar and phishing filter have also been updated.

Website creators will be more enthralled with the new version, as it provides a simpler way of working with Explorer.

The browser supports standards for Cascading Style Sheets (CCS) 2.1 and HTML 5. Yeah!

At a demonstration last week, a Microsoft spokesperson showed how websites looked the same in Explorer 8 as in other browsers.

I for one am happy, having slaved away at creating a web site using CCS and Explorer, only to find out how terrible it looked in other browsers. I should have done it the other way round.

Microsoft expects to release the full version by the end of this year. Test out the beta version by downloading it here: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/ie/ie8/readiness/default.htm

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As a frequent traveler and resident of various countries (I have now moved to Brussels, Belgium from France) is the tendency of many sites to prejudge what kind of language I want to use when reading them.

I am sure many frequent flyers in Bermuda suffer the same problem when abroad.

Thus if I am in France or Belgium, many sites automatically default to French (or sometimes Flemish if I am surfing from Brussels).

That is okay if there is a visible and easy way to switch the default language and it stays that way.

Google, for example, by default figures out what country you are in based on the server address you are going through and defaults to that language.

However making the switch to the language of your choice is relatively easy and once made usually stays that way, even if you log off and log back on.

However some sites are seemingly impossible to change. I was recently in Sweden and suffered huge problems finding my way out of one particular site.

Amazingly, Microsoft is a major culprit in relation to this problem.

I was recently researching from Brussels the company's release of its Windows Live SkyDrive, a free online storage facility for your files.

I received the notice from Microsoft in English via e-mail, but once I clicked on the link I was put on the French version of the description and could find no way to change the language. I tried everything, short of going to Microsoft.com (where it is listed on the homepage in English), but still the French version came up. I gave up.

With globalisation in full swing, and a band of roving workers, such a major company should realise that not all of its visitors may want to be told what language they should use in trying to find information from one of its sites.

Do not get me wrong. I am not arguing for the supremacy of English. I am just arguing for sites to make it easy for users to change the default language.

Communications is the name of the game. Finally, as a follow up to the British government's habit of losing personal information, note this weird story published recently on the BBC site.

Technicians at a computer repair shop in a village near Bolton had to call in the police when they found an encrypted Home Office disk hidden under the keyboard of a laptop.

The laptop had been brought in for repair by a customer, who had bought it via eBay.

The engineers found the CD, marked "Home Office - highly confidential", after they removed the laptop keyboard.

UK government mishaps with personal data include Revenue and Customs, which lost 25 million child benefit claimants' details through the post.

Send any comments to Ahmed at elamin.ahmed@gmail.com