After a brief intro by Scott Guthrie, the technical component of the keynote began with Dean Hackamovitch’s first public demo of IE8.

[Quick update: you can download the IE8 Beta here.]

I know that this conference is fundamentally about connected systems, and the web browser is a vitally important component.

But I thought this was a profoundly boring way to begin the technical announcement part of the keynote.

At first I was like “meh,” but then there were a couple of great demos that redeemed this segment, which I’ll mention after listing Dean’s 8 new things about IE8:

1. CSS 2.1
– of all the w3c working groups, this one should have the most impact

2. CSS Cetification
– 702 test cases made available under BSD license to w3c
- by default, IE8 interprets content in the most standards-compliant way

3. Perf
– much improved, esp. JScript related to strings

4. HTML 5 Start

5. Dev Tools
- set breakpoints in IE using “Developer Tools” . You can add a watch, there’s an immediate window, CSS style tracing and more.

6. Activities (integrate site into rest of web)
- “Smart-tag” like activities when you select, e.g., an address, a product that we can find on ebay, etc., without having to leave the page (using a hover-over window)
- very easy to extend

7. WebSlices (deliver user-specific content)
- allows me to subscribe and interact to portions of a page that interest me.
- examples: an ebay auction, the Facebook status
- dev experience: just add a div to the page, no need for a separate feed

8. Beta1 for Devs available after the keynote
- Get IE8 Beta here

My initial thought on this part of the keynote: IE8 does NOT make for an interesting demo. Why is this where we are starting our day?!

But then the things that engaged me:
- Showing IE8 responding to “Network Connection Lost” — and support for DOM storage
- Dev Tools built in to IE8 for setting breakpoints in code, adding watches, immediate window, CSS style tracing, and more.

Already available: First look at IE8 Activities and WebSlices

So in summary