VMWare Fusion access guest vm (windows) from host (mac)

I have found what I needed to do here. To connect to localhost of the guest os firstly:

• make sure the network settings of the windows vm in vmware fusion are set to: NAT (Share with my mac)
• Turn off windows firewall for guest or public networks in windows 8 (just search for windows firewall and select "Turn Windows Firewall on or off")
• get the ip address of the windows vm by opening a command prompt and typing "ipconfig"

Once you have done these things, you should be able to switch to the mac os, and navigate the windows ip address in a web browser.

To add a bit of detail to Tyler's answer, where he wrote "make sure the network settings of the windows vm in vmware fusion are set to: NAT (Share with my mac)", in Fusion 5 you do this by going to Fusion's menu Virtual Machine --> Settings, click on Network Adapter, and select Share With My Mac.