Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Tuesday, 26 February 2008 15:07
Opinion and Analysis
Page 1 of 2
Where do you want to surf today? No, that’s not the question behind the
upcoming public beta of IE 8, which will start life in limited beta
testing first, before moving on to general beta availability for all,
probably in ‘beta 2’ before mid 2008.
Cnet has uncovered an
ActiveWin posting on the upcoming limited availability of Internet Explorer 8 beta 1.
It’ll be a closed, technical beta to start with, but before the second half of the year is here, we’ll all be able to try IE 8 for ourselves, probably in beta 2 form.
ActiveWin’s IE 8 post includes an email from Microsoft, only intended for those invited to the IE 8 beta 1 testing program.
Part of that email states: “IE8 Beta 1 is focused on the developer community, with the goal of gaining valuable feedback to improve Internet Explorer 8 during the development process. Participation in the Technical Beta will enable you to evaluate a common release of Windows Internet Explorer 8, the ability to submit feedback, post bug reports, download software answer surveys on product quality as well as vote on top bugs filed by others from the technical beta program”.
As Firefox 3 is already at beta 3 status, Microsoft could well be coming out with a public beta at the same time Firefox comes out with their release version, but if things go well Microsoft will surely look to release the final version of IE 8 sometime in 2008, and not beyond.
Developers wanting more information on coding sites to be IE 8 compatible can visit the
MSDN IE blog, although serious developers most likely already know about this site and have been following progress happening there, especially after IE 7 changed the way developers were used to things happening in IE 6.
Cnet mentions that the upcoming Microsoft
MIX 08 event in Las Vegas will have more information on IE 8.
So, what's something you can do to improve IE 7 now into a much better browser - without switching to Firefox or something else? Please read onto page 2.
