IE8 due mid 2009 - but will you use it?

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Sunday, 23 November 2008 06:41

Opinion and Analysis

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8 browser, currently in beta 2, is due to receive a release candidate in early 2009, with the final release planned “after that”. With the popularity of Firefox and the emergence of Google’s Chrome, will you use IE8?

Ever since Google’s Chrome browser came out into the market, it’s been my primary browser, largely pushing aside Firefox, Opera, Safari and Internet Explorer.

Browers become habits, and while I still use a combination of the other three browsers for various things, I spend most of my time in Google Chrome, automatically taking advantage of Google’s "release early and update often" policy that it uses to update Chrome.

IE8 beta 2 delivered improvements over IE7 including better crash protection, better compliance with Internet standards, coloured tabs, an IE7 compatibility button and many other features Microsoft needed data and feedback on.

That feedback has been flooding in, with Microsoft’s General Manager of Internet Explorer, Dean Hachamovitch saying in a blog posting that his team has “combed through instrumentation of over 20 million IE sessions and hundreds of hours of usability lab sessions.”

His team (with help from IE MVPs) has also “scrutinized thousands of threads from user forums and examined the issues that people are raising (not to mention all the times users opt to “Report a Webpage Problem…”).”

They’ve also “spent hundreds of hours listening and answering questions in meetings with partners and other important organizations” and say they “simply could not deliver IE8 the way our customers and developers want us to without all this information”.

So, with all this information to hand, Microsoft has been busy making improvements and plan a “release candidate” in the first quarter of 2009, with the final release to follow.

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