Going past the Beta development stage with Internet Explorer 8, Microsoft also plans to increase the number of platforms that the browser supports. In this regard, Scott Dickens, IE program manager, revealed that IE8 would play nice with the Beta build of Windows 7, as the successor of IE7 would move into Release Candidate phase. In August 2008, Microsoft delivered versions of IE8 tailored just to Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008, as well as Windows Vista RTM/SP1 and Windows XP (even SP3).
The next public update of IE8 [will be released] for Windows Vista- and Windows XP-based operating systems as well as the Windows 7 Beta,” revealed Dickens. On November 19, Dean Hachamovitch, general manager, Internet Explorer, explained that the company had planned yet another public release of IE8 before RTW. In this regard, IE8 would move from Beta 2 to Release Candidate, and only then would it be released to web (RTW).
Hachamovitch only indicated that the RC build of IE8 would be made available in the first quarter of 2009. Microsoft is already on the verge of wrapping up the first Beta for Windows 7, as the company will start shipping DVDs with the Win7 Beta bits to the MSDN Developer Conference participants starting on January 13, 2009. However, while IE8 RC will integrate seamlessly with Windows 7 Beta (the pre-Beta build 6801 of Windows 7 already comes with IE8 as a default component) Dickens said nothing about support for the soon-to-arrive Windows Vista SP2 Beta and Windows Server 2008 SP2 Beta.
“Since the release of Beta 2, the team has been absorbed in the data we get from real people about the product,” Hachamovitch stated, back in mid November. “We have combed through instrumentation of over 20 million IE sessions and hundreds of hours of usability lab sessions. Together with IE MVPs, we have 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…'). We have also spent hundreds of hours listening and answering questions in meetings with partners and other important organizations. We simply could not deliver IE8 the way our customers and developers want us to without all this information.”
Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) Beta 2 is available for download here.
Source: Softpedia
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