News

IE 8 Beta 2 Coming 'Third Quarter'

Senior Technical Account Manager at Microsoft New Zealand Nick MacKechnie posted on his MSDN blog that Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 is coming in the "third quarter" of this year.

• By Becky Nagel
• May 27, 2008

Microsoft has previously said that the next beta for IE 8 would come "this summer." Microsoft released IE 8 Beta 1 in March at its Mix conference; it's available for public download here. Microsoft has not announced when the final version of IE 8 will be released.

There's not much detail about Beta 2 in MacKechnie's post, titled "Microsoft IE 8 Beta 2 Coming! Are your Web sites ready?" In fact, he points readers to this help document for Beta 1 for information on getting sites ready. However, at least the post appears to confirm that Microsoft will not backtrack again from its decision announced in March to have IE 8 conform to Web standards.

"Consistent with our efforts to promote further interoperability across the Web, Microsoft will be releasing Internet Explorer 8 to render content in its most standards-compliant way by default," MacKechnie wrote in part. "Browsing with [IE 8] may cause content written for previous versions of Internet Explorer to display differently than intended. This creates a call to action for site owners to ensure their content will continue to display seamlessly in Internet Explorer 8."

MacKechnie also points developers to Microsoft IE 8 Beta 1 readiness toolkit.

Redmond has yet to make any mention of Beta 2 on its official IE 8 site.