After more than a year of dogfooding Internet Explorer 8, while at the same time keeping the lid shut tight on any details about the successor of Internet Explorer 7, Microsoft started talking the next iteration of its proprietary browser in December 2007. First, there was the hilarious confirmation of an aspect that was generally known, the fact that IE next was in fact IE8. Then, there came good news for developers as IE8 in standards mode passed the Acid2 Test and correctly rendered the smiling face, indicating strong support added for standards.

At the same time, in mid-December 2007, Dean Hachamovitch, IE General Manager, announced that the first beta of IE8 was planned by the summer of this year. With the first showcasing of Internet Explorer 8 planned for early March at the MIX08 conference in Las Vegas, Microsoft has started sending out invitations to the private IE8 Beta 1 testing program. The invitation emails from the IE Team also reveal that IE8 Beta 1 will be made available to the general public shortly.

But IE8 Beta 1 is not the only browser testing milestone that is just around the corner. Mozilla is cooking the fourth beta for Firefox 3.0. The Beta 4 build for the open source browser was confirmed concomitantly with the availability of Firefox 3.0 Beta 3, but at that time no timetable whatsoever had been set. This is no longer the case. Firefox 3.0 Beta 4 String Freeze was on February 21, while the Beta 4 l10n Code Freeze dropped on February 25, and the Beta 4 Code Freeze was scheduled for today, February 26. Mozilla planned only a 2-3-day baking period for the next development milestone of the open source browser, which means that users will be able to get their hands on Firefox 3.0 Beta 4 in early March.