Microsoft has conformed yet again that Internet Explorer 8.0 will not be released to the general public in 2007 as the company initially planed. The announcement was made at the MIX07 conference in the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas, by Chris Wilson, IE Platform Manager, and it contradicts the original delivery cycle revealed the past year at MIX06.

In 2006, Microsoft was revealing that upcoming versions of Internet Explorer would be served within a 12 to 18 months timeframe. The Redmond Company's plans have since then been adapted and, as such, IE users should not expect IE8 sooner than October 2008. Although there have been previous reports of a two-year delivery cycle for Internet Explorer, Chris Wilson made it clear that Microsoft will stick to providing version 8 of IE towards the end of 2008.

"I think at this point certainly I don't foresee another time where we go five years without a major, I shouldn't say major, without an upgrade of the platform and the browser, Las year at MIX we were saying 12 to 18 months, certainly two year timeframe, I believe we would be delivering about that. There's no exact date, clearly, as several of our product managers are (present) and I still want to have a job. But it's a challenge for us because there are some people out there who want us to upgrade the platform in service packs, not even in service packs, in our monthly security updates even, and that makes it really hard because it make it a moving target for anybody developing web content, but clearly five years was a little bit off the long end of the spectrum. We won't be waiting five years again and I think that your expectation of having a new browser platform every couple of years is definitely a valid one and it's definitely what we're shooting for," Wilson commented at MIX07.

In this context, Firefox 3.0 will find no problems in beating IE8 to the market. Currently, Firefox 3.0 is in Alpha 4 stage with Gran Paradiso Alpha 4 available for download as of April 2007. Mozilla plans to release two more alpha milestones of the open source browser in June and the first Beta of the product in July. September will be the months for the availability of Beta 2 and in the October - November timeframe the final version of Firefox 3.0 could run on your desktop. But as Microsoft plans to launch IE8 towards the end of 2008, it means that Mozilla will have the chance to release Firefox 4.0 before Microsoft delivers the successor of IE7.