Microsoft has debuted planning for Internet Explorer 8.0 since early January 2007. A Software Design Engineer working intimately in the development of Internet Explorer revealed that, as of January 6, he was hard at work on IE 8. But of course that there are only scarce details about this embryonic stage of the Microsoft browser.

Right now, Microsoft is dead mute in relation to Internet Explorer 8.0. But all clues point to the fact that the deafening silence will be broken at MIX07 that will take place at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas between April 30 and May 2, 2007. The fact that Microsoft is currently dogfooding IE 8 has been confirmed by Bruce Morgan - a Software Development Manager, IE Team and responsible with leading the Vista RSS platform, IE UX, and IE setup teams at the Redmond Company.

An inhouse pre-alpha version is already running over at Microsoft, and at the end of January, the Redmond Company has sent out an Internet Explorer 8 Feature Survey email. Participants in the Microsoft Tech Beta program already know that as of March 1, 2007 the 59-question survey hosted at Microsoft's Connect website on IE 8 is no longer available.

So what's next? While Microsoft is not breathing a word, the fact of the matter is that the company has a standard development procedure, and the building of the next version of Internet Explorer 8 makes no exception to the Redmond rules.

"At the beginning of a product cycle we are focused on planning, architecting, and implementing. There is not much to talk about, since we can not talk about anything that has not been publicly announced yet. A few posts on context-free problems may trickle out. Then we ship a Beta and the bugs start rolling in. This is where things get interesting. Lots of problems to solve translates into having lots of interesting topics to post about," revealed Jeff Davis, Microsoft Software Design Engineer.

I must emphasize that Davis was not referring specifically to Internet Explorer 8 with the words reproduced above. The fragment is an excerpt from a post on Davis' blog and is entitled: "msdn blogging, ie7 and the future."

"Then we lock down for the final release," Davis continues. "We focus on fixing the last few compat issues, localizing, branding, and marketing. The devs start dreaming about the next release. Now the new year has started and we are back in the planning phase, which I can't talk about."