Internet Explorer 8.0 is slowly taking shape inside the Redmond campus. Unlike Mozilla which has taken an open patch with the development of Firefox 3.0 by making available Gran Paradiso Alpha 3, Microsoft is only doogfooding IE 8. Molly Holzschlag, former Group Lead for WaSP, an expert involved with W3C and a Web standards Evangelist has presented an insight on the evolution of the Microsoft browser in relation to standards and interoperability. Holzschlag has been meeting with Microsoft representatives in an effort to refine the goals for IE standards.

Now, in all fairness, Holzschlag has never mentioned the Internet Explorer 8 specifically. In fact, her work for improving IE standards support and interoperability will also find its way into IE7. However, Holzschlag's plans stretch long ahead, and are likely to impact the development of IE 8.

"I was confident that the IE team is more than interested in doing the good work, but learning that other product teams around Microsoft are paying attention to your feedback and concerns and are beginning to reach out to form strategic plans makes me feel very optimistic. Rome wasn't built in a day, of course, and there's a lot of working to do over the coming days, weeks, years and decades. But one thing is very clear, people are interested, listening, and best of all, enthusiastic," Holzschlag reveled.

Holzschlag has managed to map out four activity areas of her role with Microsoft and there are as follow: Developer and designer community liaison, Vendor Interoperability Liaison, Strategic consulting for standards implementation in Microsoft Web-related products and Acquiring and producing educational content related to aspects of working with standards.

Holzschlag promised that Microsoft will remain open and transparent in its relationship with web developers and designers. Moreover, the Redmond Company will also focus on acquiring and developing "solid relationships for browser and related software vendors and general interoperability solutions."

IE, Visual Studio / ASP.NET, Expression line of Web design and development tools and additional products such as Office are on Microsoft's priority list for "strategic consulting for standards implementation in Microsoft Web-related products."

And last but not least, as Holzschlag's collaboration with Microsoft will evolve, we will be able to see, for IE 8, but maybe even for IE 7, that "accessibility, Markup, CSS, JavaScript, DOM and ASP.NET resources will be acquired, produced and offered to the community at large for both ongoing and internal education."