All right, this is it! Believe it or not but Internet Explorer 8 lives. Microsoft offered official confirmation that the next version of its proprietary browser is alive and kicking, and kicking hard for that matter. Dean Hachamovitch, IE General Manager, revealed that the Redmond company has been hard at work for the past year, building Internet Explorer 8. There was little secret that pre-alpha and alpha version of the successor of Internet Explorer 7 were being dogfooded over at Microsoft for the past year, but nothing transpired to the outside world of the progress of Internet Explorer 8.

Back in early December, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and, then, Hachamovitch, acknowledged the existence of Internet Explorer 8 and, furthermore, confirmed the fact that the current version 7 of the browser will be followed by v8 with no intermediary iterations. At that time, neither Gates nor Hachamovitch managed to bring any new information to the table, and Microsoft faced a barrage of criticism for the secrecy surrounding Internet Explorer 8. Well, the pressure worked just fine, and the Redmond company is slowly opening up.

"As a team, we've spent the last year heads down working hard on IE8. Last week, we achieved an important milestone that should interest web developers. IE8 now renders the "Acid2 Face" correctly in IE8 standards mode", Hachamovitch explained. "If you're not a web developer, the details of this blog post probably aren't all that interesting for you. (...) While web developers will immediately recognize what Acid2 means. Briefly: Acid2 is one test of how modern browsers work with some specific features across several different web standards."

Microsoft announced from the get go that it would increase the focus on interoperability and standards support with the next version of Internet Explorer. And by the looks of it, Internet Explorer 8 is getting there. The correct rendering of the Acid2 page is a very important milestone for Microsoft and IE8, as it is an illustrative example of a high level of standards compliance.

"I'm delighted to tell you that on Wednesday, December 12, Internet Explorer correctly rendered the Acid2 page in IE8 standards mode. While supporting the features tested in Acid2 is important for many reasons, it is just one of several milestones for the interoperability, standards compliance, and backwards compatibility that we're committed to for this release", Hachamovitch added.