14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft has officially confirmed that the wait for the first taste of Internet Explorer 8 is nearly over. Despite the fact that IE8 was under development throughout 2007, with the Redmond company dogfooding the browser, details on the successor of Internet Explorer 7 were scarce, to say the least. And since even at this time, Internet Explorer 8 remains an inhouse project only, the sole sneak peeks at the next version of Internet Explorer were tightly controlled by Microsoft. The company did not risk the same level of exposure that it did by shipping the early version of Windows 7 to key partners.
At the beginning of this month, Microsoft revealed that Dean Hachamovitch, IE General Manager, would take the stage together with Scott Guthrie, General Manager in the Microsoft Developer Division and Ray Ozzie, Microsoft Chief Software Architect in a keynote address scheduled for March 5, at MIX08. At that time, it became obvious that Hachamovitch's presence at Microsoft's web focused conference could only be connected with Internet Explorer 8. But how much exactly remained unknown, and a fair game for supposition. But no more.
The fact of the matter is that the first consistent taste of Internet Explorer 8 is now less than a month away. Hachamovitch will deliver the first public presentation for IE8 on March 5, 2008, at MIX08 in Las Vegas. Starting with the next month, users will be able to make an idea of the new features that have been integrated into Internet Explorer 8. The Redmond company failed to reveal if MIX08 will bring with it the first Beta of IE8, having only promised to deliver a testing milestone by the first half of this year.
"Dean Hachamovitch, the guy who runs the Internet Explorer team, will be one of our keynoters at MIX. As he promised on the IE Blog, Dean is going to share more about Internet Explorer 8 including a sneak peek at some of the features his team have been hard at work on. Dean's keynote at MIX06 was one of the highlights of the inaugural MIX conference. Since then, IE shipped a new version with a new UI and dramatically improved standards support, and the browser industry has heated up with an emphasis on web standards and new entries in the browser market. You won't want to miss this keynote to see how the next version of Internet Explorer is shaping up and learn how Internet Explorer 8 fits into today's browser marketplace," revealed Joshua Allen, Microsoft Evangelist.