Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 was made available for download, via a release aimed at developers, on March 5, 2008, the opening day of Microsoft's Internet-centric conference MIX08. The Redmond company is making headway to the release of Beta 2 for its next iteration of the IE browser, and has announced the availability of the second wave of Internet Explorer Beta 1 downloads. The final availability date of IE8 has not been announced as yet, with Microsoft claiming that it has yet to commit to such a deadline; but Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2, the next development milestone of the browser, a version focused on end user features, is planned for the summer of 2008. But for now, two additional variants of IE8 Beta 1 can be grabbed from Microsoft.

"The IE team is pleased to announce the availability of Chinese (Simplified) and German versions of Windows Internet Explorer Beta 1 for Developers. The two languages released today are fully localized versions of the IE8 English Beta 1, released March 5, 2008. They carry with them the same improved CSS 2.1 support, better scripting performance, and other features and improvements that the English beta 1 developer release contains," revealed Vishwac Sena Kannan, International Program Manager, Internet Explorer.

With the brand-new localized builds of IE8 Beta 1, Microsoft supports the same operating systems as it did with the initial version of the browser. This means that users running Vista RTM, Vista SP1, Windows XP SP2, XP SP3 (RC2 candidate - Build 3311 or higher), Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, Windows Server 2003 SP2 and Windows Server 2008 (final version only) will be able to run all versions of IE8 Beta 1, as long as the languages of the fresh builds and those of the operating systems coincide.

"For install guidelines, please see the "How to Install the German or The Chinese (Simplified) Builds of Internet Explorer" section of the Windows Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 release notes. Please note that each international version may only be installed on its native language operating system or on English versions of the operating system with the native language's Multi-language User Interface (MUI) installed," Kannan added.

Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 [Build 8.0.6001.17184] in English, Chinese and German is available for download here.