14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft is getting ready to lay Internet Explorer 8.0 on the table for a general preview in just 10 days. While Mozilla has been hammering away at Firefox 3.0 with Gran Paradiso Alpha 3 available for download since the end of March 2007, Microsoft is still only dogfooding IE8.
However, the Redmond Company will indeed address the next version of Internet Explorer, although it will steer clear of an in-detail dissection. At MIX07, attendants will be able to get an Internet Explorer heads up, but Microsoft will offer only crumbs and nothing specific.
"We've gathered input from customers for the next version of IE through formal research like user studies and surveys, and also at conferences, comments on the IE blog, and direct emails from you; we will continue to listen at MIX07. We will have more information to share about the next release in the future, but MIX07 is too early yet to discuss specifics," revealed Chris Wilson, Platform Architect of the Internet Explorer Platform.
Chris Wilson will in fact be one of the Microsoft representatives to host a MIX07 session entitled "IE7: Past, Present and Future." According to Wilson himself, the session will focus on the IE6 to IE7 stage, but will also present an insight on Internet Explorer 8.0.
"I've been on the IE team since IE 2.0, so I know a bit about the ins and outs of Internet Explorer. In this session I'll be talking about the road from IE6 to IE7 - the vision of the release, how we set priorities, and more importantly, how we deal with the challenge of serving 500 million users. There were many lessons learned, and I'll talk about how we'll take those lessons forward into future releases of Internet Explorer", Wilson added.
Microsoft has not taken any area of Internet Explorer 8.0 public unlike Mozilla that is releasing public milestone after milestone of the Gecko 1.9 layout engine. In this context, efforts such as those made by the Windows Home Server team to keep product development opened are a lesson that the IE development team needs to learn.
And as Microsoft is keeping IE8 details quiet, I invite you to comment as to what you expect from the next version of Internet Explorer.