Internet Explorer 8
Just as he was the first to talk about IE7, Bill Gates kept the tradition alive and discussed IE8 at the Mix ‘n Mash event here on campus yesterday. Bill was talking to some bloggers about IE.Next and called it IE8, the same way we do here in the IE team hallway.

So, yes, the version after IE7 is IE8. We looked at a lot of options for the product name. Among the names we considered and ruled out:

IE 7+1
IE VIII
IE 1000 (think binary)
IE Eight!
iIE
IE for Web 2.0 (Service Pack 2)
IE Desktop Online Web Browser Live Professional Ultimate Edition for the Internet (the marketing team really pushed for this one ;-)
Ie2.079 (we might still use this for the Math Major Edition)

Of course, some people care about other aspects of IE8 much more than they care about the name. As I’ve walked different people through the plan, I’ve gotten “Does it have feature X?” “When is the beta?” “When does it release” and even the more thoughtful “What are you trying to accomplish with this release?”

You will hear a lot more from us soon on this blog and in other places. In the meantime, please don’t mistake silence for inaction.

Dean Hachamovitch
General Manager
Published Wednesday, December 05, 2007 2:33 PM by ieblog

MSDN Blogs

I like the:

IE 8

&

IE Desktop Online Web Browser Live Professional Ultimate Edition for the Internet (the marketing team really pushed for this one

oh wait, 'IE 8' is not on the list

What about IE ate?

Because it's yummy.

Yeah, I can just see it!

Like Internet Explorer ate my downloads/my pics/my system files/Windows...insert whatever is applicable

IEupd8

............................................................

Quote:

December 19th, 2007 Internal Microsoft IE 8 build passes the Acid standards test <snip> In a phone interview on December 19, Hachamovitch also said that Microsoft will release a public beta build of IE 8 some time in the first half of 2008. <snip> In the IE Blog posting, Hachamovitch said: “We’ll cover more details of the non-developer oriented work (e.g. user experience, reliability, security, etc.) in other posts in the future, after MIX.” Mix ‘08 is slated for early March 2008. At Mix 07, Microsoft provided some general guidance on its future IE plans but has offered no new details since then.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=1057

Maybe today
Yep.. Today it is available





Welcome and thank you for installing Windows Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1!


Put the Web at Your Service
This Beta version of Internet Explorer is for web developers and designers. We invite you to use the resources listed below to learn about the improvements, changes and new features available in this release.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/ie8/welcome/en/default.html


Edit: Direct downloads for:

Windows Vista 32-bit:
http://download.microsoft.com/download/d/4/3/d43f8ad4-3267-4c7a-8515-11557980357e/IE8-WindowsVista-x86-ENU.exe

Windows XP SP2 32-bit:
http://download.microsoft.com/download/7/e/8/7e88c69b-77d2-4fd7-b1eb-12c6d89ecc93/IE8-WindowsXP-x86-ENU.exe

Here is a couple of screenshots from this build






It is a bit buggy tho, even just trying to post here.
Hmm maybe i will need to use the Emulate IE7 button

Installed it --- looks good

Yep. It has problems with many sites but page rendering is faster than IE7. Currently I'm using it in "IE7 Emulation Mode".