The new Internet Explorer will be released in the first half of 2008

25th December 2007

The first beta version of Internet Explorer 8 is going to come out in the first half of 2008.
So far it is only known, that IE passed the so-called test Acid2, checking the browser for relevance to all kind of standards.
A few days earlier the second beta version of Firefox 3 came out, the main competitor of IE, with improved performance and distribution of memory. It is expected that the final version of Firefox 3 will appear before the first beta version of Internet Explorer.
The test Acid2 is successfully passed not only by IE 8, but also by Firefox 3, as well as OmniWeb, Safari and Opera.
In late November, IE users asked Microsoft to update the browser more often. After the development of version 7 which took six years, the company founder Bill Gates promised that the new version of IE will come out every 9-12 months.
Internet Explorer 7 has been in existence for more than a year already. This is the most popular browser on the planet, used by about 300 million users. In comparison, Firefox is used by about 125 million people.