IE8

Something's gotten into Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) lately. Its developers are singing like canaries about their plans for Internet Explorer 8. Earlier this month, Microsoft released IE8 Beta 1, which is intended mainly as an early look for Web developers. It's quite a change for a product that seemed to have gone dark in the days after Vista's release.

All during 2007, Microsoft said basically nothing about what it was doing for the next version of its flagship browser. The paucity of substantial blog entries on the IE Blog left some doubt whether Microsoft was doing anything at all, besides IE7 security patches. The blog hit bottom in early December 2007, with a content-free post that announced the successor to IE7 would be called IE8. That same day, Molly Holschlag got a chance to interview Bill Gates about the lack of IE8 information coming out of Microsoft. Gates' response: "I'll have to ask Dean [Hachamovitch, general manager of the IE8 project] what the hell is going on."


http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2008/03/microsoft_light.html

Hopefully the introduction of the IE8 will shed some light on the small dark era after the release of Vista. From what I've read about it so far, it seems to be the best Internet Explorer version to date. The building of anticipation is also a good strategy, needless to say, on Microsoft's part.