Microsoft Delays Internet Explorer 8 to Early 2009
Microsoft last week announced that it has delayed the final release of its next web browser, Internet Explorer (IE) 8, from late 2008 to early 2009.
“We will release one more public update of IE 8 in the first quarter of 2009, and then follow that up with the final release,” Internet Explorer General Manager Dean Hachamovitch wrote in a posting to Microsoft’s IEBlog last week. “Our next public release of IE (typically called a “release candidate”) indicates the end of the beta period. We want the technical community of people and organizations interested in web browsers to take this update as a strong signal that IE 8 is effectively complete and done.”
According to Hachamovitch the IE team shifted through instrumentation of over 20 million IE sessions and hundreds of hours of usability lab sessions, scrutinized thousands of threads from user forums and examined the issues that people are raising (not to mention all the times users opt to “Report a Webpage Problem…”).
It looks like website compatibility issues (because of IE8′s standards-compliant render engine) is the number one reason for most of the remaining issues.
Microsoft’s Senior Vice President Bill Veghte had told analysts at the company’s Financial Analyst Meeting in July that “This is the product that we’ll release to the Web later this year”, indicating a late 2008 release.
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