IE 8 release candidate now available

If you're a web developer (and I know many of you reading this blog are), now's the time to download the latest version of Internet Explorer and begin seriously testing your sites. This week Microsoft released the first IE 8 RC build, which really is the last step before the big RTW (release to web) that makes IE 7's successor official. The new build of IE8 is supposed to be more stable and better performing than the betas, and it's also (according to the IE Team) "effectively complete and done." That means what you see today should pretty much be what you see when IE 8 starts shipping to the masses, so any problems your web sites exhibit need to be fixed (or made compatible via the handy IE8 Compatibility Meta Tag).

Telerik is already busy running all test suites against IE8 RC1 and we plan to have full support for the browser when it ships. We have, of course, been testing and working with IE8 since the early previews, so you can already find broad support for IE8 in the current RadControl bits. Expect all lingering problems to be addressed in-time for the RTW.

Download IE8 RC1

IE8 will not arrive 'til early 2009

Here's a quick newsflash: the next major version of Internet Explorer will not be shipping this year and instead will be shipping sometime in early 2009. In a short blog post this Wednesday on the IE Team blog, Dean Hachamovitch (IE GM @ MS) laid-out the high-level road map for IE8 and how we'll get from today's beta 2 release to the final product. Essentially, the road map looks like this:

• Today: Beta 2
• Q1 2009: Public Release Candidate (RC1)
• Late Q1/Early Q2 2009: Release to Web (RTW)

So, anybody expecting to get IE8 before the end of the year- or even very early next year- can put those dreams (or dreads, as the case may be) on hold for a while. This week's announcement is a little surprising since I think many industry watchers (self included) thought Microsoft would ship the final IE8 version before the end of the year to try to keep pace with Mozilla and Firefox. But as Eric Lawrence (also from MS) said in the comments: "The IE team's goal is to deliver a quality IE8 as soon as possible. Providing exact dates is always problematic; no one wants to ship with nasty bugs just to meet a self-imposed deadline. Keep in mind that we support IE for up to 10 years after its release, and sometimes those extra few weeks save ~everyone~ a lot of pain later." Let's hope that statement is true and the version of IE8 that ships next year is as "painless" as possible. For Telerik's part, we will obviously provide full support for IE8 as soon as it ships, and even today you'll find near complete support for the beta versions of the browser.