Microsoft to launch IE8 in '09; RC due out in Q1
PC World | at | by Mike
Microsoft Thursday said it would issue a release candidate for Internet Explorer 8 in the first three months of 2009, indicating it will ship its newest browser sometime in the first half of the year.
"We will release one more public update of IE8 in the first quarter of 2009, and then follow that up with the final release," Dean Hachamovitch, the general manager overseeing IE8, said in an entry to a company blog.The current version is Beta 2, which was released in late August.
If Microsoft's past performance is an indicator, the final of IE should launch in the first half of 2009. Its last major update, IE7, hit release candidate status in late August 2006, and shipped as a final version in mid-October of that year, a span of just under two months.