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IE 8 Beta 1 Coming Soon - Download Pages Up Now

Posted March 5th, 2008 by Vista123.net

Well we're here in Las Vegas (more on that later), getting ready for Mix to officially start with the keynote this morning, and it looks like we're not the only ones getting ready.

Thanks to pikalu0530, we can show you two web pages up now, all set to provide download links for IE8. Just a quick glance shows some new features - activities, and web slices:

IE 8 Home Page: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/ie8/welcome/en/default.html

Here's the download links (links not working, just wait for several hours):

Internet Explorer 8 can be installed on Microsoft Windows Vista® Service Pack 1 (SP1), Windows Vista, Windows XP® Service Pack 2 (SP2), Windows Server® 2008 and Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2 (SP2). Downloads are available from the following locations:

Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 

Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 for Windows Vista x64 Edition and Windows Server 2008 x64 Edition

Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 for Window XP SP2

Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 for Windows Server 2003 SP2

Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 for Windows Server 2003 SP2 x64 Edition and Windows XP SP2 Pro x64 Edition

An email from Microsoft:

We have closed on the languages we’ll ship for Beta 1. In addition to English, we’ll also ship German, Hebrew, and Simplified Chinese. Briefly, the reasons are as follows:

·         German: Enables testing of maximum string lengths in our UI. German strings are an average of 25% longer than the equivalent English string.

·         Hebrew: Shipping a language that reads right to left is important to getting that scenario right. We have a test resource fluent in Hebrew on the Intl test team.

·         Simplified Chinese: Double-byte character sets are another area we need to make sure we have great coverage on. In addition, IE Marketing is working with partners in China on projects to be announced at Mix08. China is 2nd only to the US in total PCs, and represents the fastest-growing market for PCs, Windows and FireFox growth.

We expect that these localized releases will be roughly 4 weeks after the release of the English build (exact dates will be part of the Beta plan xxx owns).

Looking forward to Beta 2, we will ship the same three languages, plus add Japanese. There may be others we add as well, but that is all TBD post-Beta 1.

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