Internet Explorer 8 Release Candidate Now Available

The IE Blog reports on the release of IE 8 RC1:

We're excited to make the IE8 Release Candidate available today for public download today in 25 languages for Windows Vista, Windows XP, and Windows Server customers. You can find it at http://www.microsoft.com/ie8. Please download it now and try it out. We welcome your feedback!

What’s New

The team will post more about all changes between Beta 2 and RC. In brief:

  • Platform Complete. The technical community should expect the final IE8 release to behave as the Release Candidate does. The IE8 product is effectively complete and done. We’ll post separately about the thousands of additional test cases we’re contributing to the W3C. We've listened very carefully to feedback from the betas. With the Release Candidate, we’re listening carefully for critical issues.
  • Reliability, Performance, and Compatibility improvements. We’ve studied the telemetry feedback about the browser's underlying quality and addressed many issues.
  • Security. We’ve worked closely with people in the security community to enable consumer-ready clickjacking protection. Sites can now protect themselves and their users from clickjacking attacks “out of the box,” without impacting compatibility or requiring browser add-ons. We also made some changes to InPrivate based on feedback from customers and partners.

We also made some changes to the user experience based on feedback. For example, based on data about how people use actually it, we made fitting more items on the Favorites bar easier. (Note that the IE8 Release Candidate is for Windows Vista, XP, and Server only; Windows 7 users will get an updated IE8 with the next update of Windows 7. Also, the Release Candidate of the Internet Explorer Administration Kit is available for download now.)

I’ve been working with IE 8 RC1 and various pre-RC1 IE 8 builds for some time now and I have to say, the experience has been largely positive. My review of IE 8 RC1 will be up shortly. Stay tuned.

Discuss this Article 58

Waethorn
on Jan 27, 2009
"I tried placing the Command Bar on the right of the Favorites Bar, which looks okay, but what I really want to do is set some of the Command Bar icons where they belong -- next to the Back/Foward, Refresh/Stop buttons." I hate having the buttons there. It's IE6 all over again. The buttons where they are are a smart decision since they aren't used all that frequently. "Just give them a fine and allow the OEMS to put whatever browser they want onto their pcs and set it as the default browser." They already have that ability. Microsoft may or may not discount the price of the OS because of product bundling (I don't remember if this was part of the DoJ case or not), but including third-party browsers should at least increase the OEM's support costs from Microsoft, so I don't see how it can be unjustified. "I believe that the issue is more along the lines of the integration with the Windows OS, not so much with the bundling." There are common API's and COM libraries between IE and Windows. It would be like telling Apple to take Quicktime Player out of Mac OS X. They would say that the Quicktime API is part of Quicktime Player and that it can't be removed without destroying the multimedia presentation foundation of the OS. If they did unbundle the Quicktime API's from the Player, then they'd have to open up access to the API's on Windows without needing the Player too. You know they won't do that.
Waethorn
on Jan 27, 2009
"this Microsoft treadmill of upgrade upgrade gets tiresome. Why can't Microsoft just back port?" See my previous comment. NT Workstation has been out of support for a while now. Doing band-aid patches on such an old OS to get new API's to run on it would be a developer, not to mention a user nightmare and not worth the investment. Have you used OS X before?
WebGuy3000
on Jan 27, 2009
Re Mac Trojans: Anyone who supplies an admin username and password to a pirated installer downloaded from the torrents or warez sites (or to a "missing codec" from a porn site for that matter) deserves exactly what he gets, as far as I'm concerned. Actually, I see these recent incidents as a good thing, if it teaches a few people that it doesn't matter how good your locks and security system are if you invite the bad guys in through the front door and offer them a cup of tea. And that goes for any computer platform.
tayme
on Jan 27, 2009
@WebGuy - I totally agree with you. I also believe that these incidents and and probably will lead to more attacks that use various delivery methods. Social Engineering covers a wide variety of methods and the uninformed or stubborn OS X users will pay the price. --tayme
DRWAM
on Jan 27, 2009
Paul mentioned on WW that someone reminded him via email that it would be difficult to DL a 3rd party browser if Windows did not have IE pre-installed. Does the EU want us to send away for a browser installer CD and use nothing in the interim? Duh!
Dipsh t Admin
on Jan 27, 2009
Social engineering attacks are the primary vector of infection for most Windows malware these days, regardless of what robertsjoe will have you believe. Regular Joe and Jane Sixpack will always be the weakest link in computer security. As I've said many, many times here, as the marketshare increases for the Mac, the malware writers will target the platform more often and with more sophisticated attack methods. Malware is a money making business plain and simple.
Waethorn
on Jan 27, 2009
"Does the EU want us to send away for a browser installer CD and use nothing in the interim?" They have a bunch of AOL floppies saved up.
anonymous
on Apr 26, 2009
Ok.. I just installed Windows 7 build 7057 onto my 17″ macbook pro (early 2009 model). I got everything running except the wifi. It seems to show a live connection available but refuses to get online. I installed all the drives from my leopard 10. 5 cd

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