Internet Explorer 8 RC 1 Released Today

With all of the excitement over Windows 7 the past few weeks, we almost forgot about its almost-read- for-primetime companion, Internet Explorer 8. The second beta version of IE8 was released a few months ago, but today Microsoft took the wrapping off of Internet Explorer 8 Release Candidate 1. A release candidate is the last step before an official release so, at this point, the bells and whistles are all in place and the engineers are checking for bugs. So what’s new in this version? Aside from a slightly slicker overall experience, the big change is that Microsoft has created a list of sites that are not yet compatible with IE8 and automatically sends the browser into compatibility mode, which renders the sites in IE7. The newest version of IE8 will run in Vista, XP Service Pack 2, and Windows Server. Ironically, it will not run in the most recent beta release of Windows 7. Download and try it out here.