Internet Explorer 8 Web Browser to Release in Early 2009

Microsoft will issue a full release candidate for Internet Explorer 8 in early 2009. IE8 is supposed to offer more features than IE7 including malware protection and better Web standards support. The last final Web browser released was Internet Explorer 7 in August 2006.

Microsoft Corp plans to release Internet Explorer 8 in early 2009. The Internet Web browser is currently at a beta 2 stage. The software giant will release one more public testing before releasing IE8.

"Our next public release of IE indicates the end of the beta period," general manager Dean Hachamovitch said in a statement. "We want the technical community of people and organizations interested in Web browsers to take this update as a strong signal that IE8 is effectively complete and done."

Internet Explorer 8 will have performance improvements and added features that are not in IE7. Some of the features include malware protection, better Web standards support and Web slicing. Web slice gives users the ability to card off a piece of a Web page that they are browsing.

IE8 will also support private sessions. A private session means that the Web sites visited by a user will not be logged in the browser's history. Firefox and Google Chrome also has privacy modes.

The last full release of Internet Explorer was version 7 in August 2006. The first IE8 beta was released in March. The second beta arrived during the summer.

Microsoft has not set a final release date for IE8. However, if the final beta is released in early 2009, the final version could probably be released during the second-quarter.