At this week’s MIX09 conference, Microsoft announced the availability of Internet Explorer 8, which features new tools and better support for web standards (full details are available in Microsoft’s Windows Internet Explorer 8 fact sheet). I’ve been using IE8 on my main computer for a few months now and, although far too many sites need to run in compatibility mode (including this one… which is supposed to be standards compliant), it seems to be a vast improvement on earlier versions of IE (and I’m looking forward to the day when I no longer need to support the various quirks of IE6).

Rather than just repeating news that’s available all over the web, I wanted to highlight some resources that are available relating to IE8:

• Windows Internet Explorer 8 fact sheet: overview of the features and benefits of the new browser.
• An Internet Explorer 8 deployment guide is available on the TechNet website (along with the Internet Explorer Administration Kit 8).
• For organisations who want to prevent automatic updates to IE8, a blocker is available.
• The Microsoft Application Compatibility Toolkit v5 is available for organisations looking to test their web applications with IE8.

For those running the Windows 7 beta, it’s worth noting that the version of IE8 included in the Windows 7 beta is not the same as the version available for earlier operating systems (it includes Windows 7-specific features). I don’t have any specific information for Windows 7 users, but would expect the Windows 7 release candidate to include the final version of IE 8 (with the additional Windows 7 functionality).

Internet Explorer 8 is available for download from the Microsoft website.