What is the purpose of this public beta program?
The purpose of this program is to provide everyone an opportunity to install and evaluate the Beta 1 release of Windows Internet Explorer 8.       

Will Microsoft be accepting feedback from the general public?
The Internet Explorer team will be accepting feedback and reviewing bug reports from the IE8 technical beta participants.  However, anyone can view the IE8 Technical Beta bug database and rate (vote for) issues that are impacting them.  We encourage users to visit the IE Beta Newsgroup, where you can post feedback.  Additionally, we have built ways to collect feedback in automated ways from everyone.  Some of these are technologies you’re probably familiar with like the Customer Experience Improvement Program, which gives us real world usage data like “how many times people click the back button in a session,” and information when IE crashes or hangs.  We have also added a new tool called “Report a Webpage Problem…” to help report website compatibility issues. 

Why did Microsoft choose to make IE8’s “standards mode” the default and risk compromising backwards compatibility?
Internet Explorer 8 was designed to provide the most extensive support for Internet standards of any Microsoft browser. This next version of the world’s most popular browser balances user experience, standards-support and developer platform investments to provide a window to the new Web – the Web of Online services.

Microsoft is taking the responsible step of communicating this decision early in the development process.  This decision is consistent with the Microsoft Interoperability principles and actions we announced earlier this year, which included enhanced support for industry standards. 

We recognize that this step may create disruptions and we are committed to working with our partners and customers to give them the time and support they need to work through this transition.  

What functionality does IE8’s “standards mode” change?
By default, IE8 will render pages that have a strict or transitional DOCTYPE declaration with IE8 layout engine.  Pages without a strict or transitional DOCTYPE definition will continue to render in IE’s “quirks mode” engine. This is consistent with the W3C HTML5 spec.

Website authors can instruct IE8 to render pages in IE7 standards mode with the appropriate Meta tag on the page or via a server instruction.  

What is the ”Compatibility View” button on the toolbar?
By default, Windows Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 has been configured to display web content using a mode which is more standards-compliant.  However, some web sites may not display or function properly using the default configuration.  The Internet Explorer Team has created a toolbar button called “Compatibility View” , which will revert the rendering mode back to the standards support provided by Windows Internet Explorer 7. 

What do the various feedback resolutions mean? 
• Fixed - The code has been changed to resolve the problem.
• Not Reproducible - Our engineers are unable to duplicate the problem (perhaps because of a previously applied fix in the code) or this bug is now expired because of a new release of IE. If your issue still reproduces on the latest IE build, please update the repro steps and re-activate your bug.
• By Design - the feedback you provided is, at this time, expected behavior for Internet Explorer.
• Won't Fix - we know that we will not be addressing the reported issue, usually because it risks breaking the code in other, more serious ways or because the effort to fix the issue is not justified for the improvement.
• Duplicate - We already have a bug or suggestion for this issue.
• Postponed - Unfortunately, we will not fix this in IE8, but we will consider it for the next release of IE. This may include any items considered new suggestions or new feature requests.
• External - The IE team cannot resolve this issue.  We have assigned it to another group, but the other group's status for the issue is not available to our database.

How come some bugs are resolved fixed in the IE8 Partner Build?
We have provided the members of the technical beta program the IE8 Partner Build. This is not as extensively tested as a milestone build. This build represents a preview of our progress from Beta 2 to RC1.  The IE8 Partner build is not released to the public and is unsupported.


What does “RC1” mean?
Release candidate software is at a stage in the development process where it is ready to be evaluated by users while it undergoes final testing.

Internet Explorer 8 RC 1 is now platform and feature complete and this is your opportunity to be among the first to try out the new browser before its final release. Install it today and take it for a test drive.   If you find issues with IE8, please let us know by filing a bug.  In addition, you can uninstall the browser at any time. Instructions can be found at our support page for Internet Explorer 8 RC 1.

To ensure your browser is up to date, all RC1 users will be automatically updated with the final version of Internet Explorer 8 via Windows Update so you’ll always have the latest version of the browser.