Internet Explorer 8 beta targets IT pros

Microsoft yesterday previewed improvements to the second beta version of the upcoming Internet Explorer (IE) 8 aimed at helping IT professionals manage the browser’s enterprise deployment.

With the browser due out in August, the software vendor outlined improvements planned for the IE8 beta release at its TechEd conference currently taking place in Florida particularly related to its deployment with its Vista operating system (OS).

In a blog rounding up yesterday’s preview, it said it surveyed over 2,000 IT professionals and found it can take as along as two hours to deploy the current IE7 version on an image of Windows XP.

“Many IT pros want to update their Windows XP images to contain IE7 by default, so IE7 gets installed as part of the OS install. To do that the IT pros need to boot their existing images of Windows XP, install IE7 and then recapture the image,” wrote Microsoft IE product managers, Jane Maliouta and James Pratt in the IEBlog.

The second beta will also include an application compatibility toolkit targeting incompatibility issues between IE8, web sites and internal applications by facilitating new testing capabilities.

And the IE administration kit is also due for an update, to support custom builds of the browser on Vista and Windows Server 2008 platforms.

After only announcing its IE8 beta in March, it seems Microsoft is keen to respond to feedback around the browser’s support for web standards and overcome issues with websites originally designed for older IE versions displaying correctly.

“Today, not all sites are built to conform to web standards so we’ve given end users and developers control over how sites display in IE8,” the blog said.

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