While looking up links for my previous post, I noticed that Beta 2 of Internet Explorer 8 was available. I hadn’t bothered to look at Beta 1, and I had a quick look at some information about Beta 2, and it appears that, unless I am mistaken, it was only released yesterday.

One of it’s “Top Features” (strangely enough) is it’s “Compatibility View” that has the sole purpose of making it display web pages “designed for older browsers” (build with hacks to make it display properly in IE7). I tested this feature, and have found that IE8b2 in Compatibility Mode still does not display exactly the same as IE7. Isn’t it fantastic that it installs over the top of IE7! That was sarcasm, by the way.

Being a web developer, this is extremely annoying that apparently, I not only have to test IE6 and IE7, and now IE8, but also IE8 in Compatibility Mode… After quick searching, I was not able to find a standalone version of IE7 like I was for previous versions (Multiple IEs). I can only hope that by the time IE8 goes live, that there will be a standalone version of IE7 available (or, ideally, a forced upgrade to IE8, but that’s never going to happen).