In an interview with eWEEK, Dean Hachamovitch, general manager of Internet Explorer for Microsoft, said, "If I had a bumper sticker in mind for this it would say: 'Developers, start your engines.'"

Hachamovitch said Microsoft has been doing a lot of work since IE 8 Beta 2. "To me a beta is all about listening, and we've done that and focused a lot of work on putting the things we learned from developers into RC1 [Release Candidate 1], and that's just around the corner," he said. "It's all about developers. There's a sense of urgency about getting ready for the next release. It's about helping developers understand how to sign off on their sites—so they'll be ready when IE 8 RC comes out."

Even as the release candidate of IE 8 arrives, Microsoft will still be testing the technology and listening to further feedback from developers to figure out what else needs to be done to the browser before it is made generally available as a finished product, Hachamovitch said.

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