Thank You IE8 Beta Testers

As we've now entered the last major phase of our product cycle, we’d like to thank everyone for their dedication to making Internet Explorer 8 a better product.   As mentioned in IE8 Beta Feedback our Technical Beta Program provides a way for an invited set of beta testers around the world to test and file bugs against IE8.  Since the release of beta 1, the technical beta community has continuously provided excellent feedback and we have fixed a significant amount of bugs because of it. By rating your most important bugs through the Connect site, you helped us identify the most impactful bugs to fix for IE8. 

Below are some of our favorite fixed bugs submitted through the Technical Beta Program:

Connect Feedback ID 331738: Emulate IE7 without restart

When we introduced the IE8 Compatibility View button (which at the time was called the Emulate IE7 button) the user was prompted to restart the browser before the page could be viewed in Compatibility View (Emulate IE7 view).  We received 34 votes on this issue!  Your feedback guided changes we made to this functionality for Beta 2.

Connect Feedback ID 387668: Disappearing text (6001.18343)

This issue was about missing text on some webpages while using the IE8 Partner Build.  Once the user clicked on the missing text, the correct information was displayed. Thanks to your help, this issue received 34 votes on Connect and was fixed for the release of IE8 RC 1.

Connect Feedback ID 334225:  alt attribute for image should not and must not be displayed in a tooltip

This bug was a great example of a good bug report.  It was very detailed, contained links to recommended behavior, and an easy to understand example of the issue.  This bug was fixed for Beta 2.

Please feel free to continue providing us with excellent feedback through our various feedback mechanisms (Technical Beta Program (invitational), Public Beta Program on Connect, Report a Bad Webpage Problem, IE Beta Newsgroup and the IE Developer Forum).  For those who have downloaded the Windows 7 Beta, please file Internet Explorer 8 issues through the “Send Feedback” link on the top right corner of the browser.

Picture of "send feedback" link in IE8 on Windows 7. The link is located next to the close/minimize/maximize buttons.

Please, however, be aware that the Internet Explorer 8 version on Windows 7 Beta is older than Internet Explorer 8 RC 1.  So if you have an issue that reproduces on IE8 on Windows 7 and not on IE8 RC 1 then the issue has been fixed, unless it is an issue in an IE feature specific to Windows 7.

We want to send a special thanks to our IE MVP’s  who have been helping us monitor our newsgroups.  You guys are awesome!

Allison Burnett
Program Manager