Dean Hachamovitch has posted an update on the IE Team Blog in reaction to Bill Gates mentioning IE8 at the Mix "n Mash event on the Redmond campus yesterday. Bill was talking to some bloggers about IE.Next and called it IE8.
So, yes, the version after IE7 is IE8. We looked at a lot of options for the product name. Among the names we considered and ruled out:
- IE 7+1
- IE VIII
- IE 1000 (think binary)
- IE Eight!
- iIE
- IE for Web 2.0 (Service Pack 2)
- IE Desktop Online Web Browser Live Professional Ultimate Edition for the Internet (the marketing team really pushed for this one ;-)
Of course, some people care about other aspects of IE8 much more than they care about the name. As I"ve walked different people through the plan, I"ve gotten "Does it have feature X?" "When is the beta?" "When does it release" and even the more thoughtful "What are you trying to accomplish with this release?"
You will hear a lot more from us soon on this blog and in other places. In the meantime, please don"t mistake silence for inaction.