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techtree: Beta one of the next iteration of Internet Explorer (IE), IE 8, will be released in the first half of 2008, Microsoft has announced. The company assured users that its new version browser has been put through necessary tests to ensure it doesn’t ‘break’ the Web.

Titled ‘Acid2 Browser Test’, the tests are designed to demonstrate whether a browser is able to render a Web site in a certain way or not. In the event it is able to do so, the browser is certified as supporting of accepted Web standards.

Incidentally, Microsoft’s original version IE was developed before Web standards like CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and RSS (Really Simple Syndication) came into being. As such, older IE versions don’t support current Web standards.

Faced with growing competition from open-source browsers like Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft developed its last version IE (IE 7) a shade better than predecessors in terms of support for newer Web standards.

Then again, older versions of IE refused to work with IE 7. With IE 8, Microsoft hopes to address this concern.

An IE blog posting said Microsoft’s goal in developing IE 8 is to support the right set of standards with excellent implementations, and to do so without breaking the existing Web. The posting continued that the key design goal for IE 8 is compatibility with existing Web sites and Web standards supported in other browsers to provide a premium user experience.