Internet Explorer 8 is one step closer

The Microsoft Internet Explorer team posted, IE8 Blocker Toolkit Available Today!

We believe IE8 helps make browsing the web faster, easier, safer and more reliable. To help our users be more secure and up-to-date, we will distribute IE8 via Automatic Update (AU) and the Windows Update (WU) and Microsoft Update (MU) sites much like we did for IE7. We know that in a corporate environment, the IT organization will often want to delay the introduction of a new browser until they have tested compatibility with internal applications and sites.  We’ve done a lot of work in IE8 to maintain compatibility with sites designed for Internet Explorer 7, for example compatibility view and the compatibility meta tag.  However we know many IT organizations will still want to test the browser before it is deployed.  To help prevent users from installing IE8 through Automatic Update before compatibility testing has been completed, we are providing the IE8 Blocker Toolkit. This toolkit has no expiration date and can be configured either by running the registry file on the client machines or via Group Policy in domain joined environments. The Blocker Toolkit is available today from the Microsoft Download Center.

IE8 will be available for users on the following platforms:

• Windows Vista 32bit and 64bit,
• Windows XP SP2 and above,
• Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2003 SP2 and above