Last week Microsoft released Internet Explorer 8 Beta (IE8). I’ve been swearing (under my breath) at IE for the last five years, but it may be time for me to find another fall guy. Microsoft has not only been listening, they’ve been soliciting feedback from their most outspoken critics — web developers who care about standards.

If you’re a web standards fan, I’m sure this isn’t news. But if you are like most of the rest of the world, you’re probably saying, “So what?”

Good question. Standards are the bedrock of the web, and while it would be erroneous to say Microsoft played fast and loose with them, they were notoriously sluggish about improving IE and bringing it into compliance. They had almost total market domination with IE6 for five years. During that time IE’s lack of standards compliance slipped from being a minor headache for web developers to a major crisis.

The crisis peaked when Microsoft finally released a new version — IE7 — and jillions of websites broke. At Vanderbilt, IE7 didn’t just cause cosmetic problems; it broke some mission-critical hospital applications. Because of this many IT departments around campus have blocked deployment of IE7. I expect we’re far from alone. The irony is that the problem was IE7 being more standards compliant than IE8. But it still wasn’t as compliant as any of the other major web browsers.

It’s been an enormous e-pickle. To their credit, Microsoft took ownership of the problem, scrambling to come up with something better. The result is IE8.

Should you rush right out and download IE8? I’d advise holding off, because it will overwrite whatever version of IE is currently on your PC. However, if you’re responsible for websites, you should get it soon. The good news is it should be able to toggle into IE7 mode. As soon as it’s a bit more stable I’ll be updating the PC I run IE7 on, testing IE8 and reporting back.