

It is the last version of Internet Explorer to support Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows XP Professional 圆4 Edition, the 圆4 versions of Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista before SP2, and Windows Server 2008 before SP2 as the following version, Internet Explorer 9, will only support on Windows Vista SP2 or later and Windows Server 2008 SP2 or later. Internet Explorer 8 requires Windows XP SP2-3, Windows XP Professional 圆4 Edition SP2, Windows Server 2003 SP2, or Windows Vista at the minimum. According to Microsoft, security, ease of use, and improvements in RSS, CSS, and Ajax support were its priorities for IE8.

Additionally, it introduced a compatibility mode to optionally emulate older versions' rendering behaviour, and colour-coded tab groups where links opened in new tabs share the colour of which they originated from. Internet Explorer 8 is the first version of IE to pass the Acid2 test, and the last of the major browsers to do so (In the later Acid3 Test, it only scores 24/100.). It was the default browser in Windows 7 (later default was Internet Explorer 11) and Windows Server 2008 R2 and can replace previous versions of Internet Explorer on Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 but unlike version 7, this version does not support Windows Server 2003 SP1 or an earlier version. It was released by Microsoft on March 19, 2009, as the eighth version of Internet Explorer and the successor to Internet Explorer 7. Windows Internet Explorer 8 ( IE8) is a web browser for Windows.
