Exec says Internet Explorer 8 is not delayed

Last week, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer team announced that a release candidate of IE8 would be issued in the first quarter of next year, followed some time thereafter with a final release of the new browser. Microsoft has never laid out an official timeline for the release of IE8, but there had been hints that the next version of the Web browser was due out before then (Bill Veghte, Microsoft’s senior vice president of online services, said in July, "This is the product that we’ll release to the Web later this year.")
But in an interview Friday, Matthew Lapsen, a director of Windows Product Management, insisted that the release of IE8 was not delayed. "It’s not a slipped schedule," he said. "We release based on product quality, not dates." He declined to state any targets, but did say that the release of IE8 would be independent of any release of Windows.
source: seattlepi.com