Interesting tidbit at Ars Technica quotes Internet Explorer's platform architect Chris Wilson as saying that "Compatability is crucial to us."

While IE7 has made some strides with regards to standards compliance, Microsoft is hard at work on a new multimedia development platform called Silverlight, which competes directly with the W3C SVG standard. SVG is basically a vector-based motion graphics standard that has been developed so that no matter what browser anyone uses they can experience rich animations and presentations without the need for proprietary software or plug-ins.

So, will IE8 support Silverlight and SVG? That will be a test to determine if Microsoft is indeed serious about coming into compliance with web standards.

In the meantime, download Firefox to experience a standards-compliant, user-extendable 21st century browser.