Microsoft will release the first beta of Internet Explorer 8 in the first half of 2008 that will have full support for web standards. And the new browser will be known as “Windows Internet Explorer 8″.

Website designers will be able to write websites based on standards, insert a flag that tells IE to render in IE8 standards mode, and IE will then switch its rendering engine to use this new mode.

Thus IE8 won’t break the layout of existing websites coded for previous versions of IE (IE7 or IE6, for example). They’ll behave in exactly the same way in IE8 unless website designers opt-in to IE8 standards mode by placing a simple tag at the head of their HTML document.

It is not immediately clear if Windows IE8 will be available for Windows 2000 and XP versions.