Microsoft has plans to deliver the first release candidate of the newest version Internet Explorer on Monday.

“We’re about to release [IE8 RC1] for Windows Vista and Windows XP,” said Microsoft’s Frank Olivier, a user experience program manager. “Over the past months, our compatibility team has been hard at work, finding and fixing bugs that cause site rendering issues,” Olivier wrote. “Due to the different release schedules for Windows 7 Beta and IE8 RC1, some of these bug fixes didn’t make it into Windows 7 Beta.”

Microsoft originally had hoped to release the final version of IE8 before the end of 2008 but the release date had to be pushed back

You can download the Internet Explorer 8 RC1 here.