Tomorrow morning, at 09:00 PDT, Microsoft unleashes IE 8.0 on an unsuspecting Internet.

By 12:00 PDT, the number of Web sites having to put up IE 7.0 only stickers will be in the millions.

I haven’t done a lot of testing of the new monster (I mainly use Firefox on Mac OS 10.5.6), but it doesn’t seem any weirder than any of the other Microsoft browsers I have used.

Under the hood, it does amp up the number of connections that are used to download objects, but if your infrastructure is prepared, it should be no big deal.

The big concern lies in the rendering. If those users who can upgrade to the new browser (anyone not limited to IE 6 by a corporate IT policy written on parchment) do find there are problems, will they blame the site or the browser?

Have you tested your site to ensure that it actually works with IE 8? Or will you get burned?

What is the greatest benefit you see to your visitors having IE 8 instead of IE 6 or 7?

Is this a good thing?