The program, called "Browser for the Better," is connected to those wacky Dean Cain IE8 commercials that launched earlier this month.

And while the Dean Cain marketing effort will likely last forever thanks to the glorious wonder of the Internet, the charity portion of Browser for the Better only runs from June 10 to August 8. Don't ask about the image. Apparently, for the meals to become viable, Microsoft had to truck in a bunch of artists so they could stack them into shapes resembling the Empire State Building and Golden Gate Bridge. [Neowin]

In this short excerpt, Microsoft endorses their product with a firm nudge and a wink. I mean, Steve Ballmer didn't go so far as to drop trou on screen, but kudos to the company for not being total prudes about what their software is clearly designed to facilitate.

Just keep those innocent little girls on a different set than your pervy comedians, Microsoft. Seriously, I don't even want to see them at the same lunch table. [Microsoft via Crunchgear]

If you've used the release candidate, or even the beta right before it, it'll be a mostly familiar experience, with nothing that seriously warps your fragile little mind. Microsoft does want you to forget about all of the Javascript benchmarks you've been seeing—they insist it's not about the Javascript performance touted by Apple or Google with their Webkit-based browsers. It's all about how fast pages actually open they say, and they claim IE8 is now "as fast or faster a majority of the time" than Firefox or Chrome (before the most recent beta). We'll see!

One cool UI bit, which you can see in the screencap, is that tabs are color-coded, so you can see where your trains of thought spring from—all of my Giz-originating tabs are one color, while all of the links I opened up in tabs from Fark are a different color, and so on. Pretty handy.

Accelerators are its version of add-ons in a way, or at least that's how they tout in them. In practice, they let you quickly jump to web apps, like Google Maps (or their own Live Maps) or translate something from Japanese or whatever language via their own service, or one of your choosing, like Google Translate. So IE8 is way more open in how you use embedded services—you're not stuck with Microsoft's own, which is good since a majority of the browsing public will be using this one day (probably, anyway). But without features like Firefox's add-ons and extensions, Chrome's rawer minimalism, or Safari/Opera's Top Sites, it still feels a few steps behind the rest of the pack.

Oh yeah, you can grab it at noon eastern in the morning. [Microsoft]

Mary Jo Foley posted what looks like the entire list of broken sites, but here are some of the more ridiculous sites that don't display properly in IE8, and require it to render them old school style (aka not web standards compliant). Here are some of the more laughable ones.

microsoft.com
google.com
yahoo.com
cctv.com
msn.com.cn
live.com (a Microsoft site)
wikipedia.org
flickr.com
wordpress.com
adobe.com
facebook.com
apple.com
youtube.com
imdb.com
thepiratebay.org
dell.com
netflix.com
nytimes.com
gizmodo.com (In case you're wondering why you have problems in IE at Giz)
kotaku.com
sony.com

My eyes glazed over after a certain point, so if you see any other ridiculous entries, let us know in the comments.

Microsoft is going to constantly adjust the list, taking off sites that become compatible with its default "standards mode," and adding sites that people complain about. Here's the list for Vista users, and for XP people. Aside from this tragically amusing compatability issue—which Microsoft totally brought on itself by making Internet Exploder completely ignore web standards for years—IE8 is actually much better than IE7, and worth taking a look. [ZD Net]

Or, if you want the quick and dirty, here's what unfurled in front of me, give or take a few guest presenters and some marketingspeak:

Ballmer comes out—my guess is he's smiling. He talks about the wonderful world of consumer electronics. He mentions this company called Microsoft. He also mentions the tough economic times we're all going to suffer through together. He will be optimistic, however.

He's going to talk about Windows 7. First, he'll announce the availability the Windows 7 Beta tomorrow for registered Microsoft beta peeps, January 9th for everybody else. He'll run through a lot of stuff we've already seen on Win 7, like DeviceStage, Homegroup networking, "Play To..." and other coolness like the Win 7 touch interface.

On the Windows Live front, he'll tell us that Windows Live Essentials is no longer in beta, and that you can now post photos on Facebook directly from Windows Live Photo Gallery, and save photos from Facebook directly to your Win gallery too. He'll also say that Windows Live Search and Essentials toolbar is gonna boot Google from Dell computers in February. Meanwhile, Verizon Wireless is going to implement Windows Live on VZW feature phones. IE8 is not out of beta yet, but it's coming.

For Windows Mobile, the big news, as presumed, will be full Adobe Flash support in the browser. (Sounds good to me, if only the browser was as good as, well, others.)

Ballmer is going to call Robbie Bach to the stage to talk about connected entertainment. Bach will start with some good Xbox stats—28 million worldwide, with 17 million active Windows Live members, and over a billion dollars spent on the service since inception.

Bach will introduce a number of sweet products:
• Windows Mobile app for managing Netflix queue
• Xbox Live community game builder called Kodu (already buzzed about)
• Windows Media Extender functionality in Toshiba products (announced earlier today)
• The latest edition of Ford Sync, which you can read about here
• Go back and forth on shows you didn't pre-record using Microsoft Media Room Anytime (I wonder what the advertiser stipulations are on that)
• Already known games Halo Wars and Halo 3: Orbital Drop Shock Trooper
• Xbox Live Primetime game 1 Vs 100 live gameshow coming in spring

What, no love for Zune? Almost everything's going according to plan so far, but stay tuned, because anything could happen. You know, come to think of it, Robbie Bach got to talk about a lot of the fun stuff. Is this the kickoff of the Ballmer Years? Or is it really the kickoff to the Bach Years? Steve would probably win at arm wrestling, but seeing the two of them on stage, I'm starting to think Bach could maybe take the bossman in a Cool Hand Luke-style a fist fight. [Full CES 2009 Coverage]

This IE 8 release candidate is said to be feauture complete, which is to say that we should expect anything significant to be added before the final version ships. Most of what we were expecting is still present, and refined: the porn mo—err, InPrivate, a refreshed interface, stronger find functions, full keyboard navigation and adaptive zoom. Not present, however, are significant increases in Javascript rendering speed or CSS compatibility, areas in which even this mature version of IE 8 was handily beaten by current Firefox and Chrome builds.

Still, the browser looks to be a solid step forward, and despite the one-step-behind spec sheet, aging code base, and TGDaily's convincing assertion that IE 8 won't be able to slow the erosion of Microsoft's browser market share, will provide welcome improvements for that giant, stubborn chunk of the population that just uses whatever their eMachine shipped with. [TGDaily]