Tabbed browsing is part of IE7 which has been the preferred version for a couple of years now.

IE7 moved toward better compliance with the standards, and IE8 claims to be "fully compliant." To accomodate sites that need some of the "extras" (non-compliant features) that were in older IE versions, reports are that IE8 includes a "run as old IE" switch to let you get into them.

Any IE8 that people have been running for more than a week or so has been a "beta" version, so those who have been running a beta version probably will want to get an update to the "final release" version that started being available officially about a week back.

I haven't seen any comment that gives compelling reasons not to use IE8, but on the other hand I haven't seen anything other than advertising blather that says you need IE8.

Note the link (fourth post) about the Firefox update. Firefox has been found to have a "critical hole" that needs patching. A new version will be needed to get the patch, which should be available now or within a few days, so Firefox users should be looking for it. All Firefox users are affected, regardless of OS, according to the report.

John