Microsoft plans to make the bits available as of 9 a.m. PT on Thursday. Interested parties will be able to grab them from the Internet Explorer 8 Web site, officials said.

Microsoft officials will launch officially IE 8 during the Mix ‘09 morning keynote on March 19.

There are very few changes between the Release Candidate (RC) IE 8 code that Microsoft delivered in January and the final bits, officials said.

Starting with the RC, Microsoft began offering users a downloadable Compatibility List of sites which automatically default to the older, non-standards-compliant version of Internet Explorer 7 in order to lessen compatibility problems with IE 8. Since January, Microsoft has tweaked that list a bit, removing sites which have since updated so as to work properly with the more standards-centric IE 8, and adding new ones that aren’t standards-mode compliant. Otherwise, the tweaks to the product have been few.

Microsoft is planning to push IE 8 to users via its automatic updating mechanisms, but has yet to set a date as to when it will do so. In the interim, downloading the IE 8 code from Microsoft’s Web site will be the way interested users can obtain the latest release of the Microsoft browser.

An interim report on the UK’s digital future also looked at plans for public service broadcasting.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown said digital technology was as important today as “roads, bridges and trains were in the 20th Century”.

But the Conservatives said the report promised “no new action”. The Lib Dems said it was a “complete damp squib”.

Culture Secretary Andy Burnham told MPs it would help Britain secure a competitive low carbon economy in the next five to 10 years, adding the country “led the world in content creation”.

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