Watch this video read this post. At barcamp in Auckland last Saturday I got some "feedback" on the silence around IE8, hopefully this is the start of the IE team opening the door to what is being built in IE8.
As mentioned in the channel 9 video the part I like is that it will be up to the site creator to flag their site so that IE8 will render in "Standard Compliance Mode"... 19.48 in the video.