IE8 now being delivered as 'Important Update' for Vista, 'High Priority' for XP

A few weeks ago, Microsoft made indications that it would be delivering Office 2007 Service Pack 2 and Internet Explorer 8 as important automatic updates to Windows users on the same day. That day ended up being today, and now many Windows users are being prompted for the first time to install IE8 as an update to their operating system. Since the product's release last month, upgrades have only been voluntary.

Though two-thirds of the world's Web traffic is attributable to browsers identifying themselves as Internet Explorer, according to the latest up-to-the-minute data from analytics firm NetApplications, under 5% of that traffic comes from IE8. In fact, only in the last week has IE8 traffic by NetApplications' measure eclipsed HTTP requests hailing from Apple Safari version 3.2, which runs on Mac, iPod Touch, and iPhone. Requests from Mozilla Firefox 3 accounts for nearly one-fifth of analyzed traffic; but now, with IE8 becoming an "in-your-face" update for the very first time, Internet Explorer traffic in total may experience a bump.