The waiting is over for those poor users of Internet Explorer 6 as yesterday Microsoft announced that IE7 is now available. Go, go and download it now and experience a safer and better way of surfing the web (with a Microsoft product). Then start up Firefox again, because you know better.

Big Changes?

IE7 means a few different things; a lot of bug fixes, removal of security holes, tabbed browsing, simpler interface, the list is probably longer than I'm willing to go on for, I'm not advertising it! But more importantly, this could affect any website already on the internet.

Your site may have looked great in IE6 after tweaking, and possibly hacking at it, but I urge you to try it in IE7 now (if you weren't already looking with the beta versions). The problem is, the rendering has been improved, but it still isn't of the capability of proper standards compliant browsers. Add to that the fact that all of the famous CSS hacks have been removed and any site could look wrong in IE7. My advice has always been to use conditional comments to keep your site looking good in IE, but I thought I'd warn you anyway.

Automatic Updates

Not only is IE7 officially with us, but it will be coming in force with November. As promised, IE7 will be pushed out to users via Automatic Updates so make sure you're ready!

My Reaction

I'm glad that IE7 is now with us, it heralds a new age for web development, where Microsoft continue to improve their product because both users and developers need the constant improvements. Also, the poor guys who use IE because they know no better at least get a safer experience and, of course, tabbed browsing. But, there is one thing that stands out about this release that impresses me more than anything since hearing about the development of IE7. I'll leave you with the last paragraph from the announcement of the release and hope you'll agree, this is the best thing that Microsoft could have said

That said, we’re not done. Even as we put the finishing touches on Windows Vista and release all the remaining language versions of IE7, we have already started work on the next versions of Internet Explorer. We’ll post more here soon about our plans for the product and our plans for listening to you.