Today during his keynote speech at the RSA Conference, Bill Gates announced Microsoft's on going commitment to provide safer web browsing for Windows Customers. As part of this it was revealed that the first beta of Internet Explorer 7 will arrive this Summer for Windows XP SP2.
This goes against a decision made back in 2003 which was that a new version of Internet Explorer would require a new version of Windows and not be available as a standalone for other versions (Windows XP featured Internet Explorer 6, and would receive upgrades to IE6 SP1/SP2 as part of a service pack update). As Windows Longhorn has been taking some time in arriving I welcome this update for XP, however I hope Internet Explorer 7 will not be an entirely security focused release. Since Internet Explorer 6 in 2001 a great many things have come onto the web scene, some technologies which are in IE6 simply do not fully work as they are meant to/’modern’ versions are not implemented at all, CSS support is a good example. This is something which really does need to be addressed. Bill also announced that Windows® AntiSpyware technology would be made available with no additional charge.
Press Release
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2005/feb05/02-15RSA05KeynotePR.asp
IE Team Blog:
http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/02/15/373104.aspx