Bah, I doubt IE7 will be more than a few security patches. Maybe they'll throw in an integration with the anti-spyware proggy they just bought. Maybe they'll add tabs. Maybe design a few icons. But other than that I'm sure it'll be the same engine, I'm sure it still won't support 24 bits PNG's and I'm sure they won't add the customizing capabilities FF has.
Heck, they only just decided that they'll release a new version, when they had previously said no further updates would come before the release of Longhorn. So how much can they do in a few months?

I'll be the first one surprised if IE7 actually turns out to be revolutionary, as IE4 was back then.

IE 7. Whats the point? Every1 knows that Eventually all those IE6 dinosaurs will have to admit defeat and move to firefox or mozilla. Overall, my message is
GET FIREFOX

IE 7. Whats the point? Every1 knows that Eventually all those IE6 dinosaurs will have to admit defeat and move to firefox or mozilla. Overall, my message is GET FIREFOX

No thanks!

Eventually all those IE6 dinosaurs will have to admit defeat and move to firefox or mozilla.

Dude, c'mon already. It's just a browser.
I (greatly) prefer FF too. But can we all stop beating up on each other over browser choice?

(Kona, didn't you post recently that you were actually liking FF?)

I ditched it - to many problems loading/viewing sites.

unfortunately, I was being sarcastic. MS won't ever have a browser as cool as FF.

I ditched it - to many problems loading/viewing sites.

Hmmm, are you willing to reveal which sites? I'm interested to see if it's a problem here also.

I've gotta say, so-far-so-good with FFx IME - so much so I can't bear to go without "open link in new tab" (middle click) anymore!

Hahaha. I've been using Firefox since 0.6.1 and could probably count the number of pages it hasn't displayed correctly on my hands.

TABS!!! Must have TABS!!!

Word from Paul Thurrott is it'll have it (Link)

IE7 BETTER????? LMAO.... (more Sp's and headaches to fix).... If you are inspired by Gates, microsoft or IE, i want to know where I can get the drugs to make you so delusional....

I still don't buy into this browser war thing. It might have been a big deal back in the Netscape days, when the browsers worked differently and pages that worked on one wouldn't work on the other. Nowadays, everything shows up proper on IE so I don't see any reason to switch. As for all these security holes, the only reason people are so aware of them is because of Microsoft's constant bullitins with patches and updates for the browser. So by the time you read about some obscure flaw, it's already fixed.

I agree Jay, IE surely is not perfect, but at least MS can admit it. I mean, don't take me wrong, I'm a Netscape guy myself. But all these "alternative" browsers do nothing to close the gaps in THEIR programs. Reality is firefox is pretty crappy. It doesn't load pages right, some of the pictures it DOES load are grainy and out of focus. Total garbage! As of now the order I would use to choose a browser would be:

1: Netscape

2: IE6

3: Opera

4:Firefox

And if IE7 comes complete with tabbed browsing (my fav thing about Netscape) then i'm sure 1 and 2 will be switching places. Merely because I don't like using outdated software, and judging by the new beta from Netscape... yuck.

And if IE7 comes complete with tabbed browsing

Paul Thurott has an article about it, and it is only avaliable for XP SP2.

http://www.winsupersite.com/

Funny, different strokes for different folks... I really like the new Netscape. Can't wait till it's stable. At the moment, it's quite unusable, but the features are really nice.

It is not so much the browsers that are culprit when it comes to pages displaying incorrectly as it is the web coding standards. Granted I will be the first to admit that IE sucks when it comes to CSS compliancy and FireFox is the best one out there so far (I use both being a web developer and need to develop for a wide variety of users). Most of the sites that appear flaky is because the developer(s) have not gone back and updated their code to be cross browser compliant: in some cases it doesn't really matter, in other cases you can lose a lot of business/traffic. WC for instance appears great in both IE and Mozilla/gecko browsers.

Redmond decided to release IE7 early and make it available to users with SP2 installed. If you read the entire article by Thurrott, you will see that originally IE7 wasn't going to be released until Longhorn was released and was only going to be available for Longhorn users. I think they made the decision to release IE7 early and make it avaialble to more users because of FireFox's success so far on the consumer level (IE still dominates the corporate environment); IE7 was being designed for Longhorn already before the current success of FireFox. Same concept as Redmond making Avalon and Indigo technologies available to SP2 users: they get a wider user and developer base. However, keep in mind that to get the new Aero look you have to have Longhorn.

I am looking forward to the changes in IE