From 1999 to 2002 there seemed to be regular updates for Internet Explorer. So much so that few rivals bothered competing. Only Netscape made a similar number of releases, but even they gave up after a while. However, Microsoft got rather complacent with the Internet Explorer 6 release and, apart from a few minor security fixes, we've seen no update for a few years now.

Within Windows Vista, this is all about to change and Microsoft have realised that they need to drastically update Internet Explorer to offer a modern browsing experience. Luckily for existing Windows XP users, Internet Explorer 7 will be released as a standalone application....as long as you use XP with Service Pack 2.

New features include an overhaul of the webcore (HTML engine), better support for CSS, tabbed browsing, anti-phishing feature, an instant search feature and a new interface.

You can download Internet Explorer 7 Release Candidate 1 but, be warned, installation takes a while to complete.

25 Aug 2006