Internet Explorer 7 Now Available To Everyone
Posted on Saturday, October 6th, 2007
A year ago, Microsoft released the long awaited new version of the world’s most popular browser. Internet Explorer 7 swept in to replace the tired, old and fragile IE6. Developers got suitably excited at the prospect of spending less time banging their heads against the brick wall of standards support and bugs in IE6 and some even went as far as thinking about dropping support for IE6. Now we are a year on and IE6 is still the most popular browser, but Microsoft are doing something about it now.
Why Not To Download IE7
Some people were excited about IE7, but I was more skeptical and rightfully so it seems. You see, when you ban a third of your user base from installing your browser’s major update, just because they pirated your operating system, you run the risk of the update going unnoticed. And largely it has, IE6 stills rules the roost, Firefox continues to make gains and IE7 is still trying to get a footing on the browser stage.
Time To Move Forward Again
On Thursday, Microsoft announced that computers would no longer have to pass Windows Genuine Advantage checks in order to install IE7. It seems like an attempt to regain market from Firefox and move closer to booting IE6 out of the door. But re-including 200 million users can never be a bad thing.
Get Firefox, But If You Don’t Want To, Get IE7
IE7 was an improvement on IE6 especially in terms of web standards support. IE7 offers a better experience for designers, developers and ultimately users (no broken websites to deal with). Now that anyone with Windows XP can get IE7 there could very well be a shift towards upgrading (well, sales of Windows Vista aren’t doing the job so a second round of Automatic Updates might do it). I’d like to thank Microsoft for this myself as it can only move the day for dropping support for IE6 closer.
It will be interesting to watch browser stats over the next few months to see if this change does have any effect. Maybe, in another year’s time we will be celebrating this decision and dropping IE6 support. Then again, maybe users will continue to be stubborn and use IE6. In the meantime, I will be encouraging people to use Firefox, umm… I mean to use IE7, but only if they are so opposed to change that Firefox is just too far for them.
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1October 6th, 2007 at 4:25 pm
Chip Says:Interesting move! I heard a rumour about this a while ago, and I’m looking forward to see some statistics, to see how (and IF) IE7 is going to grow.
I’m sure somewhere on the Internet, someone is gathering statistics right as we speak.
2October 6th, 2007 at 11:09 pm
Phil Says:Hi Chip,
I hope we see an increase in IE7 use properly now. Of course, if you look at your own site statistics you should be able to get an idea of how things are changing. I look forward to looking back on this and seeing whether there is an improvement.
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October 7th, 2007 at 9:52 am
3October 7th, 2007 at 9:55 am
Chip Says:As I said in my post, I do not totally deny Internet Explorer 7, I just hope it will be improved over time, now that it is free.
4October 7th, 2007 at 1:31 pm
Phil Says:You’re right there, Chip. IE7 still needs improvement and I still look forward to IE8. Finally, like yourself, I too recommend Firefox!
I just think that this can only improve the state of the web for surfers and developers.
5September 17th, 2008 at 10:32 pm
Adam Gurney Says:Time has passed now, and IE7 is ready for Beta from what I have heard. Also, what I despited was that, it has copied the adress bar “fast search link” Firefox added in its new (3) version.