Internet Explorer 7 RC1 is now available
We are excited to announce the public availability of the Internet Explorer 7 Release Candidate 1 (RC1). With this release, we're strongly encouraging web developers, enthusiasts, and IT professionals to finalize their testing and ready their environments for the final availability of Internet Explorer 7. We are confident that websites and applications that are optimized with this build will be compatible with the final version when it is released later this year. For an easy path to compatibility, we encourage technical audiences to download the free Readiness Toolkit.
Internet Explorer 7 RC1 is available for download on Windows XP SP2, Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, and Windows Server 2003 systems. The Internet Explorer 7 RC1 build includes improvements in performance, stability, security, and application compatibility. With this build, Microsoft has also made enhancements to the fit and finish of the user interface, completed CSS platform changes, added language support, and included an auto-uninstall feature in Setup, which automatically uninstalls prior betas of Internet Explorer 7, making installing the new build even easier.
As previously announced, to help our customers become more secure and up to date, Microsoft will also distribute Internet Explorer 7 as a high-priority update via Automatic Updates soon after the final version is released for Windows XP later this year.