Internet Explorer 7.0

It is personally fun and exciting for me to see other teams around Microsoft do great work. Today, the IE team shipped Internet Explorer 7 for Windows XP. Congratulations to the team!

IE7 makes it easier and safer to browse and develop for the Web. IE7 is not just about a browsing experience - while adding the inline search, tabs, and optimizing the UI are some of the key advances in IE7, but also provides a great developer experience. We have added support for OpenSearch, we fixed many of the CSS headaches that developers have had to deal with over the years and ended up providing a great RSS platform. There was also a lot of focus to improve the speed of the java script engine.

The release of IE7 has really come from listening to the community. We prioritized on what caused web developers the most trouble, and focused on the browser to answer these challenges. By getting out into the community, through the IE blog and just plain listening to what you had to say, we were able to move IE forward. Most importantly, we are not done listening. IE7 has shipped, but the work for the next version has already started, and soon, we’ll open up the channels for feedback again.

The community around Internet Explorer is growing, and the team is working to help built and foster its growth. A great example of this is the IE AddOns website where you can go and download different AddOns to make your browsing experience more fun, and interesting. And you can write your own AddOns too. In fact, the IE team is going to be kicking off a contest with a $2500 cash prize and a trip to Mix07 will be the grand prize. One of the most exciting toolbars I have seen recently, is the IE Developer Toolbar that provides a great way to explore the DOM, locate specific elements on a page and many other things.

Namaste!