Microsoft has finally released the final version of Internet Explorer 7, the long anticipated upgrade to IE6, which has been around since 2001. The new version of IE sports tabs, cool tab-views (try pressing cntrl-q to see thumbnails of your tabs), customizable toolbars (to a point) and many many security and functionality improvements, like a phishing filter, native popup blocking, and built-in warnings to users that they may be viewing sites that are masquerading as trusted websites.

IE7 is a free download, and is available through windows update to Windows XP computers with Service Pack 2, but no systems running an earlier OS, not even Windows XP SP1 users, and even though IE7 reportedly shares approximately half of its code with IE6, the version available now is supposedly a lightwieght version of the browser that will ship with Windows Vista early next year. IE7, at first glance, still feels cumbersome and lacking in features and functionality that really puts it over the edge as a serious competitor to browsers like Mozilla Firefox and Opera, but it’s definitely a significant improvement.

The problem, though, is that because it shares so much code with its predecessor, within the first 24 hours of the browser being available, a security vulnerability has already been found. Tsk.

[ PC World :: Final Version of Internet Explorer 7 Now Available ]