Microsoft recently released betas for their next OS (now called Vista for some reason) and Internet Explorer 7. Now Vista I’m not too bothered about as it’s an OS and they’re not very exciting to me. As well as security, Microsoft seem to be focusing on making things shiny and see-through, so ummm ... yeah, see-through.

Internet Explorer 7 is the one which interests me. Despite many people thinking that IE works and people who design for the web should just make sure things work in IE and blame other browsers when things look different, this is not the case and thankfully Microsoft will be focusing on getting the bugs fixed as the betas progress. First priority will be security of course because IE is the least secure browser out there and as more and more ‘ordinary’ users start using the internet, they need to be protected from their own stupidity

I have been down on Microsoft before after their decision to halt devlopment of IE except for OS releases; this wouldn’t be bad if it worked, of course, but it doesn’t work right. Deciding to keep a broken browser as it is for four years or more seemed a rather foolish decision. Despite that, I am glad that they are going to try and fix things so we can all create websites and have them look like we want them to look without a lot of workarounds. It could be the huge success of Firefox which has caused Microsoft to wake up but whatever the reason, anything which makes life easier for me is a Good Thing ™.

Reading that a few websites are broken with the beta of IE 7 because the web developer didn’t code things right - instead, just made sure it worked in IE - makes me laugh. This is the reason we need standards, this is the reason we need browsers to support those standards. I’m not sure if I will use IE 7 as my primary browser when it’s released - I’m used to my current browser - but many people will as it’s part of the OS they buy.

Yes this has been a blog about something as boring as a browser, please ignore it (bit late now as you’ve fallen asleep reading it).