Internet Explorer 7 Available Now

October 18, 2006 By Digital Trends Staff

The long awaited IE7 has been officially released. Get it now from the Microsoft website.

After over a year and a half, IE7 has been released to the public as of Monday afternoon. Download it directly from: http://www.microsoft.com/ie. Word hit the streets after several mangers of the IE division posted on the IE blog:

Dean Hachamovitch, General Manager of IE, wrote a blog post outlining their ups and downs while creating IE7. "The Phishing Filter and the architectural work in IE7 around networking and ActiveX opt-in will help keep users more secure. IE7 also delivers a much easier browsing experience with features like tabbed browsing (especially with QuickTabs), shrink-to-fit printing, an easily customizable search box, and a new design that leaves more screen real estate for the web site you’re viewing."

Kellie Eickmeyer, Lead Program Manager of IE, followed up with a blog post outlining ways to get support in case you run into any problems using IE7. "The Internet Explorer7 support page is an excellent resource for assistance. Here you will find a list of FAQs, contact information for phone support and links to Microsoft discussion groups. In addition, Web Developers can visit The Microsoft Internet Explorer Developer Center for the latest information on IE Web Development or to participate in the IE Web Development forum."

Tony Chor, Group Program Manager of IE, then posted links to download IE7 in other languages besides English. "The short version is that we will be releasing IE7 in all languages available for each version of Windows – twenty-four fully localized languages in total. In two to three weeks, we’ll ship the Arabic, Finnish, French, German, Japanese, and Spanish language versions. The remaining languages will be released in phases between November and January."

Showing 12 comments

Frank at 8:33am 31st July 2008 Sticking to IE6.0 for now, but how do you get rid of the MS page that comes up when I start up IE that's wants you to upgrade to IE7.0? It overrides my default homepage!
JimE at 1:40pm 21st October 2006 Unfortunately IE7 is a dismal failure at W3C standards compliance, no doubt for petty political reasons. I'll always use browsers that have the greatest compliance to those standards. And as for security, FF and Opera win hands down. Disclaimer: I am a happy user of Linux, both at work and at home, MS alienated me long ago with their dishonesty.
BobMin at 8:29pm 19th October 2006 IE7 takes over your computer and makes you pay for add-ons. It was hard to remove because it is installed as an update not as a new program. After you remove it - you have no system. I don't want to have my wallet out while I am using a browser.
Andrei at 6:05pm 19th October 2006 IE6 is already full of trash so what will you expect of IE7...if you want to destroy your computer, go ahead & download IE7. If you wanna be safe & sound then just use FireFox 2.0 (RC-3 now!)
Tobius at 7:09am 19th October 2006 If you haven't taken the plunge yet you might want to hold off a bit longer. The vulnerabilities have already begun rolling in. Kudos to Secunia for leading the forefront:
http://secunia.com/Internet_Explorer_Arbitrary_Con...

Good job M$! Fight the good fight and keep that track record going strong!

I think I'll just stick with my trusty Firefox and watch from the sidelines as the next onslaught of M$ debauchery unveils. =)
Grady at 5:05am 19th October 2006 Works great. I like it a lot...very easy to work with. Much better than IE 6
freakxx at 2:04am 19th October 2006 I have used both FF-2(RC3 by now) and IE-7. What IE7 has done is not more than copy and paste from FF features...just pasted (didn't care to organize it properly what an user may find useful and convenient to use). I would strongly recommend ppl to try out FireFox-2 (RC-3 now) at http://www.mozilla.org/projects/bonecho/all-rc.htm... and think twice before u install IE-7. About memory leak of FF-2, the situation has improved to much better in FF-2.0. So, no worry of memory leakage anymore.
ashok pai at 12:58am 19th October 2006 i like FF2 better - the spell check works like a charm. yeah the memory leakages are a pain - but i only have a few extensions - cant live without those. IE7 beating FF2? not a chance! MS should've worked on IE7 for a longer period, not some knee jerk reaction to shrinking market size rather than some serious thought to suffering users all over. i hope sense prevails, and people download IE7 to cover thier a*** (for all those IE6 users)
Thomas Beaucorut at 12:39am 19th October 2006 IE7 has nearly catched up with Firefox 1.5. Firefox 2.0 is one more step ahead, though.

And IE7 only works on XP... and is probably impossible to uninstall. I'm not going to install it on anything production-related.
Uday Shankar at 9:21pm 18th October 2006 IE7 rocks!! Seriously, it does!! I had used the RC1 version and today, I downloaded the public release version and used it. I have been using it for a few hours now and frankly, I think anyone who uses it will be impressed (except for die hard Firefox fans).

I am a fan of Firefox too and I dont find too much of a difference between Firefox and IE7. The only small difference I notice is that IE7 loads faster than Firefox.
sandy at 7:31pm 18th October 2006 It looks good, but I don't think its better than FireFox. I will need to play with it more.
Jim at 6:38pm 18th October 2006 Someone please tell me how you like it before I download it. I do not want to ruin my system!