What it is
I know, you haven't heard from us in a month or two - then 3 in one day! Holy Cow! Sorry for the long time between posts, but it just happened that these all cropped up at once.
We recently received an update from Micosoft indicating the Internet Explorer 7 is due to be released to the public after 11/1/2007. The product will be released through a critical update on windows update (probably on 11/14/2006). What this means is that UNLESS YOU TAKE STEPS NOW you WILL be upgraded to IE 7 sometime shortly after the 14th, and doing a manual windows update could update you as early as November 1st. Now don't get us wrong - we've tested IE7 and think that for the most part it's pretty great. You get a bunch of new features and Microsoft promises it will be more secure than version 6 of Internet Explorer (take that statement with a grain of salt I expect).
But any new release is bound to have kinks - and if you're in charge of a large number of machines you may want to consider deploying IE7 on your own schedule instead of Microsoft's. If you are managing multiple machines we'd suggest downloading a copy now and putting it on a test machine to see if it causes problems with existing web applications. We haven't found any critical ones yet - but you never know.... There are definitely some user interface changes that will take some getting used to. In addition, you may want to test your own website and any web applications you have with the new IE7 to be sure that it renders and operates properly. Better to let your internal or outsourced developers know that you need changes to the site to support the new browser, rather than waiting till it's already in users hands.
We'll investigate and update you on what new security settings are automatically installed, and which ones you may want to "tweak" to be sure you're getting the best protection in future posts....
What you should do
If you wish to you may download IE7 now and apply it (you're going to get it anyway in a few weeks). The download site is at:
If you've tested IE7 or don't want to download right away you can deploy the "Download blocker tool" which can be downloaded here:
For more information about IE7 and it's new security and user interface capabilities see this site:
For a real giggle take a look at who snarfed up this domain name:
Further References
Microsoft's bulletin on the release of IE7 to the public and how it will roll out:
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