IE7 Coming Tomorrow?

Tomorrow is “patch day” for Microsoft. They are scheduled to release 11 new security updates for Windows but are also rumored to push out Internet Explorer 7. According to a blog post on the Washington Post website:

“Last week, Security Fix mentioned that Microsoft intends to ship 11 patches tomorrow, including a “high-priority update.” According to a post on the company’s IE blog, that high-priority update could be IE7, a long overdue upgrade to IE 6 that includes new security features and other enhancements that most other Web browsers have long possessed. A Microsoft spokesperson declined to say whether IE7 would be released tomorrow, saying only that it would be released sometime this month.”

Internet Explorer 7 contains a lot of new features. The most notable are tabbed browsing and built in RSS support. If you are used to the way IE used to look like, be prepared for IE7. It looks nothing like the old IE versions that most users are accustomed to.

UPDATE: the targeted release of IE7 is scheduled for 10/18. The push of the new browser won’t happen via Automatic Updates until the week of 11/1.