Upgrading Internet Explorer to Version 7

As is often the case, Microsoft release a new version of software under the guise of an update, and then find themselves in the embarrassing position of having to grant users the ability to roll-back that upgrade because it wasn't perhaps as polished as it should have been on release.

The latest version of Internet Explorer, IE7, is one such upgrade. Is it truly an upgrade? Well, visually, it is quite different from IE6, in that you can now have some of the privacy, security and configuration features that users of Firefox and even Avant have taken for granted for ages.

Tabbed browsing, where you can have different web sites open in one window, isn't a new concept, even to Internet Explorer; Avant has had it from the beginning and, ironically, Avant uses the Internet Explorer engine. In this regard, IE7 is just bringing Internet Explorer back up to the same level as all its competitors.

Security and privacy in Internet Explorer have always been concerns, which is why Firefox so rapidly became the next most popular browser on the market. Is this because Internet Explorer is bad? No, it's probably no more vunerable to attack and exploitation than any other browser but it takes Microsoft longer to acknowledge said vulnerabilities, then patch them.

Firefox made security and privacy much more visible to the end-user, allowing you to see what was going on and configure it to stop some or all of it. Sure, it might hamper your browsing experience when compared to Internet Explorer but, once you knew what you were giving up and why, it became an informed decision, not an imposition as with Internet Explorer, which made sweeping assumptions on your behalf.

This short-sighted approach has also been addressed in IE7 which, as previously cited, only brings it into the same league as its rivals and competitors. That said, in typical Microsoft fashion, it does it seamlessly. There is nothing on the market that integrates with Microsoft's operating systems quite like Microsoft's own products.

You can't uninstall Internet Explorer as it's too deeply embedded in the core operating system; you can only elect not to use it, openly. Using something else will use up additional disc space and memory but will likely be more secure in the short term, until Microsoft completes its next round of catch-up.

So, should I upgrade to IE7? At the time of writing, if you exclusively use Internet Explorer and no other browser, yes - definitely and quickly, without a shadow of doubt or hesitation. If you're one of those people who's already migrated or dabbles with a competing browser, then the choice is entirely yours, because you're sufficiently enlightened already to make up your own mind.