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Most people anticipated the release of Internet Explorer 7 to parallel the release of Windows Vista in early November (business) to Q1 2007 (consumer). Well Microsoft decided to sneak it into Windows Update as a high security patch. So there's the possibility that millions of Windows (at least those who are smart and use Automatic Windows Update) users may inadvertantly be upgraded to the latest version of IE.

So what does this mean?

Well for a web developer / web architect like myself it means that I need to start doing some heavy unit tests for all the sites I have created that are in production. This is a problem for us because we thought we had several months left before mass adoption of IE7. Now that Microsoft is pushing IE7 out through Windows Automatic Updates rather than a pull system where interested users could knowingly download the update the adoption rate of IE7 will be much faster and far sooner than expected.

From the IEBlog :

"These efforts have been ongoing since last year and have been extremely
successful but we can’t ensure 100% compatibility without your help. We need you to test and ensure your sites, extensions, and applications are ready for IE7. We strongly encourage you to do the following ASAP:"

They go on to list several items one must do to ensure their application and infrastructure complies with IE7. What about those of us who have to go back and do this for 20+ web applications? In 4 weeks… As if we all have nothing better to do than test our sites for incompatibility with IE7?

Other issues arise for us web developers, such as running IE6 and IE7 simultaneously, which is not possible. In order for me to adequately test cross-browser functionality Microsoft recommends running Virtual PC (Microsoft Virtualization product) to run IE6 after the release of IE7.

I'm admittedly a Microsoft junkie but c'mon now… I thought your mantra was 'Developers, Developers, Developers'?

Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO

But again you are screwing your own. Thanks Microsoft.

IE 7 Coming This Month…Are You ready?
Microsoft To Push Out IE7 This Month

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