IE7 final release - all done and dusted - release date?

Does anyone have any ideas of when IE7 could be released?

[bhonda]

Hey all,
Just doing some CSS designing at work, and I'm at the end of my tether with IE6! I know IE7 Beta's been released, and even though it's not that much of a monumental jump from IE6, any improvement's better than nothing. Does anyone have any ideas of the sort of timescale until IE7's released for public consumption? How long does it 'usually' take from Beta release to final? I know it's a very odd question, and nobody can say for sure (let alone MS!) but I was just wondering - months, years, decades? I just want to know how long I've got to work with IE6 for!

Cheers,
B

[Robin_reala]

Current rumours suggest December.

[victor]

But bear in mind that it make be several, perhaps many, years before the percentage of IE6 users drops to single digits.

Webmasters have been so accommodating of IE6 users (adding hack after hack to make IE6 look good) that it will take a substantial marketing campaign to persuade IE6 users that they are no longer the center of the universe.

[garann]

Webmasters have been so accommodating of IE6 users (adding hack after hack to make IE6 look good) that it will take a substantial marketing campaign to persuade IE6 users that they are no longer the center of the universe.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't Windows Update force people to get the latest version of Internet Explorer? I would hope that would lead a substantial number of IE6 users to upgrade right away. Or allow their OS to do it for them. :)

[encyclo]

The initial expectation was that there would be a first public beta of IE7 at the beginning of August, so if that was true, they are already a month behind schedule. Final release? Months away still...

As for when you can safely expect to stop supporting IE6, you are probably looking at five to seven years' time at the earliest. IE 5.0 came out six years ago (1999) and still has a statistically significant market share. For IE6, it is worse in that only 50% of Windows users are on Windows XP (with the rest on 98 or 2000), and so IE6 will remain the "best" version of IE for all those non-XP users even after IE7 is released.

[2by4]

I'd call ie 7 beta ie 7 alpha, it's a very rough item, very little in it actually works. That's typical of an alpha, not a beta release. They've got a lot of work ahead of them. The actual beta release will show more, then the gold release should be a few months after that.

Sometime in 2006 that is.

[bill]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't Windows Update force people to get the latest version of Internet Explorer?

Not really. I still run one machine on Windows NT with IE 2, and Windows Update doesn't do anything. In fact it doesn't work at all.

You'll get a big percentage of upgrades if MS makes it a critical update and auto installs it. I don't see that happening though.

[kaled]

If MS announce that IE 7 is to be known as IE 2007, then you'll have your answer, otherwise not even his Billness could answer the question.

I said in another thread that I believe IE 7 will be the last update and that MS will bite the bullet and drop IE altogether. I stand by that prediction but it is probably five years away.

Kaled.

[Shadowkiller]

IE 7 won't likeley get a big share of the market till Windows Vista is released. IE7 won't be available for all XP users unless they upgrade to Service Pack 2. So we're probably talking years before IE7 is the dominant browser.