Microsoft urges us to "prepare" for IE7

Believe it or not, Internet Explorer 7 is imminent. Although, Microsoft won't give a specific release date, the beta is due out sometime this summer, and they're asking developers to prepare for the newest release of the popular browser. IE7 is already boasting new features such as tabbed browsing, an RSS reader, phishing defenses, some CSS support (rant forthcoming) and some undisclosed "developer platform enhancements."

So, what steps need to be taken to prepare for the release of IE7? If you use a browser "sniffer" or otherwise process the UserAgent, or, UA header sent by the browser, be sure your script can handle a 7.0 version of IE. At the very least, your script should behave gracefully when it comes across this previously-unknown version stamp. Most browser sniffers will simply degrade to the lowest-common-denominator when faced with an unknown UA. But it's best to test your site early. It's likely that the IE7 beta will be quite popular.

More can be read about the comments from Microsoft and a few anti-Microsoft web developers in this article from eWeek. More can be read about IE7 specifically in Microsoft's IE Blog at blogs.msdn.com/ie/.