What does all this mean to you?
With the features that Microsoft has added, Internet Explorer 7 is now looking like an essential upgrade for current IE users. The tabbed browsing, RSS / web feeds and search bar are nice, and should bring IE7 up to parity with competing browsers, but the real meat is underneath the hood in the various changes and enhancements that Microsoft has made to the basic browser code.
Internet Explorer 7 should be the most secure iteration of the browser to date, even before the inevitable patches. Hopefully Microsoft's improvements here will lead to a still greater separation of the browser from the rest of the operating system too.
As to whether Internet Explorer 7 can convince Firefox users to switch back, the jury will be out until the final version release, which is a few months away yet. Firefox has its share of problems and annoyances, though security is not (yet) a major one. If IE7 can deliver on its promise of greater security while delivering the same browsing experience IE users have become used to
When can I get it?
As of the time of writing, you can't unless you are a member of the Microsoft Developer's Network or its IT professional TechNet service. As we said, Internet Explorer 7 will be available both in a standalone version and in a slightly different edition packaged with the public Windows Vista beta operating system
The standalone version of Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 should be released in early to mid 2006, with a public beta hopefully coming around the fourth quarter of 2005. The Vista version of IE7 will obviously be available only with the operating system itself, sometime in late 2006.
. In comparison to netscape navigator which changed it's interface with every version.