Microsoft has released the long awaited update to its browser application, Internet Explorer. Numerous enhancements have been made in IE7, mainly addressing security concerns that have dogged previous versions.

“We listened carefully to our customers and are delivering a safer browser that makes the tasks they do every day much easier,” Dean Hachamovitch, general manager of the Internet Explorer team at Microsoft said.

As well as beefing up the security of IE7, Microsoft has added functions that allows you to better understand potential threats to your system which, according to Microsoft, will assist you in "making better and safer decisions online".

"Making the consumer experience more secure is paramount to maintaining consumer confidence online,” said Patrick Gauthier, senior vice president of Visa. “Microsoft's security improvements in Internet Explorer 7.0 will certainly further this endeavor.”

Microsoft has worked closely with financial institutions such as Visa and PayPal as well as security vendors such as Verisign to create IE7 and in return these institutions are encouraging their customers to upgrade as soon as possible.

“VeriSign has always been on the leading front of offering the most current technologies to help secure consumers online, which is a concept that Microsoft brings to life with Internet Explorer 7. We encourage users to move to the new browser,” Tim Callan, product marketing director at Verisign said.

Microsoft also introduced 'tabbed browsing' - a feature that previous versions of Internet Explorer had lacked but something that rivals in the browser market such as Firefox and Netscape have had for a long while now. According to Microsoft, a feature called Quick Tabs will provide you with an 'at-a-glance' snapshot of all the tabs that are open on a single screen.

IE7 will be distributed to customers as an automatic update early in November, and will be built into Microsoft's forthcoming operating system, Windows Vista. However, users can also download the new browser now, but it is only compatible with Windows XP with Service Pack 2.

The release is a little earlier than many expected - attendees of the recent Digital Life conference in New York were told to expect the new browser on 27 October. Microsoft's IE7 blog had not been specific about the release date but had said that it would arrive before the end of October.

It also comes at a time when Mozilla has been gearing up for the launch of Firefox 2.0 - the final release candidate had been made available earlier this week, suggesting that a launch was imminent. However, the exact release date is still unknown.

Meanwhile, security company Secunia says it has already found a vulnerability in IE7.

http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/
http://www.microsoft.com/
http://www.mozilla.org/
http://secunia.com/

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