IE 7 Beta 2 Released

I was lucky enough to get an invite to the Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 release party last night, thanks to my friend Jeremiah Owyang.  There have been a number of upgrades since the last version of IE, but a large part of the changes with this release center around bug fixes.  This version was released for the XP-class operating systesm, meaning all XP desktops and Server 2003.  Folks at Microsoft say that this version of IE is for 'the enthusiast", meaning it's not quite ready to put on the average user's machine, but a talented amateur.

Microsoft continues to work on the security of Internet Explorer and it was obviously in the forefront of the development team present.   They've also shown a definite commitment to supporting IE 7 in the enthusiast communittee by setting up a free support number.  They're listening to the conversations users are having about IE7.  The manager I talked to actually reads every single bug report, slightly to the chagrin of his engineers.

I had a lot of fun at the dinner and there were a number of interesting conversations floating around the room.  The folks from Microsoft were all incredibly knowledgable, but the conversations ebbed and flowed around a lot of non-Microsoft topics also.  The party was small, but there were a high concentration of high level bloggers.  I'll admit that I was a little awed to meet some of the bloggers and podcasters I've been reading and listening to for a while now, like Steve Gillmor and Robert Scoble.  Jeremiah has the list of all the attendees and there are pictures too.

Microsoft is making a definite effort to remain king of the browsers with IE7.  They're making every effort to give users what they want, from improved security to tabbed browsing to a tighter interface.  I'm not quite willing to switch back from Firefox, but I'm willing to install this version of Internet Explorer on my main computer for testing.