Microsoft is pledging to make some major changes to IE, and to attempt to fix many concerns with the popular browser. The company is currently considering many "fixes" to the application, which they believe will help to stop the advancing popularity of certain open source browsers like Firefox. However, it\ufffds not likely that we will see a new IE until the next version of Windows.

Officials for the Redmond, Wash., company said they will not upgrade the browser before the next release of Windows, dubbed Longhorn, which will only increase pressure from Firefox and further erode confidence due to security issues, sources said.

[link|http://www.techspot.com/story16971.html|Feb 14]

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Microsoft will release a new version of Internet Explorer, the world's most widely used Web browsing software, with stronger, built-in security features, chairman Bill Gates says.

The move is the latest in Microsoft's three-year effort to beef up security to protect its software products which are the most-targeted by malicious programmers. The company has made three security software-related acquisitions, with two of those coming in the past few months.

"We have decided to do a new version of Internet Explorer, this is IE 7," Gates said on Tuesday at the RSA Security Conference being held in San Francisco.

[link|http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2005-02-16T041716Z_01_CHA566005_RTRUKOC_0_TECH-MICROSOFT-BROWSER.xml|Feb 16]