Windows Vista & IE7 Beta 1 Available
Beta versions of both Windows Vista (formerly codenamed ?Longhorn?) and IE7 for Windows XP are now available. Back in
February we committed to releasing betas this summer. I?m sure it surprises some people, but we did what we said we?d do.
How interested you are in actually running pre-release software should depend on who you are. For example, I think that running pre-release
MSN Virtual Earth or the
Windows Antispyware Beta is interesting for everyone. I think
NetScan is less interesting for broad audiences.
The beta versions of
Windows Vista and
IE7 that have just released should be interesting to developers and IT professionals. For this reason, the beta is available to MSDN subscribers and a pretty small set of pre-enrolled beta test participants. Our goal is to get feedback from this group, do a bunch more work around quality (performance, security, reliability, etc.) and some features (e.g. additional standards support beyond what?s in
beta 1, additional functionality around tabs and RSS, etc.), and release Beta 2 much more broadly.
With Beta 1 done, you can expect much more active posting about technical details on the features that are now public. We?ve posted an
IE7 Technology Overview,
What?s New in Internet Explorer 7 for Developers, and an
Anti-Phishing Whitepaper. Based on questions and feedback from the beta, we?ll blog and post more.