More Info on IE7...

... kind of. Not so much what's in it, but MS have admitted there will be a third service pack for Windows XP... my guess is that this will be the one containing the XP-compatible bits for "Avalon" and "Indigo" (which will find their apotheosis under "Longhorn").

According to Microsoft's Mike Nash:

"We'll be updating Windows on a regular basis," he said. "How the browser gets
packaged--whether it's with a service pack--has not been nailed down. There is
going to be a Service Pack 3 (of Windows XP). That's not a surprise. How that
relates to (IE 7's release), we haven't figured out yet."

IE will need an update to handle "Avalon", so it makes sense to release this new version at the same time, or perhaps slightly ahead of the pre-"Longhorn" XP release (which will no doubt form the bulk of XP sp3). It all seems a little bit vague, as if MS are on the backfoot with IE - they had a long-term plan to update IE at some point on "Longhorn" (which is why they dismantled the IE team and put them all on the "Avalon" team), but now the success of Firefox, and the constant niggling security and web standards compatibility issues nibbling away at the IE market share has forced them to think again. Can they pull this off?

Meanwhile, Firefox downloads reach the 25 million mark.