IE7 has Tabs

A lot is riding on the new Internet Explorer 7, due Summer ‘05. Web webgeeks are clamoring for better standards support, improved rendering and more. On May 16, webgeeks weezed a collective sigh of relief as the IE7 developers announced IE7 will, in fact, have Tabbed Browsing support.

This seemingly mundane feature has been available in other web browsers for some time now, but the adoption of the technology will make it a standard to the 89% of the market still using IE. This coupled with other highly requested features, including a RSS reader, will help bring several popular web technologies to the masses.

RSS/XML is going to enjoy even wider adoption. They’ll be found on all of the sites you frequent – not just the blogs and news sites you visit often.

Better support for PNGs will mean improved graphic quality without compromising site load speed. They’ll also mean better alpha channel support (GIFs just don’t cut it anymore). Better support for web standards will mean improved and more consistent page rendering. Most of these things are going to be seemless to basic users, but they are going to make a huge difference for developers and designers alike.

It’s still early, but there’s a lot of hope that IE7 will be a browser worth using. I hope the developers really listen to all of the feedback they’ve been getting and deliver a product worth upgrading to.