Well, it’s finally been announced. IE7 is to be distributed via Automatic Updates!

This is good news for us web developers. IE 7 has better web standards support and the Automatic Update will mean that its adoption will be rapid.

However…

A majority of sites on the web have been built to look good in buggy IE6. So there’s a possibility of pages breaking in the new browser simply because it has ironed out the bugs and is implementing things correctly. This mostly applies to pages using the stricter DOCTYPES; IE7 will still drop into quirks mode for pages without DOCTYPES and so for these pages there should be little if no difference.

In a discussion at @atmedia2006 in June, Chris Wilson (IE7 project lead) explained that it’s highly unlikely there’ll be any changes/fixes to the new browser rendering engine between the beta and the final release. He said we can confidently assume that if our pages work in IE7 beta they will work in the final release.

So, if you’re not already doing so, please grab a copy of IE7 beta and test all new pages before releasing. You’ll still need to test in IE6 of course, and you’ll need to run a second machine for this because you can’t have multiple versions of Internet Explorer on the same machine (Chris says they’re working on it!). Alternatively, get yourself a BrowserCam account for online testing.

If you’re still not convinced, Chris also hinted heavily that IE7s initially release will be this late summer, (although the auto update is planned for 4th quarter) so it’s release is potentially only weeks away.