Much to my dismay, I had to install IE7 on my laptop. This is so that I can see what the websites I am designing look like in it. Already I have been told of a problem on a site I recently finished. Not surprising really. With all the tricks we designers have to do to get IE6 & below to work properly, I'm sure there will be more sites breaking around the world.

The good news is that IE7 does actually fix some previous IE problems. Sure, there are the usual security patches (guaranteed to be more though) and CSS display fixes, but the one I'm really happy with is the fact that IE7 now displays PNG files properly. For the uninitiated, PNG is a graphic format like JPG and GIF. However, it is much more sophisticated as it can be transparent (either fully or partially). So now, the shadows you see on the edges of the white page here, can be created as a PNG, and no matter what the background is, the shadow will simply darken it. (At the moment, the shadows are part of the background).

So, the big question: Is IE7 better than Firefox? Personally, I don't think so. There are lots of nice features in IE now, but Firefox already had those a while back. And lets not even start on all the security holes in IE! IE7 is bound to continue the tradition of having monthly security patches.

The final word: get Firefox! IE7 is nice, but Firefox is better.