Microsoft now pushing IE7 to all XP users

Good news for web developers!

Microsoft is now pushing IE7 to all Windows XP users as a high-priority, automatically-delivered (if Automatic Update in Windows XP is on) update. Strangely, they say, "Distribution of Internet Explorer 7 by Automatic Updates will take several months to complete." I am not quite sure what that even means.

More information is available from Microsoft. Previously, you needed to go through the often-rocky Windows Validation program, or whatever, to upgrade to IE7. (Microsoft's site says that "all Windows users" can now upgrade, but in fact they only mean Windows XP SP2 and Server 2003 users. XP SP1, 98, 2000, and Me are still left out in the cold.)

This is important to me because if this move cuts deep enough into MSIE 6's market share (50% currently), we will not have to design our websites for IE 6, the lowest common denominator (and dominator) in the browser world. Hello, real CSS and PNG! (The timing is odd because just last weekend, I wrote a project to turn PNGs into transparency-dithered GIFs using only server-side code. No JavaScript, and it works for CSS backgrounds.)