Microsoft today publicly announced that the availability of an updated Internet Explorer 7 beta will not be until Q1 2006. In real terms this means that the next IE7 beta for Windows XP isn’t likely to ship until January/Feb. An educated guess may place Microsoft revealing WMP11 Beta for Windows XP and the next IE7 beta at CES 2006 which is due to commence on January 5th in Las Vegas. Microsoft’s Bill Gates is expected to open the keynote and attendees will be hoping that both IE7 and WMP11 will feature heavily alongside Microsoft’s vision for consumer devices in the coming years.
In Microsoft’s announcement the company has not made it clear whether this will be a pre-beta 2 release of IE7 or the much anticipated beta 2. Q1 of 2006 does co-incide with previous plans that the company is planning to release Windows Vista Beta 2 around this time.
Dean Hachamovitch (head of Internet Explorer at Microsoft) posted a blog entry to the Microsoft IE Team Blog today, “We want to make sure that everyone has an opportunity to try a pre-release version of IE7 and tell us how it works with their web sites, their applications, their add-ons, and how they use the web overall.”