Internet Explorer 7 Release Candidate 1 available

A new version of Microsoft's upcoming Internet Explorer is available for all users. This time it is the release candidate 1 of Microsoft's upcoming browser. Downloads are available for Windows XP service pack 2, Windows Server 2003 service pack 1 and Windows x64 editions. A previous version of Internet Explorer 7 will automatically be uninstalled prior to the installation of the new release candidate 1 version.

If you want to manually uninstall a previous version of Internet Explorer go to the Add or Remove Programs option of the control panel and scroll down until you find a Internet Explorer 7 entry there.

Check out the release notes for further instructions, they help you when you cannot uninstall Internet Explorer 7 from the control panel among other things. Lots of changes have been introduced in the new version, all of them are listed in the release notes.

Update: Internet Explorer 7, while still available on some machines running Windows, is not really supported anymore by Microsoft. Windows XP users for instance who install the third service pack - which they should for security and compatibility reasons - will end up with Internet Explorer 8. The same is true for Windows Vista users, who may also upgrade their operating system to Internet Explorer 9, the current release version of the browser which unfortunately is not available for Windows XP.

Microsoft furthermore is currently working on Internet Explorer 10 which it plans to ship with its upcoming operating system Windows 8. While not officially confirmed, it is assumed that Windows 7 users will also get an opportunity to upgrade their version of Internet Explorer to version 10. It is certain however that neither XP nor Vista users will be able to upgrade their system browser's to that version.

All current versions of the Internet browser can be downloaded from the official Microsoft website where they are available for all supported operating systems and languages.

Update 2: The link pointing to the release notes has been removed as the page is no longer available over at the Microsoft website.