Working together for standards The Web Standards Project

Over on IEBlog, group program manager Tony Chor is lifts the kimono on the changes made to Internet Explorer in Windows XP Service Pack 2.

While the update isn’t available for other Windows versions, and it doesn’t offer any improvements to IE’s standards support, the security enhancements made to IE in this update are highly worthwhile for users. They also may cause problems for some site developers, so it’s worth your while to brush up on what’s new.

The web has been buzzing of late with rumors that an interim update to IE was in the works — something to tide users over until Longhorn. Well, this is it folks. The rumors of niceties like a download manager and a pop-up blocker all come to fruition in SP2. I don’t know if Microsoft will release another upate or not, but the smart money says this is the last hurrah before the next bet-the-company Windows release in 2005 or 2006.

UPDATE: This CNET aritcle includes confirmation from Microsoft that IE won’t get a ‘real’ update until Longhorn:

“At this time, there are no plans to release a new, stand-alone version of IE,” a Microsoft spokesman said. “The current plan is to make new IE features available with major Windows releases…Aligning IE updates more closely with Windows releases benefits customers by minimizing the number of updates to deploy and service.”

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