According to this entry on MSBLOG, Microsoft plans to release further versions of Internet Explorer on an annual base. And although I have my concerns, I do like the plan.

No, I don’t use Internet Explorer, and neither I will in the future – after all, it will never be available natively for Linux. But up to now, it is the de facto standard browser for surfing the web, so developers have to ensure that their designs need to display correct at least in this browser, which is not that easy as one might think. In fact, all version of Internet Explorer up to version 6 have major problems when it comes to web standards like CSS. Unfortunately, in his five years of existence, Microsoft never updated the rendering engine of their latest browser.

Finally, IE7 made a step in the right direction with a proper implementation of CSS 2, as far as I can see. And after all, it’s Microsofts Browser who dictates what’s possible and whats not. When it comes to CSS 3, which will have some great features, the IE7 has no knowledge about it at all – although I have to admit, that Firefox’ and Operas support is also more rudimentary right now. With annual versions of Internet Explorer, there’s a slight hope that CSS3 can be used in a productive way yet in this decade.

So, it’s up to Microsoft. I hope that they do not made this announcement as a lame excuse to cover another patch under the hood of a new version. I hope that those new versions which they have in mind will also cover new features and do not stick only to fixing security related bugs. The Internet Explorer is the standard browser in the world wide web, and it will be for a long long time – so it will better be good.