Internet Explorer 7 not quite enterprise ready

Back in October, I downloaded IE7 within hours of its public release. Some of our in-house custom web-apps are optimized for Internet Explorer and I had grown sick of using IE6, a browser that, to a Firefox and Safari user like me, seemed stuck in the stone age. As excited as I was for the upgrade however, I can't say that it went off without a hitch. Plug-ins stopped working. Things didn't display correctly. The web-apps (that I had downloaded IE7 for in the first place) were missing functionality.

Now this kind of experience is not unusual for a major browser upgrade--especially one from a company that has historically been reticent to adhere to standards. Most of us think of these kinds of inconveniences as the price that early adopters pay. Want the latest tech? Well, you're going to have to put up with a few bugs. You're pretty tech savvy anyway, so you can probably iron out some of those yourself--with a little work. But would you want to deploy a new browser to your end-users? My thought is "no," at least, not unless you enjoy seeing a crowd of angry users making a beeline for your cubicle to complain about how this, that and the other thing doesn't work anymore. A recent column in ComputerWorld lists a few reasons why IE7 may not be quite ready for the enterprise yet and offers up a few tips for folks who may want to uninstall it.

For more IE7 woes:
- see this ComputerWorld article