Microsoft refreshes, broadens IE 7 beta

Microsoft said Internet Explorer 7 is available in its second beta version. IE 7 has many features made popular first by Opera and then by Firefox, such as tabbed browsing and plug-ins. Uniquely, there will be free telephone support, officials said. The plug-ins site is not yet running and there have been reports of rendering glitches, but IE 7 is said to have far better security than the current IE 6.x browsers--the lack of security is what led to Firefox's popularity in the first place. So brace yourself for another round of battles in the browser war.

For more on IE's future:
- read this Microsoft Watch article

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