IE and Firefox to square off this summer

Browser giants boast of new features

A testing version of Internet Explorer 7.0 has leaked out onto the web, prompting speculation that a public beta release originally planned for summer could be brought forward. Meanwhile, planned features for the next version of fast-growing rival Firefox, scheduled for a full release this summer, have been listed.

Some specialist sites last week posted images of the second beta version of IE 7.0 and links to download the code.

Reviews of the code said that the latest version has a simpler way to add RSS feeds to Favourites folders and thumbnail views of open windows. Earlier this month, Microsoft’s own IE developer blog said that a ‘Delete Browsing History’ feature would let users flush all related activity to searches – temporary internet files, cookies and history -- in one click.

Earlier this month, internet ratings analyst XiTi said use of rival browser Firefox had passed 20 percent in Europe and 11 percent in the UK, although those figures were skewed towards consumer usage because the snapshot data was taken on a Sunday.

An 18 January blog posting at Mozilla.org, which governs Firefox development, lists features for version 2, due in the middle of this year. The features are aimed at providing “significant user experience enhancements” including improvements to bookmarking, tabbed browsing, search and RSS handling. Inline spelling checking is also billed for the upgrade but no changes to current APIs are planned.