 |
• June 5, 2003 •
There has been some commotion on the Internet regarding comments made by Microsoft's Brian Countryman, Program Manager in Internet Explorer in a chat posted on the Microsoft TechNet Web site.
When asked about the next version of Internet Explorer, Brian said: "As part of the OS, IE will continue to evolve, but there will be no future standalone installations. IE6 SP1 is the final standalone installation."
Asked why there wouldn't be a further standalone version, he said: "Legacy OSes have reached their zenith with the addition of IE 6 SP1. Further improvements to IE will require enhancements to the underlying OS."
This last part is stretching to say the least. There could be quite a number of enhancements made to Internet Explorer which do not require changes to the underlying OS, but since Microsoft managed to win the "browser war" with Netscape, there's no competition to keep it on its (development) toes... sad.
