IE7, a ew hope, but not for long.
Internet Explorer 7 was officially released by Microsoft yesterday. Expectations are that within a month it will begin arriving on your desktop PC through the regular Windows Update. The much lauded update from Microsoft is expected to have much greater support for CSS. Already, however, reports are coming in that IE7 is breaking existing web page layouts. Some also reported problems with 3rd party software not working with the beta — specifically HP Director for HP Scanners. No word on whether these problems have been fixed.
However, Secunia reports on a major security issue with IE7 that also affects IE6. Specifically, failing the test means that your online financial information may be harvested by unscrupulous individuals. Here is the failure message I received using IE6:
Your browser is vulnerable! The test retrieved content from news.google.com in the context of your browser.
This actually means that if you were logged into your bank account, any web site you are visiting would be able to retrieve confidential data from your bank. This could also be used to retrieve personal settings entered on sites like eBay or Paypal.
The solution for both IE6 and IE7 is to disable active scripting support. This, of course, means less browser functionality.
Firefox passed the test with flying colors. Have you tried Firefox yet?