While Internet Explorer 7 is on it’s last beta release before RC status, the first public beta of Firefox 2.0 is available for testing.

Internet Explorer Developments

Internet Explorer 7 Beta 3 is the last beta release before two release candidates leading up a planned release later this year. While IE7 will only be available on Windows XP SP2+, Server 2003 SP1+, and the upcoming Vista OS, it will be a released as a priority update. There should be a significant adoption rate on XP boxes as it automagically installs itself via windows update on most machines.

Beta 3 shows some further rendering improvements as well as some UI fixes, but the program still features its rather non-standard menu bars, which could be confusing to users who aren’t expecting their browser to be updated.

The Readyness Toolkit could also be of interest to web developers (WaSP article on it here). This browser is going to be making a rather large footprint when it comes out and is nearly finalized rendering wise so…

There is also an Internet Explorer Administration Kit 7 Beta 3 for download.

Firefox 2.0 Beta

The 2.0 beta release shows that the update to Firefox isn’t going to be as earthshattering as Internet Explorer’s, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Most sites won’t have to be recoded, old hacks won’t have to be re-evaluated, and many of the technical additions are cutting edge enough to not be universally applicable.

This entry in the Mozilla Developer Center shows what’s new for both developers and end-users. Inline spell checking be appreciated, and safariesque close buttons on every tab are well overdue (though available through extensions for quite some time now).

It seems robust enough to be used as an everyday browser, if still too early in the cycle to truly test on. The lack of support for many extensions may provide a solid reason to keep this on a backup profile or merely wait it out.