Ready for Internet Explorer 7?

Word on the street is that IE7 will be released before the end of this year. Although "released" may not be the best description. More like it will be pushed from its cage into the wild.

Remember when Windows Service Pack 2 was automatically downloaded and installed if you had Windows Updates turned on and set to do just that? I hear that's what's going to happen with the new browser release.

I also hear that Redmond has done some good things, or has tried anyway, with IE7. Tabbed browsing like FireFox, security fixes, and most importantly to web designers and developers, support for CSS2.

That should make web engineers everywhere happy, right? Well...we'll see. It will depend on how prepared they are when the day comes that the auto updates are installed. Since we all have to work around IE6 now, our scripts and CSS are going to be a little funky in IE7. How funky? Personally I don't know yet.

My laptop gets out of the shop on Monday, and I'll install IE7 on that machine, NOT my main box. Then I'll start looking at my client's sites to see if they stand up. I'm betting there'll be some work to do on several of them.

Question is: How will my clients take being billed to fix their site because of Microsoft's new "release"? and How are we supposed to make our CSS etc. work for both the new version as well as the machines that don't have 7 installed?