I spotted an interested article linked from zlog about the future of Internet Explorer.

Q: when / will there be the next version of IE?
A: 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.

Go read the article in full.

What on earth are Microsoft trying to do? I can’t work out their strategy. They obviously are trying to force people into revenue-generating upgrades, but at the same time are trying to ram their new technologies down everyone’s throat and forcing adoption. Knowing the reality of OS upgrades as they must (in that people often simply cannot be forced to upgrade easily due to a long list of possible factors) surely their two goals are at loggerheads?

It’s easy to get people to update their browser to a version of IE that supports the latest twist in Microsoft’s evil plan, but you just can’t force people to upgrade their OS – they just won’t do it.

So to continue using Windows 2000 (a reasonably good OS) into the future and still be able to access web sites using up-to-date technologies, the ordinary man in the street basically has to switch browsers.

I don’t get it.