Currently it only supports Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari on Windows, but as it is being actively developed more features and additional browsers will be added in the future.

While I applaud MS’ decision to release these disk images, I’d have preferred it if I could keep IE6 installed and have a disk image with IE7…:) I’ll probably wait for another couple of releases before I install it anywhere important — MS has always needed a couple of tries before getting things right.

MS’s arrogance in still trying to ride rough shot over every ‘web experience’ with their own half-baked idea of standards implementation, is what really chaps my buttocks.

Look at the up-coming implementation of High Assurance SSL (or ESSL – Extended SSL as it’s now called) to see what I mean. CSS, JS…all of these things are examples of MS trying to force their own view and handling of ‘the web’.

I would say that if you can – install IE7 on another machine. Preferably something you don’t really use for much else.

In reality, if you code correctly and test on Firefox and IE6, 99.9% of the time IE7 will be fine as well. THAT SAID, IE7 has a somewhat unique handling of older Javascript – which has currently rendered one of the menu’s in an application here, completely un-usable.

While it’s fine for most purposes, like testing layout, there are limitations (aside from slightly iffy stability): for example, I had problems when it came to testing security settings. I assume it’s because IE is tightly coupled to Windows itself, and so changes made by one version might ‘spill over’ into another.