In his keynote address, Gates said: "We have a dialogue to make sure that we're understanding exactly what people would like to have us do in Internet Explorer, and what we've decided to do is a new version of Internet Explorer."
The beta version of IE 7 should be available by September 2005 if everything goes according to plan.
Gates was rather coy about the new offering but he claimed IE 7 will add a new level of security, including features to combat phishing and malware (malicious software).
When Internet Explorer 6 was finally released in August 2001 -- after about nine months in beta --an image toolbar to save, e-mail and print photos, and a media toolbar to play music and videos were among the key improvements.
Although numerous patches for IE 6 have been released over the years, the focus has squarely been on security sans usability enhancements. Features such as tabbed browsing -- well-received in Netscape Navigator 7 and Mozillla Firefox -- has so far eluded Internet Explorer users.
Firefox is widely regarded as an "Achilles heel" of sorts for Internet Explorer. Despite Microsoft's efforts to ignore its popularity, it seems the open-source browser has sent shivers down a few spines at Redmond.
From the little Gates revealed, we know the new browser will only work on Windows XP with Service Pack 2, and the next version of Windows dubbed Longhorn. IE 7 is not backward compatible and will not work on other Microsoft operating environments such as Windows 2000.
At the moment, there isn't much meat to chew on and I wonder what exactly Gates meant by the word "new"?
Is version 7 just another security patch disguised as a "new" offering? Should it rightfully be called IE 6.1 for Windows XP Service Pack 2?
In a recent advisory, Neil MacDonald, research director at Gartner, was extremely critical of Microsoft's security plans. "The decision to restrict IE 7 to the XP platform suggests that Microsoft wants users of older platforms to upgrade if they want improved security," he said.
Instead of making evolutionary security improvements to IE, MacDonald hopes the company will "fundamentally re-architect IE with security in mind."
But that's easier said than done. Rip and replace is not the name of the game. The problem is there's too much legacy code in the engine that drives IE 6.
From a monetary perspective, Microsoft doesn't make a single cent from Internet Explorer so the development team for the browser will continue to struggle for resources against its commercially-viable siblings like Office, SQL Server, Windows Server and others.
For now, Microsoft is quite reticent about IE 7 but users have been told they can expect great things from the browser.
Mike Nash, a corporate vice president at Microsoft, wouldn't reveal much either but made this bold promise: "Internet Explorer 7.0 will be the most secure browser we've ever released, building on and surpassing the success of the SP2-enhanced Internet Explorer 6.0.
"We don't plan to ship it until it meets our quality bar, which we've set pretty high."
We'll hold you to your word, Mr Nash.
"Internet Explorer 7.0 will be the most secure browser we’ve ever released." That's not saying much, is it?