Microsoft News Tracker

Microsoft has ended its brief experiment with naming the version of Internet Explorer for Windows Vista as “Internet Explorer 7+”. I dislike product names with non-alphanumeric characters too, but you have to be careful what you wish for since as I originally observed:

Last but not least, Microsoft has officially dubbed Vista’s version of Internet Explorer as Internet Explorer 7+. Since Microsoft famously considers Internet Explorer as part of the operating system, the separate version should be no surprise, but previously the nomenclature would have been something exceedingly tedious like “Internet Explorer 7 for Windows Vista.”

So what’s the new name? Microsoft’s Tony Chor explains at the IEBlog:

Specifically, here are the official full names:
- For Windows XP: “Windows Internet Explorer 7 for Windows XP”
- For Windows Vista: “Windows Internet Explorer 7 in Windows Vista”

Even I didn’t realize the full magnitude of the horror! Of course, the official name is rarely used, but the key thing is that setting aside antitrust hangover claims that IE is part of the OS, there truly are differences between the IE7 versions on different operating systems as Chor illustrates.