Is Microsoft moving forward or back? I'm a little late on this one. Microsoft announced that they're going to release a new version of IE separate from the next Windows service pack. Or as the next Windows service pack. Or something like that. Which is a Good Thing. They've let IE run fallow the last couple of years, until Firefox gave them reason to reconsider. While I think that the Microsofties can be a bit much at times, when they really try to innovate, they usually do a pretty good job at it (see Internet Explorer 4.0, Excel, and Entourage for examples). So we should all be happy, right? Well, no. Because for every step that Microsoft takes towards the light, they find a parallel path that still leads to darkness. In this case, Microsoft is being very coy regarding whether IE 7 will address its poor support for a number of Web standards and whether they're going to make it available to the roughly 50% of Windows users who haven't switched to XP. So is this really an attempt by Microsoft to improve their product and compete in the marketplace, or is it an attempt to get people to buy more copies of Windows? I try to keep an open mind, but history isn't just a fancy name for where your browser's been. It's also something Microsoft needs to live down.  ¶ 9:21 PM