Those of you who have resisted all advice to switch to Firefox, and insisted on staying with a Microsoft product (which typically means security issues and either feature gloat- or in IE’s example- features missing)- your day has come:
IEBlog : Internet Explorer 7 for Windows XP Available Now
Internet Explorer 7 for Windows XP Available Now

Today we released Internet Explorer 7 for Windows XP. I encourage everyone to download the final version from http://www.microsoft.com/ie.

We listened carefully to feedback from many sources (including this blog) and worked hard to deliver a safer browser that makes everyday tasks easier. When I first posted publicly about IE7, I wrote that we would go further to defend users from phishing and malicious software. The Phishing Filter and the architectural work in IE7 around networking and ActiveX opt-in will help keep users more secure. IE7 also delivers a much easier browsing experience with features like tabbed browsing (especially with QuickTabs), shrink-to-fit printing, an easily customizable search box, and a new design that leaves more screen real estate for the web site you’re viewing. IE7’s CSS improvements are incredibly important for developers as many of you have made quite clear. I also think IE7’s RSS experience and platform are important, powerful, and innovative.

In addition to our release of IE7, Yahoo! has a customized version of the browser available today and over the next few days partners such as Weather.com and USA TODAY will offer their own customized versions. These versions will tailor the user experience with specific toolbars, additional search engines, favorites, and RSS feeds.

I want to thank everyone who provided feedback as we developed and fine-tuned Internet Explorer 7. Over the 20 months since Bill Gates first announced our commitment to deliver IE7, we released five betas and a release candidate to millions of users worldwide. With each release, your feedback helped us make IE7 better. Your contributions, ideas, and direct comments were crucial in helping us prioritize and focus our work. I can’t imagine delivering this product without the tremendous cooperation we enjoyed from so many of you as well as developers and partners.

That said, we’re not done. Even as we put the finishing touches on Windows Vista and release all the remaining language versions of IE7, we have already started work on the next versions of Internet Explorer. We’ll post more here soon about our plans for the product and our plans for listening to you.

Thanks,

Dean Hachamovitch
General Manager

I find it interesting that there are “Branded versions” of the browser available- instead of allowing the user to customize the experience for themselves- through skins, themes, plug-ins and extensions- you can get a “custom version” from Yahoo or USA Today. Interesting new twist that will need further investigation.

In the mean time- please start downloading away- so you can learn the joys of tabbed browsing and RSS.

The boilerplate warns that it still needs work. I tired to click to the plugin page of about 5 different plugins to end up with a 404 error. However, it’s an interesting use of AJAX and yet another place to find ways to pimp your installation of WordPress.
WordPress Plugin Database

Welcome to version 2.0 of wp-plugins.net. Lots of testing and improving still needed, but slowly getting there… As such, no point contacting us with bug reports for now (chances are, we may be working on them already), but any sort of patch and code contributions are always warmly welcome, of course.

If you’ve ever wondered where the little tidbits in the gray boxes at the bottom of your dashboard come from- you should read this post by Owen “RedAlt” Winkler- which explains it.
» Planet WordPress and the Dashboard Feeds

Planet WordPress is a site that aggregates feeds from a number of users who have contributed to the WordPress Open Source project, or who provide good sources of information on WordPress, its themes, or its plugins. Planet WordPress produces a feed that is displayed in the Dashboard of most WordPress installations.

While I can’t say I read all the feeds on it- very often I get some good leads on new cool WordPress functions, plugins, themes etc. there.

I’ve guessed that it could become a paid advertising channel in future releases of WordPress, to help fund WordPress.com and pay the people who put in the many hours to keep WordPress great. It’s an interesting concept- and could give Google Ad Sense a run for their money.