Microsoft stirred up developers across the Web yesterday by announcing that it would release Internet Explorer 7 for Windows XP, with beta versions becoming available by the middle of this year. A close look at the announcement, however, suggests little or no work will be done on the rendering engine, the bane of Web designers everywhere.

Solid information about just what will be in IE7 is hard to come by. My gut feeling is that the people who will be building IE7 got the news around the same time we did, and they're still scrambling to define just what they can do in the time available.

The one thing we can be sure of at this stage is that Microsoft will market IE7 as a more secure browser, in the same vein as the Windows XP SP2 update. The intention seems to be to stem the flow of users to alternatives like Mozilla Firefox.

The question on the minds of Web designers everywhere: will Microsoft sneak in any improvements to the way the browser displays Web pages at the same time? At this stage, there is nothing to suggest they will, but we can always hope!