Nevertheless, despite Microsoft’s current pain, the software heavyweight remains Firefox’ greatest long-term threat. The company is rapidly trying to fill in the holes in its browser offering to limit the intrusion of Firefox and other rivals.
The next version of IE — due within the next few months — is reportedly expected to include tabbed browsing (the most-lauded feature of Firefox among the ZDNet Australia editorial team), support for Internationalised Domain names, improved support for Cascading Style Sheets and Portable Network Graphics transparencies. It is also likely to include a built-in news aggregator based on Really Simple Syndication (RSS).