IE7 is coming early, but...
Microsoft has publicly commited to releasing Internet Explorer 7 this year. Most of the hype so far has been around security and privacy with very little discussion about other new features. Perhaps that is the right move for now since security and privacy concerns with IE are top reasons that many experts and pundits have advised people to switch to Firefox. But beyond security and privacy there are several years of feature innovation for IE to catch up on:
I see a lot of hope in the blogosphere about tabbed browsing, which would be great - although you can already get browsers such as Avant that wrap the IE browser control in a tabbed interface.
A better model for browser extensions would be nice. I am a big Firefox fan, and one of the things I really like is the selection of extensions available. I usually have a few extensions installed and have considered writing my own a couple of times (though it's a pill I've yet to swallow - I have a long to-do list these days). The ieview plugin is a top pick: simple yet very practical for Internet developers. The ability to write managed extensions for IE would be superb!
My biggest concern with yet another version of IE is the union of new quirks with old quirks for the sake of backward behavior compatibility (for example, some people will want the new IE to act like previous versions of IE when it encounters markup that is invalid). It's a classic problem in which developers or end users rely on an idiosyncratic feature, buggy behavior, or an undocumented "feature" to accomplish something. And when a problem arises in a future browser versions, people cry foul.
I believe we are fast approaching a time when as an industry we will acknowledge that we've stretched HTML much too far and start coordinating on a better solution for thin clients. I have some thoughts on this already that I think are mostly practical with just a tiny bit of wishful thinking. I will try to get those ideas blogged this week.