A post on the IEBlog informs of the increasing rate of adoption of Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7. As the browser has reached its Release Candidate 1 stage, and in the context of the market dominant-position of the prior versions of the product, websites rush to resolve compatibility issues and to deliver seamless integration with IE 7. Market Share has reported that, in August, Microsoft's Internet Explorer market share was 83.02%, while the alternative represented by Firefox has reached out only to 11.84% of consumers. "Over the last eighteen months, most sites that had previously blocked the new version of Internet Explorer have been updated, and we're happy to report that the vast majority of Internet sites are now accessible using IE7," stated the Microsoft blog.

The sites that are still not offering support for Internet Explorer 7 are doing so due to issues related to the implementation of exact string matches to identify specific IE version strings. According to Microsoft, their number is continually decreasing. The Redmond Company even suggested that the problem-checks will either have to be removed or adapted to Internet Explorer 7. To ensure IE 7 accommodation, Microsoft is providing the user-agent headers sent by IE 7.

On Windows XP SP2, IE7 will send the following User-Agent header: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1)
On Windows 2003 Server, IE7 will send the following User-Agent header: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.2)
On Windows Vista, IE7 will send the following User-Agent header: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0)

"To enable you to workaround any remaining sites that block access to Internet Explorer 7, we developed the User Agent String Utility. The utility comes in the form of a small executable that opens an IE7 instance that sends the IE6 user agent string. It also provides a mechanism for you to report problem web sites to Microsoft so that we can follow up with the affected site owners," stated Microsoft.