For all of you out there in the land of web development, here’s a reminder that Internet Explorer launches this month as a high priority auto-update. While the end result of the IE7 launch will be a far more developer-friendly Microsoft browser, the initial launch will no doubt be a turbulent time for the web, as many of the proprietary hacks and work-arounds employed to mend IE6’s various defects seem to cause new and annoying issues in IE7.

So dear developers, it is indeed time for us to hang up the venerable * html and Tantek Çelik Hacks, in favor of Microsoft’s sloppy yet useful conditional comments. I sort of feel like this is the end of an era. But then i realize it’s going to be a long time until we can safely leave out support for IE6 all together. A long time indeed.