Somewhat ironically, I'm probably the last person in the blogosphere to report that Internet Explorer 7 is finally done and available! Whew. (You can get it here.)

It always feels good to release a new product (I've shipped dozens of products at Microsoft starting with Golf 1.0 for Windows), but I'm especially proud of this one. We rebuilt the team from almost nothing, listened and learned, and worked our asses off for the past few years. It was an exciting ride full of ups and downs all the way to the end. It's not perfect of course, but I think it's pretty darn good. I'm lucky to work with an amazingly dedicated and talented group of people who made it happen. I was struck by how many people from around the company contributed to the product as I was writing the "we're done" mail. It was truly a monumental effort. (No, I won't say how many people worked on IE, so don't ask.)

After we went live on the web yesterday at 5:00pm, we had champagne, blew air horns in the building (an old, lost tradition that I think may have annoyed the other team in our building - oh well), and then went out for more drinks and pool later at The Garage. (Before we left the office, Alex, one of our developers, shared a lovely limited edition cask-strength single malt - Caol Ila. Wow.) We also did a little sidewalk chalking around Microsoft campus to mark the occasion.

Today, we had a slightly bigger party with everyone who helped with IE7. We had the requisite toasts by Dean (our General Manager) and Steven (our Senior VP), had some more champage, and then started throwing people into the fountain, starting with Dean (another old tradition). Of course, I wound up in the fountain as well. It's not as deep as one might think, resulting in a banged up elbow that bled nicely for a while (unfortunately, another old tradition). Fortunately, Jim, another one of our developers brought a nice 18-yo Caol Ila (quite by coincidence), which took the edge off the pain...

This was a big milestone for us. We still have lots of localized versions to ship plus that little Windows Vista thing to finish up. Plus, we've already started work on our next two versions. But, today (and yesterday) it was fun to savor the moment.

So, don't delay - go get it now!