Internet Explorer is not the greatest web browser in the world. That’s not news.

What is news is that IE7 (in beta right now and due before year’s end) really is going a long way toward fixing IE’s legendary and historically broken CSS implementation.

The IE developers’ blog explains a lot of what has changed in IE7, and it makes me happy. This isn’t just a case of Microsoft paying lip service to a bunch of cranky bloggers. These changes are real! I’ve installed the beta and the difference between it and older versions of Internet Explorer is basically unbelievable.

For the first time…ever…Internet Explorer isn’t ignoring web standards. Pages that render properly in Firefox require little or no alteration at all to work in IE7.

As someone who has to work with xhtml and css on a regular basis, this is incredible. There’s no way I’ll switch away from Firefox, but man this will help a lot when it comes time to test across browsers.