Some months ago Micro$oft reported that it had ended development of its 'Internet Explorer' website browser as a standalone product. Now the software giant has appointed a new project leader to IE, could this mean a return?:

Some analysts believe the appointment means that the much criticised browser will get a polish before Longhorn is released and IE's importance begins to fade.

Dave Massy, a technical evangelist at Microsoft, worked on the early development of IE but moved to the Longhorn team a few years ago -- around the same time the company won the war against Netscape and appeared to lose interest in dramatically changing its browser. On Massy's Web log on Monday he claimed the move "isn't big news" but confirmed he would be working on providing the development team with requests from customers.

Microsoft has decided to improve IE because the company wants to protect its virtual monopoly of the browser market, according to Stephen O'Grady, senior analyst at Redmonk.

There's certainly no hiding the fact that IE has been steadily losing ground to rivals, such as Opera and the free (open-source) Mozilla project. While their code expands and gets faster, IE has remained stagnant.

IE's biggest flaws still remain its comparatively slow rendering speed and security. These are two places that any future development should concentrate on most of all. More @ ZDNet.