Support for the five-year-old Internet Explorer 6 browser won’t vanish overnight when the new IE 7 debuts later this year, Microsoft assured users on Thursday.

Security updates for the older IE will continue to be produced and released, said Christopher Vaughan, a lead program manager for the browser team, in a blog entry.

“IE 6 SP1’s [Service Pack 1] support policy will not change when IE 7 ships. Everywhere that IE 6 SP1 is supported today, IE 6 SP1 will continue to be supported until the OS it ships with expires,” wrote Vaughan. “If you’re running IE 6 for Windows XP Service Pack 2, you can stay with that version of IE for as long as Windows XP SP2 is around.”

Source: InformationWeek