I am concerned about the high cost of EW7 upgrade. Recently upgraded to EW6, and 7, based on the release notes, seems like an incremental release with not a lot of new or high value features to justify $250 for existing users who have already purchased the product multiple times over the years. Will bug fixes cease for EW6?

Is there a compelling reason to purchase this release, or will EW8 be more feature rich to justify an upgrade? If I skip EW7, will I be forced to pay full price for the next version?

I love the program and use it weekly, but the highest value feature for me (LOL) would be the return of the one-click total-song background selection. With EW6, changing background for all slides of a song requires multiple clicks and menus (i.e. "Edit Song > Slides tab > Ctrl-A > Inspector > Background menu > Select Media > OK > OK.") Will this process ever be simplified again? I would pay $250 easily for the return of a feature that will shave multiple minutes off of my prep time, week over week.

I also would like to see the browser upgraded to Chrome, or at least something supported by the vendor. But I won't pretend to understand the complexity required to integrate a new browser.

Please see our What's New Page for all the features that we have added to 7.
https://www.easyworship.com/software/whatsnew
I also recommend going to subscription so you can get other new features as they are released instead of having to wait for the next major version release.

With EW6, changing background for all slides of a song requires multiple clicks and menus (i.e. "Edit Song > Slides tab > Ctrl-A > Inspector > Background menu > Select Media > OK > OK.") Will this process ever be simplified again? I would pay $250 easily for the return of a feature that will shave multiple minutes off of my prep time, week over week.

There are other ways to change the background for all slides in a song.
You can drag a video, or image from the resource area onto a song in the schedule.
You can drag a theme onto a song in the schedule.
You can also edit a song, click the theme drop down and select a theme just like you selected a background in previous versions.

I also would like to see the browser upgraded to Chrome, or at least something supported by the vendor. But I won't pretend to understand the complexity required to integrate a new browser

We are using the web browser component provided by Windows. At this time Windows is using IE 11 for this component.