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Improved design to make everyday tasks easier and faster, with better navigation through tabbed browsing; inline search right from the toolbar; shrink-to-fit Web page printing; and a streamlined, redesigned user interface (currently in its early stages in Beta 1).
And they REALLY like RSS feeds according to their next improvement.
New tools to take you directly to the information you want through support for Web feeds (RSS) that includes automatic discovery of web feeds (RSS) on Web pages, basic Web Feed (RSS) reading capabilities, and basic support for saving Web feeds (RSS) as a new kind of favorite.
Anybody want to share their MSDN subscription? ;)
I'm a web developer, so naturally I have all kinds of browsers installed for testing purposes. Everything from NN2 to Opera to FF... still I use IE 99.9% of the time.
Personally, I think FireFox is the worst of them all. I think the UI is a disaster. Little things like having to click three times in the address bar to be able to delete a portion of a URL is ludicrous.
Again, being a developer, I wish IE would follow standards better, but until they do, I'll still be developing mainly for IE and tweaking for others. When 90% of the population uses one product, who am I to argue?
Of course, details like that are technically off-topic for this discussion, but it does highlight an interesting point. While Firefox is the tool of choice for developers these days, we all know that most people use IE because that's what came with their computer. They're familiar with it and therefore resist change, just like I did when I first learned other browsers were available. But now that the IE interface is itself changing, apparently significantly, what will the reaction of users be? Since a change is in store no matter what, this could well be a good catalyst to get more people to give up IE in favor of something else.
I thought the release date for IE7 was supposed to be August 3rd. Is that when a public beta will be released? Or was the release-date just moved up a bit?
That's what's interesting, when MS decided to push browser development, they did a really amazing job. Of course they had the singular motivation of needing to do better than Netscape 4, and cost was no object, since they were, and I believe still are, afraid of the browser as OS model of development. In other words, the browser, running open free standards, being used as a platform independent interface to applications. That was the fear back then, and I think it's still the fear. Note the difference: IE 4 was a great leap, fantastic browser for the time, IE 5 even better, IE 5.5 better still, IE 6 goes W3C box model compliant, then no competition, and it all stops. Those releases came in 98, 99, 2000, and 2001, roughly. In other words a major upgrade every year.
I don't think this stopped just because MS beat Netscape. IE's primary market is intranets, not the web as a free open resource. If you look at it as an intranet browser, it all starts making sense, average css [how many corporate intranets have or need advanced CSS or whatever, xhtml support etc?], insecure since it's running on an intranet, activex to run all the company linked apps, ideally linked to ms office etc.
MS itself runs on the intranet model, not the open development model. So I don't expect them to do much to really make it easier on us, they have no motivation.
IE7 is going to murder firefox. Sad but true. The average joe has been tempted and tried and tried again, but they just don't like anything but IE.
The growing number of Firefox downloads suggest otherwise. Take a trip to Spreadfirefox.com please. Over 70 million and counting. IE7 murder Firefox? Get real. Plus many users still haven't upgraded from IE5. Or even IE4.
"I'll still be developing mainly for IE and tweaking for others."
What that means is you will be coding incorrectly and fixing it for others. MS has even acknowledged this and has formed an alliance with WASP to "fix" future versions of IE so they are more standards compliant...like FF. It may do you well to learn to code the correct way and fix it for IEs bugs and quirks. Then if MS ever learns how to make browsers, you too will know how to code for them.
The emphasis on phishing and malware protection is going to be very attractive to the vast bulk of ordinary users who are already used to their flashing virus scanner and software firewalls protecting them from evil hackers. Firefox will have some serious competition unless it can evolve, as non-technical users will notice the absense of the new "protection" measures if ever persuaded to switch. Alternative browsers will be seen as being as incomplete as a Windows PC without an anti-virus program.
IE7 offers what the average user wants, not what the average developer wants - but there are far more users than developers.
Firefox numbers are far higher than could be accounted for if it only were being used by obsessed web developers, although Opera numbers tend to reflect that I'd say.
Both Firefox and Opera are designed to evolve, stand alone applications, with easy plugin capabilities.
IE 7 will look just enough like Opera and Firefox to satisfy whoever is making the decisions in MS.
When it comes to the web, I don't underestimate MS, I simply look at their track record, and it's not very impressive.
"I'll still be developing mainly for IE and tweaking for others."What that means is you will be coding incorrectly and fixing it for others.
It's more about coding for the masses, the ones putting bread and butter on my plate. But that's another topic altogether.
Alas poor IE is still the same program used to defeat Netscape. As we're seeing from the news that they've only added one CSS fix in IE7, the problem is likely that the rendering engine is too old to adjust to today's web any longer. I believe for Vista they are incorporating a complete rewrite.
IE7 on XP is just a stopgap measure, designed to deflect attention away from alternative browsers. In a way I'd rather they waited until a proper IE7/Vista was released.
I have little doubt that Microsoft will use every opportunity to triumph IE7/XP as a major upgrade, with amazing 'new' features like tabbed browsing, PNG and CSS. Joe Public will buy into it because unless they've studied browsers and CSS, they won't know any different.
Security is really the only area where IE7 will be worth it. And then that's only because IE6 has been so poor. I could go on, but I know lots of "IE lovers" use this board, so enough for now.
It's more about coding for the masses, the ones putting bread and butter on my plate. But that's another topic altogether.
Incorrect markup is still incorrect markup, no matter how you try to shake that stick.
Actually, you should get bonus points for supplying the correct answer and knowing how IE failsIf I were doing the hiring you'd get the job for mentioning something like that. To me it shows you understand the specs and the reality.
But there's good news along with the apology. Wilson published the following list of known bugs that beta2 will fix, and these fixes are already done, just not released in beta1.
Peekaboo bug
Guillotine bug
Duplicate Character bug
Border Chaos
No Scroll bug
3 Pixel Text Jog
Magic Creeping Text bug
Bottom Margin bug on Hover
Losing the ability to highlight text under the top border
IE/Win Line-height bug
Double Float Margin Bug
Quirky Percentages in IE
Duplicate indent
Moving viewport scrollbar outside HTML borders
1 px border style
Disappearing List-background
Fix width:auto
I can understand that philosophy, no brickbats from me.
Still, I do just the opposite: I code for Firefox and tweek in IE.
Most of that is simple stuff, avoiding unnecessary scroll bars and the like.
I have no idea what my site looks like in Opera, and would like to find out.
If there are any Opera buffs out there, please sticky and I will give the URL.
Thanks in advance -Larry.
This is *JUST* a facial of IE6 and a tactic to counter the tinders Firefox is setting underneath IE.
I've tested IE7 with a fully XHTML 1.1 and AAA accessabilities compliant test site I have and let me tell you MSIE is still utter and complete junk!
NO... this version of IE (which is a pain to install btw as it requires SP2) is ~NOT~ faster then MSIE 6 OR Firefox, OR Opera.
Microsoft is a monopolizing company...
Microsoft ONLY implements changes when it's monopoly is under threat...
Microsoft does not implement real changes when it feels it's dominance is not under a heavy threat...
In the very near future I will be officially banning MSIE from all but a few select pages...
I intend to help press standards forward which VERY MUCH include the ability to produce not just an XML compliant web-site but also ensure that my work is AAA accessible by those who are blind or deaf.
Fact - AAA accessible web-sites do not work in MSIE...
The bloated code just to emulate :hover adds an additional 3-4 seconds of load time for people on dialup.
About half of internet users STILL connect using dialup.
Internet Explorer is worse to Designers and Developers then Netscape 4. The reason being is that Nutscrap didn't have an icon on every windows desktop. While it lingered for a while it eventually died off. It will still take some time to help migrate users away from MSIE.
FACT - A computer I setup half a year ago with ONLY access to Firefox had no spyware or viruses on my checkup visit...
Compare that to a friend of my mother's who has owned a computer about the exact same length of time and had dozens of viruses and almost 500 spyware items found by three different scanners combined.
Only HALF of MSIE 6 users have SP2 installed. Don't believe me? Set your stat filters for SV1.
SP2 (Service pack 2) causes more problems then throwing a lit match in to a toilet-paper storehouse. It's less stable and hogs resources like crazy. It does not stop spyware nor does it stop viruses.
There are people out there who love Microsoft and love MSIE. These people are in denial...
I care about people and consumers and I am certain if other people in a knowledgeable position as myself have respect for people (even if they have no clue about technology) we will be able to stop Microsoft's monopoly over browsing and help make people like their computers again.
Until then, I will be glad to come over to your house if you love MSIE and charge you 85 dollars to remove your spyware, trojans, and viruses, and processes that can only be removed when your HD is made in to a slave in another computer. I also charge extra if you have less then 1gb of ram and have what was in the old days referred to as "virtual memory".
Mods please note my sarcasm...
[edited by: tedster at 5:49 pm (utc) on July 30, 2005]
Are people really so blinded by Microsoft?
Anyone who loves Microsoft so much will have a total bombshell when they visit this site that some kind of important people put together...go ahead, give it a try!
[w3.org...]
Think your MS built pages are worth the world? Try validation...
[validator.w3.org...]
Microsoft does not support W3C standards. You either support them or you don't and they don't.
I design and develope with the latest working versions of languages and standards. I first test my work out with Gecko and Opera. Lastly I test a page out with non-standards compliant web browsers (Netscape 4, All versions of MSIE, etc) and depending on browser usage I will begin hacking the code to ensure that the page works for programs that some people mistake for browsers.
But there's good news along with the apology. Wilson published the following list of known bugs that beta2 will fix, and these fixes are already done, just not released in beta1.
JAB, thank you for the statistic of how many people have XP SP2 installed. What I'd now be interested in knowing is how many IE6 users are on some version of Windows other than XP. For instance, I run W2K on almost everything, with no plans to "upgrade" at a later date. I have SP4 and IE6 installed, and that's as high as it's going to get for Windows 2000. IE7 won't be an option for me, at least not until I can get my hands on a copy that's hacked to be installed along the lines of multiple versions of IE on the same PC. Most people on non-XP operating systems obviously will not be going through that kind of process just to "upgrade" their browser.
In addition we’ve added support for the following* HTML 4.01 ABBR tag
* Improved (though not yet perfect) <object> fallback
* CSS 2.1 Selector support (child, adjacent, attribute, first-child etc.)
* CSS 2.1 Fixed positioning
* Alpha channel in PNG images
* Fix :hover on all elements
* Background-attachment: fixed on all elements not just bodyI want to be clear that our intent is to build a platform that fully complies with the appropriate web standards, in particular CSS 2 ( 2.1, once it’s been Recommended). I think we will make a lot of progress against that in IE7 through our goal of removing the worst painful bugs that make our platform difficult to use for web developers.
Think that answers some questions about :hover, background: fixed and CSS2 support..
>>drcrombie.. I'm playing at looking into it.. as in I'm running IE7b1 that is not breaking previous hacks (so far anyway), but in reading that the majority of improved CSS support will not happen until Beta2 I don't expect this is the version to be putting through it's paces ;) - it's basically the same so far except, yes Peekaboo and Guillotine are fixed in this. But it's too early to say what other effects the fixes have as they're not here yet..
Suzy
Background-attachment: fixed on all elements not just body
I'm not sure by this that they mean fixed positioning on all elements, or just for background images. If they don't have fixed positioning working but they do have CSS2.1 selectors working, this could cause trouble for some sites who are doing something like this:
#menu {
position:absolute;
}
html>body #menu {
position:fixed;
}
Background-attachment: fixed on all elements not just body
I'm not sure by this that they mean fixed positioning on all elements, or just for background images. If they don't have fixed positioning working but they do have CSS2.1 selectors working, this could cause trouble for some sites who are doing something like this:
* CSS 2.1 Fixed positioning
Or it's just ironic, that the browser that killed Netscape itself turned into the new netscape, holding back the web for years and years.
If MS had maintained their pace of development, these fixes would have been released in 2002, if they manage to fix them that is. That's not given.
Fact - AAA accessible web-sites do not work in MSIE...
Can you say briefly why?
SP2 (Service pack 2) causes more problems then throwing a lit match in to a toilet-paper storehouse. It's less stable and hogs resources like crazy. It does not stop spyware nor does it stop viruses.
I disagree.
It seems Steve Jobs and his non-sense approach to business has plenty of followers within some developers.
The graph "Web Browsers Used to Access Google" found at [google.com...] is clear enough, developers should code for IE and - if necessary - tweek a bit for Firefox.
Should your web pages display well in IE? - of course they should! But if you code to STANDARDS, rather for the way any particular browser displays, then your overall development time for cross-browser pages is almost always much shorter -- even after checking and fixing for an assortment of browsers and operating systems.
But if you write code for the way one particular browser renders it, then the changes needed to get your pages to look good in other browsers may be quite time-consuming. This is especially true if you are coding for quirks mode and don't use a DTD.
Fixing an already valid page so that there are no rendering problems in widely used browsers is usually relatively simple. Fixing a non-valid page that depends on one browser's non-standard practices for its appearance can take a long time, and possibly risk your sanity.
It appears that the IE team knows this and is now taking it seriously.
