IE7 - details begin to trickle out

[tedster]

"Sources" say we'll see tabbed browsing, an integrated news aggregator, full PNG transparency support...and lots of improved security. No big surprises in any of that, really.

When it comes to functionality, IE is playing catch-up. I wonder if there is any real innovation going on. Well, that's not likely to be leaked this early, I guess.

Microsoft has shared publicly that IE 7.0 will be focused primarily on improving security...

But Microsoft is sharing quite a few more specifics about IE 7.0 privately with key
partners, claim sources who requested anonymity.

eWeek Article [eweek.com]

[Hester]

Excel is an interesting example. In the preferences you can set how it deals with multiple spreadsheets. The choices are to keep them all within one Windows taskbar tab, or show multiple tabs, as if they were separate programs. Even though I love browser tabs, I prefer Excel to open in separate taskbar tabs. (But I rarely open more than 1 or 2 spreadsheets.)

The disadvantage to that approach is that I can't tile the sheets in Excel (to copy and paste or compare them) but I can of course tile the separate programs using the windows themselves.

[mrMister]

As far as I knew ASP is a type of technology meaning active server pages. Microsoft has an ASP technology called ASP, there are other ASP technology solutions PHP, JSP, etc.

No, ASP (Active Server Pages) just a proprietry name, JSP is Java Server Pages, it's not a subset of Active Server Pages

How do you get Perl or PHP code to run from a Microsoft ASP page?

You can't use PHP, it isn't implemented. To run Perl, you can do a number of things...

1. Change the default ASP language of your server to Perlscript
2. Use the language directive: <@ LANGUAGE="perlscript">
3. Use scipt tags <script language="perlscript" runat="server">

The 3rd option is most useful because it mans you can use multiple languages in the same ASP page and call functions written in one language from code wiritten in another language.

And it's interesting that you said if you need major string handling you can wipe that up in Perl and use it in ASP because PHP has a lot of heavy lifting concerning strings already built in.

The language that PHP uses has a lot of similarities with Perl. I mentioned string handling as an example.

My aim of my point wasn't to suggest that ASP is good at string handling, it was a more general statement... you can choose which language is best for the task you need to do. You don't have to limit yourself to one language like you do with PHP.

In fact it's got hundreds of time saving functions. Try quickly implementing encryption in ASP.

I think you're confusing ASP with VBScript here. It would be time consuming to implement encryption in VBScript. As I said ASP is not VBScipt. I use Perl for encrypion in VBScript. There's plenty of Perl modules that deal with encryption. See here... [search.cpan.org...]

These are important things to very large companies and ASP doesnt have default solutions you would have to buy packages for all the stuff that is quickly available for free from PHP.

Again, I think you're confusing ASP with VBScript. With PHP you're limiting yourself to just the PHP packages (which are mainly based on perl). With ASP you don't even have to limit yourself to Perl. The world is your oyster, you can implement and write packages in many languages and incorporate them in to ASP.

So far I've only mentioned scripting languages, but you can also implement a host of other languages by using COM.

It's easy to get confused, because a majority of ASP sites are VBScript only. The truth is that most ASP developers are ignorant to what ASP is capable of. However, just because they don't utilise the full power of ASP doesn't mean that the ASP platform itself isn't powerful.

The main failing point of ASP up until recently was the Windows Servers it is confined to. Building heavy duty applications on NT4 wasn't a good idea because NT4 was an unstable platform and couldn't handle the load (As eBay found to their cost). However Microsoft have improved greatly, Server 2000 was a great improvement and Server 2003 is much better still, it's a very stable platform indeed.

Incidentally, for those that are having problems following the progression of this thread, this is the point I was making about IE7. There is a new Microsoft now, they are making great steps towards improving all of their products. Just like Windows 2003 is a massive improvement on previous Microsoft servers, I expect IE7 will be an equally massive improvement on their shoddy browsers of the past.

[alexisb]

I know the rendering engine programming to support CSS2 can be hard and there is time issues but come on!, we need modern browsers to support web standards.

[2by4]

"but come on!, we need modern browsers to support web standards."

There's a certain irony in the fact that IE 6 is now the Netscape 4 of its day. In other words, it's the browser that is holding back the development of the web now, and will continue to be for about 5 years, which is about how long you can expect a browser to retain a meaningful market share.

Mrmister's faith in the ability of the MSIE team to magically fix the now antiquated IE rendering engine without doing a full rewrite is charming, but unfortunately what's needed here isn't faith, but a serious commitment to actually put out a new, to the core, browser. Maybe we can make up a scenario where they do this, and then believe that it's been done.

MS didn't decide to put out a new browser until they started losing market share to firefox, they haven't been fully committed to this project, and are still in my opinion only going to release some window dressing fixes, while the core problems remain.

On the bright side, this means that I don't have to learn any more advanced CSS stuff for 4-5 years, since it won't run on IE anyway.

[TheDoctor]

I don't have to learn any more advanced CSS stuff for 4-5 years

Except that learning advanced CSS is a heck of a lot easier than learning convoluted hacks to make your design work in IE6. :)

[2by4]

Sadly, I've internalized most of the major IE rendering bugs, and now just don't use CSS that requires complex hacks. That's a step up from doing separate pages for NS 4x and IE like I used to do a long time ago, but it's the same situation, MS has no pride in their work, and they don't care about the web, unlike Netscape, which had a great excuse to not keep improving their product, namely being driven more or less out of business by MS monopoly practices. MS has no excuse. It's really pathetic, and once again shows that no matter what MS says publically, they don't have any passion for the web at all [if they had any, I mean if Bill had any, he would have been improving IE steadily, it was a choice to stop development, and that choice is much more revealing than any nonsense pr stuff they throw out now, just look at what it was like when they were trying to destroy NS, IE 4, 5, 5.5, each a big improvement]. That's probably related to the fact that the web works best when all standards are open, and that just drives MS up the wall, they can't stand anything like that.