New IE7 Information Announced 620
Brandon writes "Looks like the IE team is trying to catch up to some of the major OS browsers. They have finally added proper PNG support and have fixed numerous CSS bugs. The full post is on The Official IEBlog." From the post: "We're doing a lot more than this in IE7, of course, and we're really excited that the beta release is almost here - we're looking forward to the feedback when we release the first beta of IE7 this summer. Stay tuned for more details as we get closer to beta."
Good. (Score:2, Insightful)
Mmmm! Competition! (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)
Suggest they un-integrate IE (Score:5, Insightful)
Competition is a good thing (Score:5, Insightful)
only 90% of the population (Score:2, Insightful)
competition? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:middle-click for tabbed browsing (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:nuts to -moz-border-radius (Score:5, Insightful)
I believe that mozilla did implement the proposed standard but put it in their own namespace for now because it isn't a standard yet and they didn't want to be accused of "embrace and extend" the way that Microsoft does.
video plugins (Score:5, Insightful)
Too many features to match. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Good. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:only 90% of the population (Score:1, Insightful)
Firefox development would have to completely cease before I'd consider switching, and even then I'd investigate alternatives before going back to IE.
MS messed up, and they're gonna burn for it.
N.
Repainting the Deckchairs on the Security Titanic? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not trying to flame M$ but ... most of the reason I junked IE was security issues. Once I made the jump, the other improvements like graphics-handling were nice, but not critical.
Would putting better graphics on the Titanic's deckchairs have kept anyone on board?
Re:Too little...too late (Score:5, Insightful)
And Microsofts PR machine has a history of successfully turning around 180 degress. Just thinks of the events that lead to the first browser war.
IE holding a big percentage of usage may be good (Score:3, Insightful)
Bad news for Firefox (Score:3, Insightful)
IE7 might just be "good enough" for people to warrant not switching to Firefox. For people who are new, and perhaps not computer savvy, getting plugins to work with Firefox on Windows is non trivial. This isn't Firefox's fault because development focus for most plugins is still on IE.
But then again, it might be good news for us. Competition is good, this might ramp up Firefox development and bring more innovations for the rest of us.
Re:Mmmm! Competition! (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesn't really address the trust issue, however, even though some of the more abusive "features" of IE may be toned down due to competition and heightened user awareness. Microsoft still largely sees its end-user base as property that it owns, and to which it can sell access for commercial or marketing purposes. Firefox, on the other hand, being FOSS, is naturally more user-centric. IE users can thank Firefox for making the Beast a little kinder and gentler, at least for the time being...
Re:Too little...too late (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Too many features to match. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:min-width and hacks (Score:5, Insightful)
If IE7 fixes the rendering bugs but keeps the parsing bugs, we'll have to figure out new bugs to update the IE6-only hacks with.
That's why web standards should be followed, so you don't end up with spagetti code trying to support different browser versions. Admittedly I don't know everything that goes into creating a standards compliant website. Nor do I work on them other than my own, which I haven't worked in way too long.
Along the lines of web standards, I liked Jeffery Zeldman's "designing with web standards". I would of liked it if there had been projects to work on in it though. I only learn and retain by doing, if I don't do it I don't retain what I read. At least he includes references to other books some of which have exercises or projects.
FalconRe:They want feedback? I'll give em FEEDBACK (Score:5, Insightful)
Putting an ad-blocker (pop-ups are fair game) on something as popular as IE would cause very serious disruptions to many, many websites (ie their revenue stream gets completely cut). Not to mention the inevitable lawsuit if doubleclick.net was in by default.
I think the request for it being GPL'd is wishful thinking too. Maybe you need to calm down?
Re:Good. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm pretty sure that improving a product to maintain one's marketshare, even if it is the vast majority, is in fact competition already. There's no reason that Microsoft can't make IE7 good. During the browser wars I used Explorer instead of Netscape because I really did like it better. Certainly they have the hackers and the resources to make the best browser if they want to. If Microsoft really does release a product better than Firefox, it will be sad to see the underdog lose, but really the consumers will win.
Re:So long, Firefox (Score:5, Insightful)
There should be an ammendment to Godwin's Law for people who resort to accusing others of working for the bad guy.
Though I don't believe it's "Goodbye FireFox", you cannot honestly say to me that IE7 doesn't have the potential to disrupt FF's market share.
What a company! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: CSS (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:nuts to -moz-border-radius (Score:4, Insightful)
Get this security feature (Score:1, Insightful)
No Thank You, Microsoft (Score:2, Insightful)
Let's not jump the gun here. There's been no beta released yet and honestly how long is it going to take for everyone who is using IE6 to adopt IE7? To illustrate my point, let us step back a few years...
Do you remember the rendering bugs in IE4? What about IE5? Then came IE5.1, 5.5, and 6. The only reason IE6 is now a majority market share browser is because most average computer users are using Windows XP. I dare say, but it really wouldn't surprise me if there are still a number of 5.x installs in use by those who are using Windows 2000. IE7 adoption won't hit a majority of the market until Longhorn is released and even then, how many people are going to be purchasing new computers right away? I remember when XP came out--the number of people still using IE5 two years after the fact was pretty incredible.
So before anyone gets incredible excited over this, take a moment to realize that the adoption of IE7 (assuming it actually does fix the bugs that have plagued IE before) is at least a year or two away. This isn't going to be an overnight thing--people have to buy new computers if they're not technically inclined and even then a very small minority of the almost-but-not-quite technically inclined will bother to upgrade. So, unless the upgrades are enforced by ISPs (through hand out discs, pre-configured packages, etc.), I encourage web developers to sit this one out.
The upshot? Don't plan on using PNGs with an alpha channel until 2007 or later. (Unless Longhorn is pushed back again, which means we could be waiting another FIVE years. Ah, and if you didn't detect it, yes that was mild sarcasm.) Remember, even CMSs like Plone still have CSS work arounds for Netscape 4.x--and how old is that?
Keep the stone tablets, my friends, this new "paper" thing is still buggy.
Re:middle-click for tabbed browsing (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm a little irritated at the overrated mods slapped onto this post. (if you think he's misguided, hit the reply button instead, folks!)
He has a point. Though FireFox is getting better and better, IE still is still the best supported out there. Sometimes I have to use IE from time to time due to lack of support for the browser I'm using. Admittedly, MS would have to do a hell of a lot of work for me to use IE7 exlusively, but I can certainly understand this guy's point of view.
Re:The ones that I hope get fixed (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm glad to see Internet Explorer doing something right, even if inadvertently. See, I have this nice 19" monitor, and people who insist on making tiny little pages that fill the top-left corner of my screen make me leave their site as quickly as possible. I spent good money to have a lot of screen real estate - please don't try to take it away from me.
Re:IE will always be behind (Score:4, Insightful)
Are you an idiot?
It took the Mozilla project nearly five years to build what Firefox is today. Hell, Mozilla didn't even surpass IE4 until 2002, five years after IE4's release.
Microsoft went from not having a browser to having the *best* browser in two years.
If they have to, they will build a standards-compliant, fast, extensible browser.
The only question now is whether they will have to. But it already looks like the popularity of Firefox has answered that question.
The Mozilla Foundation has a lot of great talent. But they don't have 300 full-time developers. Microsoft has plenty of bright people - and plenty of money. Don't sell them short.
They are complacent, not stupid.
Re:min-width and hacks (Score:5, Insightful)
What I do is, I design a very simple design in Firefox, then I check it against IE that it renders "nicely" (nicely meaning, if IE renders it wrong, the mistake doesn't affect readability or anything). The idea is, my website designs are "so simple, not even IE could screw them up".
It really limits the possibilities, but at least the resulting pages are simple & elegant.
Re:Acid2 (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm curious how they know for sure it looks that way if no browser does it right? I mean, it's possible that they made a mistake in designing the character?
Re:Suggest they un-integrate IE (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:min-width and hacks (Score:5, Insightful)
If designers didn't rely on obscure parsing bugs like the one in your post, that wouldn't be a problem. There's nothing elegant or clever about exploiting parsing bugs [quirksmode.org] to fix another bug. In an ideal world the browser developers would fix both the parsing bug and whatever other bug the parsing bug is designed to work around. Since we're never gauranteed of this, why take the risk? If you're a professional developer with past projects in the hundreds when IE7 hits the streets, can you then afford to turn back the clock and revisit most of them because you relied on parsing bugs, rather than more concrete methods. (Ahem, conditional comment style sheets [microsoft.com]) You'd be completely screwed. If you don't fix your client websites, your reputation will go the way of the dodo. If you do you'll have weeks upon weeks of unpaid work.
IE may have miserable CSS support, but at least it provides some very clear, built-in work-arounds for its problems. (JScript, behaviors, conditional comments, all that propreitary garbage that we can use to fabricate something resembling standards support [edwards.name]).
Re: CSS (Score:3, Insightful)
Weird. (Score:3, Insightful)
Quicktime, Real (well, Real Alternative), and amazingly, even WMP work perfectly with Firefox for me.
My pet peeves with Firefox have to do with its memory footprint and how it doesn't render some IE-designed websites correctly. The latter isn't even Firefox's fault really, since it's more standards compliant than IE.
I only touch IE when I use Windows Update.
Re:Good. (Score:3, Insightful)
There are a few factors that drive people to coutinue using IE. They way I see them they are:
Fear of change
I've found that people don't like to mess with something that works even if something else might work better. I've fixed alot of freinds, teachers, and neighbors computers. Sometimes, with good reason, I've installed firefox. Some of the things I've heard a lot: "Here's how I used to get online.....will that still work?". "Can you make Internet Explorer work?"
Igorance of other choices
This is what you were touching on I'm sure. The problem I have with your senario is the fact that you assume (like many people do) that spyware and popups are a good reason to switch to another browser. What we as a community have to understand is that changing browsers is really just running from the problem. The reason IE is open to attacks by spyware is because the people who make spyware know that that's what most people use. As soon as people move to another selection, they'll simply target the new browser.
Lack of need
I'll hold firm, that as long as people can do what they need to do online they're happy and don't care to mess with what "works". In fact, they're proablly happy that their SP2/google bar now blocks popups.
Favortism
Heh, I wouldn't have put this in but belive it or not I know windows fanboys. I also know linux posers (they slap stickers of tux everywhere and talk about how evil redmond is but only use microsoft products and can't name a single linux distro). Some people like windows, and they only use offical windows products.
What I'm basically trying to say is that for another browser to gain a large market share in the long run, they'll have to offer the users something big. It will have to be usefull to the common user and more than just, "security" and "safty from spyware" because those things will go away once the browser becomes more popular.
Re:They want feedback? I'll give em FEEDBACK (Score:3, Insightful)
Hold the Control key while clicking Refresh. Clicking Refresh without the Control key does reload the data "from the URL", but all the other URLs referenced by the page you're reloading (images, stylesheets, external JavaScript, etc.) may not be (especially if you're behind a caching proxy server). The reason for this is, if you don't need to reload all the bazillion other files and only need to reload the main content of the page you're looking at, clicking Refresh is MUCH faster than it would be if you reloaded everything.
The equivalent in Netscape/Mozilla-based browsers is Shift-Reload. In IE for Mac, Option-Refresh.
In Safari for Mac OS X, clicking the Reload button twice in a row does it (the first time reloads the page only; the second time reloads everything). I'm not sure if this sends the same headers Mozilla does with Shift-Reload though, so it may not work perfectly behind a proxy; I know it didn't, and Dave Hyatt told me he'd have somebody look at that, but I'm not sure if it actually works now or not.
Re:They want feedback? I'll give em FEEDBACK (Score:2, Insightful)
Funny, that. I always thought they were being a service to their shareholders, and them alone.
Since Microsoft doesn't actually make any money from IE users, you can't expect them to follow a user-centric point of view. The only way they can make any money from their users (apart from Windows licenses, which they will get regardless of whether or not they use IE or another browser, or even switch to Linux after buying a new PC with Windows pre-installed) is from advertising revenue on sites like MSN.
Hence, allowing ads is the only way they can perform a service for the shareholders. Oh well, that's why I use Firefox instead.
Re:Woah... Reality check! (Score:2, Insightful)
In any case, there's a lot of features that I think Microsoft won't implement rather than can't. I'd be surprised to see them add anything like AdBlocker, since they run websites like hotmail that make their money from ads. And can you really see them integrating BugMeNot [roachfiend.com] into their browser? Seems pretty unlikely to me.
Re:Good. (Score:3, Insightful)
How will consumers win when MS promptly stops all development of IE once they have won the 'second browser war'?
A win for consumers is if multiple browsers prosper. The market is actually pretty close to this point right now - let's hope it stays that way!
Re:Good. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Suggest they un-integrate IE (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Good. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:min-width and hacks (Score:5, Insightful)
Most of the time, when I hack my way around browser bugs, I do it by taking standards-compliant HTML that validates at validator.w3.org but looks wrong in a particular browser, and changing it into different standards-compliant HTML that still validates but looks the way I want.
Please don't tell web designers to "just follow the standards". It's REALLY not that simple.
There is only one update they need... (Score:5, Insightful)
They need to abandon zones, put the application in charge of the security of a window, and NEVER let a window open, launch, link to, or reference a "more trusted" object than the one the link, embedded object, what have you is referenced from.
That means IE would be a hard sandbox. If you want to use ActiveX components that aren't sandboxed, you need to run a separate program.
Yes, that means that Windows Update would need to be a separate application shell around the HTML control. That's a teeny tiny problem compared to these sneaky damn zones.
Too little too late (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Good. (Score:5, Insightful)
I would disagree with this. There are problems to be found in Firefox and other new browsers to be sure. The way things look it will be Firefox if anything that ends up with significant market share. To date, almost every Firefox vulnerability has still been related to the broken windows zone-based security model (read IE security model). The two big issues are ActiveX and that model. I believe that without ActiveX and that security model to ride on, NO BROWSER would ever carry the sort of spyware overhead we see today again. That includes IE, but I do not see Microsoft dropping their biggest market lockin 'features'.
I think Firefox will always be safe from spyware when compared to any browser with ActiveX. However, spyware was only one thing I mentioned. Everything else mentioned was a feature.
Big features from a user perspective.
-Spyware free weather status(any idea how many weatherbuggers there are?)
-Popup blocking that works (IE popup blocking does not 'work', largely thanks to popups launched by spyware.)
-Flashblocking (flash ads are notoriously annoying)
-Tabbed browsing. After browsing a link heavy site for two days with tabbed browsing, nobody will ever use a browser without this again.
Honestly I believe Favortism is the next biggest problem. The truth is that end users do NOT install functional software on their computers (although they will install cute little holiday related crap that breaks functional setups). Techs install software on their computers. If the local tech shop is still using IE, all of their customers will be using IE.
I once worked for a shop with a Microsoft bias. We were slammed with spyware problems and when doing a spyware cleanup I would routinely install firefox with a standard set of extensions. I showed people how to "open this page in IE" if they needed to and off they went.
If someone else did work for the user after that point I would get a call everytime regardless of the problem. The good ol' boy Microsoft techs would claim they couldn't work on these funky 'firething' setups. This included the boss. Finally I just gave up.
Re:I want Cross-platform support. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:They want feedback? I'll give em FEEDBACK (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, like that will happen. Might as well ask for the Windows source code while you're at it.
Second, please don't default load to the msn page, WTF.You do realize that Microsoft gets revenue from MSN Search, don't you? And is it really that hard to change your default?
Third, could you actually put something in there to block ads and popups.Have you not heard of this new SP2 thing? Try it out. Blocks popups. As for ads, if they did that they'd piss off every web advertiser in existance and probably get class-action sued.
Fourth, last time I looked default IE has over ONE GIG of cache in the settings.Tools, Options, Settings. Change it yourself.
Fifth, could you actually make it work with java?Every Java app I've tried works. Gotta download the Java plug-in first. Blame Sun and their lawsuit for that.
Sixth, don't renember all my crap - I want privacy and security - and when I close the browser I want the option to not only take out the cache, cookies, and history of web sites visited, but also want it to TRUELY ERASE IT.Paranoid much? There are probably a dozen third-party apps that do this already.
Seventh, oh and this really pisses me off, PLEASE PLEASE when I hit the reload button - I want it to actually reload the data from the URL over the internet not reload a bunch of cache!!!Hold down Control when you hit F5 or press reload.
Eigth, can't you natively render PDF's. Why do I half to deal with all this over bloated adobe crap?I have a suspicion that Adobe would take issue having PDF rendering part of IE without any Adobe app. As for Reader bloat-ware, go bark up Adobe's tree.
Ninth, please put something in there that makes it easy for me to "steal" (GASP!!!) someone's "intellectual property".Uh huh. Why not just add a "warez" button which takes you right to your favorite IRC channel too?
Re:min-width and hacks (Score:1, Insightful)
Except that nearly every javascript useragent detector makes huge implementation-specific assumptions that are almost certain to break when new browsers come out. They're one big bug waiting to happen.
Re:middle-click for tabbed browsing (Score:3, Insightful)
This is why I exclusively use a non-IE browser (and the fact that I'm in Linux most of the time, but I digress...). Getting a stranglehold on the web and forcing people to use proprietary applications to exchange information is like adding new words and conventions to a language and charging people to use them.
Re:min-width and hacks (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:IE7 would be perfect if... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:nuts to -moz-border-radius (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:So long, Firefox (Score:1, Insightful)
No, it merely has to be unsucky enough for people to not switch to Firefox next time they get a new computer (or probably if they upgrade to Longhorn).
You have a very short term perspective. Have you considered a career in banking?
Re:min-width and hacks (Score:3, Insightful)
I've seen sites that can't even survive re-sizeing the font. Slashdot won't for example fit width wise when the font is enlarged (at least not under FF
I really wish people would stop over fixing the layout of thier sites so they could be view without exactly matching the designers preferences, and wierd ideas of proper page width (I'm assuming whatever fits inside the toolbars of his design tool).
Used to be web pages were viewable because almost all markup was proportional, not absolute, and it didn't matter that much what browser you were using or resolution.
Mycroft
Re:Too little...too late (Score:3, Insightful)
Internet cafe's are disabling IE, businesses are switching to Firefox internally. It is spreading and people are waking up to the fact that there ARE choices.
And once they realize that there is another choice for their browser, they will also begin to wonder if there are other choices for their other products like the OS, Office apps, media players, etc.
Once the browser begins to fall (as it already has), people become aware that there are choices and once they are aware that there are choices, they will begin to make them.
Skeptical, as always... (Score:4, Insightful)
They stopped all IE development and let the browser utterly stagnate because they had no real competition; there were many complaints about the insecurity of ActiveX, the refusal to follow the w3c standards, the refusal to provide proper PNG alpha support, and the amount of work involved in trying to get sites rendering the same in IE as they did in pretty much any other browser around.
Microsoft have had *years* to address these issues, and selectively chose to do absolutely nothing about them, because they couldn't care less about the customer, just about stifling competition and making money. (Granted at engineer level you may well have people taking offense at the suggestion that they don't want to make a better product for their customers, but that clearly isn't the corporate policy.)
Now all of a sudden along comes Firefox, which provides an amazing base, and doesn't have any of the IE issues. Microsoft have some competition in the first time in a while, and suddenly they're back to how trumpeting about how wonderful they are, and how they're implementing all these brilliant new features, like popup blocking, better (but still not perfect) CSS compliance, proper PNG alpha support, and all the other things that people have been complaining about for years, and the things that other browsers have had since day one.
Sorry Microsoft, but I find your claims insincere. You had years to implement this stuff, but you didn't bother your ass to help your customers out until you had a whiff of competition come your way. I'll stick with FireFox.