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You're right, but firefox is working on it, Microsoft announced that they won't even try to pass the Acid Test. Neither one may be able to meet the standards yet, but at least the Mozilla group is working on it. Which would you rather use, the group that tries, or the group that knowingly blows it off.

Apple says that safari has already passed in their test builds, and Opera is said to be "very close". Rather than the market telling the users what they want, perhaps by boycotting IE the users can tell the market what they want.

Considering they have http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/07/29/445242 .aspx already stated that IE is moving towards standards compliance, I think he is jumping the gun a bit here. Internet Explorer is just now moving towards being operable in a developer environment and should be recieving our blessings that it will succeed in order for web developer's nightmares to subside.

There is a blog entry about this here

Here's a link to the actual blog posting from the story to which the /. article links.

A good SVG toolkit with STANDARDISED browsers (yes, I'm talking to you, IE) will mean we can finally tag a div as width="80%", put an image in it as "100%", "100%" and forget about how the image renders based on resolution.

Here's an interesting one too. Check out the export from Adobe Illustrator to Microsoft's Avalon/Vista format. The Eye Candy page is pretty cool. Amazing fidelity for a user interface technology. It's not SVG, but it's a very similar technology.

<blink> was Netscape, not Internet Explorer. And its CSS equivelant, text-decoration: blink, will not be in Internet Explorer 7.

It's already fixed in the current beta

As others have mentioned, WinFS didn't make it into Vista, but it will have transactional NTFS. This will probably keep the linux-ntfs folks busy for a while.

I'm looking at you Internet Explorer, you Safari and you Konqueror (they don't even tell you the default, but on Ubuntu it spoofs as "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible;" as well as "(like Gecko)" ).

You: The CSS 'acid test' btw is currently passed in house with their latest build and it is fully W3C compliant in house...

IE developers: In that vein, I've seen a lot of comments asking if we will pass the Acid2 browser test published by the Web Standards Project when IE7 ships. I'll go ahead and relieve the suspense by saying we will not pass this test when IE7 ships. [...] We've dug through the Acid 2 Test and analyzed IE's problems with the test in some great detail, and we've made sure the bugs and features are on our list - however, there are some fairly large and difficult features to implement, and they will not all sort to the top of the stack in IE7.

If Microsoft suddenly gets CSS religion, it may pass the acid test when it exits beta.

Not gonna happen:

I've seen a lot of comments asking if we will pass the Acid2 browser test published by the Web Standards Project when IE7 ships. I'll go ahead and relieve the suspense by saying we will not pass this test when IE7 ships.

It'll break most of the hacks, possibly all of them. Right now, Chris Wilson is asking whether the "* html" hack should be kept, so if you want some way to target Internet Explorer 7 with CSS hacks, better post a comment telling him you want it left it.

Will it ignore the IE6 Hacks, and render properly?

Internet Explorer 7 will fix CSS selectors, so the hacks won't work. But that doesn't magically make the pages render properly - unless the accompanying properties and values are implemented (which is unlikely at this stage), taking away the hacks will *break* stuff rather than fix it. Option #3 is not the best.

And where did you hear that Microsoft worries about people talking about podcasting? You obviously haven't read http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2005/07/ 18/439940.aspx

http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/07/29/444957 .aspx The IE team just responded here

On the MSDN IE blog, commenters are livid about this. It's the perfect place, since it's frequented by developers and, hopefully, read by MS employees.

Instead of complaining on Slashdot, everyone should hop over there (http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/) and tell them that standards support is necessary.

After installing IE7, Trillian no longer loads that box.

Kind of funny how IE can break unrelated 3rd party apps, but I think there's probably some bad exception handling in Trillian here. If it's trying to use a new MSN messenger library, I'd expect the app to still load, perhaps without being able to connect to the MSN network.

Anybody else able to duplicate this? A couple other users have reported this behavior on the IE Blog.

Only 2 of the many CSS bugs have been resolved, no improvement in CSS implementation/support, no good debug tools.

Maybe try a IE Blog 'standards' search... even though they are pretty quiet about it, when they do say something it's pretty encouraging. Especially the fact that they link Quirksmode and Position Is Everything. If the IE Team fixes the bugs outlined there, a huge weight of debugging will be lifted from web designers (well, in like 7 years when everyone is finally upgraded :)

The register article is wrong.

What's the business case for it? Microsoft isn't in this for the respect of a very small part of the population. They're in it for the money (eek: that's reminding me of a scene from a B movie that had me chuckling hysterically a couple of weeks ago. But I digress). What exactly will they achieve with this? Why would they do it? They already have a cut down version of XP for embedded systems.

Really? Because things like changing system time, or power settings as LUA are mostly hacks, not a nice bit you can change in group policy. And the group policy to install printers is limited to signed drivers.

So yes, functional, but not as extensive (or easy to manage) as one would want.

Really? Because things like changing system time, or power settings as LUA are mostly hacks, not a nice bit you can change in group policy. And the group policy to install printers is limited to signed drivers.

So yes, functional, but not as extensive (or easy to manage) as one would want.

More Info

http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/07/27/444004 .aspx
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?Fa milyId=718E9B3A-64FE-4A4C-9DDF-57AF0472EAD2&displa ylang=en

"CSS improvements. CSS is a widely used standard for creating Web pages. Internet Explorer 7 is prioritizing compliance to CSS standards by first implementing the features that developers have said are most important to them. As a result, in Internet Explorer 7 beta 1 Microsoft has addressed some of the major inconsistencies that can cause Web developers problems producing rich, interactive Web pages. The work Microsoft has done includes fixing some positioning and layout issues related to the way Internet Explorer 6 handles tags. (More information about these bugs can be found online at http://www.positioniseverything.net/explorer/peeka boo.html and http://www.positioniseverything.net/explorer/guill otine.html. The final release of Internet Explorer 7 will focus on improving the developer experience by reducing the time needed for developing and testing on different browsers."

"...the beta is available to MSDN subscribers and a pretty small set of pre-enrolled beta test participants."

http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/07/27/444004 .aspx

The problem is that the installer can not replace any files that are in use by any open program. The windows file systems (FAT/NTFS) prohibit removing a file that's in use (although with NTFS, you can rename the file while it's in-use). The only sure-fire way to make sure the file is not in use is to reboot.

"Suppose you have two DLLs, A.dll and B.dll. Process X has loaded A.dll but not B.dll. Now you want to upgrade them. What do you do? If you rename A.dll to A.bak and install a new A.dll and B.dll, then process X will get the old A.dll (now named A.bak) and the new B.dll. Gosh, I hope the new B.dll and old A.dll (now named A.bak) interoperate!"

Read Raymond Chen's blog. You know you want to.

You care correct. MS had this feature a while back. If you watch a video from http://channel9.msdn.com/ from several weeks ago they hightlight this feature.

here is a link to a microsoft site that has more info
http://blogs.msdn.com/mssmallbiz/archive/2005/04/1 1/407118.aspx

...as a factual news site!

Following Microsoft's inclusion of a real red screen of death in Longhorn/Vista/Foo, yet another perfectly good piece of satire is rendered pointless by real news.

Maybe BBspot should market itself as a prescient news source rather than a humour site.

According the VE programmer:

Virtual Earth was live between 4 PM (PT) Saturday and 10 AM (PT) Sunday as part of our final cheks against our production systems; so we are now back offline as planned and be officially (beta) live on Monday. Our initial release is only limited to USA and we will follow up with other regions soon after that...

Chandu Thota's WebLog

"We're sorry, but we don't have imagery at this zoom for this region."

From playing with MSN Virtual Earth I've noticed that their satellite imagery is at a much higher resolution, and there appear to be no image breaks in the satellite data where there are in Google Maps.

I think Google Earth has them booth beat right now though.

BTW, there is a ~30 minute informal video interview w/some of the MSN Virtual Earth team on Channel 9.

"We're sorry, but we don't have imagery at this zoom for this region."

From playing with MSN Virtual Earth I've noticed that their satellite imagery is at a much higher resolution, and there appear to be no image breaks in the satellite data where there are in Google Maps.

I think Google Earth has them booth beat right now though.

BTW, there is a ~30 minute informal video interview w/some of the MSN Virtual Earth team on Channel 9.

Actually, I see the exact reverse - at most places, it has 2x the details level that Google has. For example, Google's headquarters at Mountain View is shown at much higher detail. See http://blogs.msdn.com/sriram/archive/2005/07/24/44 2610.aspx for more

"Something strange is a brewin' at Microsoft these days. To see what I mean, check out this video interview with Kim Cameron, Microsoft's Architect of Identity, about Kim's now famous now famous Laws of Identity. Personally, I was so schocked to see Micrsoft come down this hard on the side of open standards and corporate responsibility that I almost choked on my tinfoil hat. Is this the beginning of a new Microsoft? But more importantly, now is the time to start an open and ongoing discussion about the future of digital identity. Is Kim's vision something the Slashdot community could get behind?"

So why not go a link further? Or perhaps even try it for yourself? Pity most folks here don't realize that Google rarely innovates* anymore; they'd rather herald half-cooked imitations as something amazing ;-P

-----
* Correction: they do innovate sometimes, like making green cheese yellow or something equally amusing. Here, mods, do your worst!

http://channel9.msdn.com/wiki/default.aspx/Channel 9.InternetExplorerSupportForPNG

Raymond Chen tries to explain it - also read the comments for some discussion.

Longhorn Team RSS Blog: Longhorn (hearts) Atom, too.

... IE7 will support 'extended' RSS. So there!

http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/06/24/432390 .aspx

Regards, Yogix

The new UA string is

Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0)

taken from the IE7 developers' blog.

Internet Explorer 7.0 running on Longhorn will have a user-agent string of:
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0b; Windows NT 6.0)
according to the IE Blog. Presumbly, Internet Explorer 7.0 running on Windows XP will have a user-agent string of:
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0b; Windows NT 5.1)

* Enhanced Write Filter

Also, didn't they copy user-switching? But it's alright because they gave it a 3D animation, so it was innovative ;-)

• How do you show all the users on the domain in the Welcome screen? You certainly don't want a list with 10,000 names in it. (Scroll scroll scroll.)
• How do you check whether a user has a password? In Windows XP, the Welcome screen merely tries to log you on with a blank password. If it works, then poof! you're in. If it doesn't work, then it displays the password prompt. This works, but it also generates a failed password event into your security event log. Many IT administrators have a passwork lockout policy, where if you get your password wrong more than N times, your account is locked. Blank password probing would result in locked-out accounts all over the company.

There's some really excellent analysis on this by Ed Bott.

Compare and contrast to the lies and misdirection spread (as is normal), by Microsoft's resident spin doctor Robert Scoble. See his Ballmer interview, aka, The Idiots Guide to Brownnosing, to see his true colors.

Lots of Gator-bashing is rightly occurring all over the MSDNosphere, see here for a funny example. Remember, even Microsoft employees (commenting anonymously, of course) hate this idea.

I'm guessing that Microsoft will somehow integrate Claria's obnoxious 'personal marketing' tactics into Internet Explorer 7 or the new RSS functions to get a chunk of the targeted intarweb ad market which Adsense has completely sewn up for normal web pages. We should go and tell them what we think about Claria and Gator, not to mention their general business ethics. Don't let Scoble's lies deceive you, and don't hold back.

There's some really excellent analysis on this by Ed Bott.

Compare and contrast to the lies and misdirection spread (as is normal), by Microsoft's resident spin doctor Robert Scoble. See his Ballmer interview, aka, The Idiots Guide to Brownnosing, to see his true colors.

Lots of Gator-bashing is rightly occurring all over the MSDNosphere, see here for a funny example. Remember, even Microsoft employees (commenting anonymously, of course) hate this idea.

I'm guessing that Microsoft will somehow integrate Claria's obnoxious 'personal marketing' tactics into Internet Explorer 7 or the new RSS functions to get a chunk of the targeted intarweb ad market which Adsense has completely sewn up for normal web pages. We should go and tell them what we think about Claria and Gator, not to mention their general business ethics. Don't let Scoble's lies deceive you, and don't hold back.

There's some really excellent analysis on this by Ed Bott.

Compare and contrast to the lies and misdirection spread (as is normal), by Microsoft's resident spin doctor Robert Scoble. See his Ballmer interview, aka, The Idiots Guide to Brownnosing, to see his true colors.

Lots of Gator-bashing is rightly occurring all over the MSDNosphere, see here for a funny example. Remember, even Microsoft employees (commenting anonymously, of course) hate this idea.

I'm guessing that Microsoft will somehow integrate Claria's obnoxious 'personal marketing' tactics into Internet Explorer 7 or the new RSS functions to get a chunk of the targeted intarweb ad market which Adsense has completely sewn up for normal web pages. We should go and tell them what we think about Claria and Gator, not to mention their general business ethics. Don't let Scoble's lies deceive you, and don't hold back.

I think Longhorn will probably have full png support (at least the alpha channel) as IE 7 will support alpha channels in pngs: http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/04/22/410963 .aspx

So's his whole company. Read the the comments on that Channel 9 Circle Jerk Those people are scary!
I'm just hoping that they're so far divorced from reality that it will pass them by. They certainly give that impression.

http://blogs.msdn.com/michkap/archive/2005/05/07/4 15335.aspx Seems that its actually a red screen of death (although possibly subject to change)

is one of the hyperlinks goes to a Microsoftie blog.

Here's the link:
https://blogs.msdn.com/jobsblog/archive/2005/06/01 /423909.aspx#426416

Offtopic Question:
What's the benefit of running a blog on an https server? (Or whatever it's actually called)

I think what happened is this: the Gretchen Ledgard post mentioned in the article set off a string of responses and counter-responses in the MSDNosphere. At some point during that, this Sorkin guy came out of the woodwork to announce that Microsoft had insulted him and that working there was beneath him, and that's news for the next few days.

To me, the only interesting thing in the whole mess was Ledgard's site, which actually has a lot of interesting material for both job seekers and interviewers anywhere.