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IE7 Announced for Longhorn and WinXP
sriram_2001 writes "There is now an official announcement from Bill Gates on Internet Explorer 7. It will be available in beta form this summer for Longhorn and XP SP2. The IEBlog has commentary about the decision making process that went into the new browser version." Coming on the heels of the June Beta announcement for Longhorn, if things go as planned it will likely be here in early summer. The new browser's early arrival was first discussed last year.
Who wants to bet we'll see 'tabs' in IE7
time is a perception of a being's consciousness
time is your 6th sense, the wierd ones are 7+
Firefox could use a little competition.
Hasn't IE been in beta since, well, it was released?
You have two hands and one brain, so always code twice as much as you think!
A friend's computer is virtually unusable because something corrupted IE, and that in turn broke Windows Explorer.
All IE needs to be good is: tabbed browsing, popup blocker, standards compliance, and fewer security issues. Sounds simple, doesn't it? Firefox was able to do it, let see if, given enough time Microsoft can do the same. Although I will still use Firefox, it will be nice to have a competent browser when I use, for example, a computer at school.
So they've admitted that IE is weak and Firefox et. al. is a compelling product. Knocks aside, I am very interested in seeing how this plays out.
This is disappointing because we all know microsoft won't fill the giant security hole that is active x. Sure they have a "popup blocker" and this beta will have "tabs." But will it actually follow the W3C standards or is it going to be as hard to work with as IE6? I mean we KNOW they won't clean the issues up because they're releasing their own Anti-Spyware application. So really, what's the point?
Kyle
http://www.unlogikal.net/
What? Microsoft suddenly decided to release a new version of IE now that FireFox is taking nearly 12% of its previously undesputed market-share? Shocking!
Now that there is competiton, Microsoft is suddenly interested again. But, losing brand loyalty is key, and I see lots of unsophisticated users using Firefox. Take IE7 and shove it Microsoft.
"In yet another example of innovation, Microsoft has invented a feature called Tabbed Web Surfing (tm) (r). Tabbed Web Surfing is a revolutionary user interface for web browsing that Microsoft as its inventor has received over 7,000 patents on."
I'm a big tall mofo.
Will all you Firefox users now be quiet? Oh, they are talking about me, as well?
4 critical security flaws have already been found in the yet to be released Internet Explorer 7.
I think the most interesting question about IE7 is: will it be written with .Net? Microsoft seems to think that developers should all jump on the .Net bandwagon, but they seem rather reluctanct to do it with any of their big products.
.Net brings.
.Net? If it is, no wonder it's so much slower than VS6.)
IE.Net (or rather, mshtml.Net) would be a great way to show off the supposed security enhancements that
(Aside: Is Visual Studio now written in
Vote for global prefs bug
Announcing IE7 allows Bill to spend some "capital" to get the unwashed computing masses to try IE one more time.
They just better get it right this time.
Otherwise the pendulum swings over to the browser with the Netscape Pedigree.
Now... how ironic would *that* be...
The problem with socialism is that they always run out of other people's money. - Margaret Thatcher
if we got just these two things, and nothing else, i might actually stop slitting my wrists as a web designer. PLEASE MICROSOFT. PLEASE. that's all i want god damnit.
- tristan
IE developer/lead says "I think of today's announcement as a clear statement back to our customers: "Hey, Microsoft heard you. We're committing (to ie7)."
What he means : "Damm firefox took a lot of market share. Even with our monopoly people are downloading this better and free product"
Mircosoft intended to use its domenence in browsers to control the desktop. IE distribute apps with IE/Longhorn and proprietary extentions (.net) that only worked on windows.
Firefox's success caught them off guard and now there running to catch up. I think MS was hoping to bundle ie7 with longhorn, causing massive corporate forced upgrades, but delay after delay nixed that idea.
You would have noticed the poster was asking the forefox users to be quiet. So, us Firefox users can keep on ranting. :)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
This would arguably be opening themselves up to some huge legal problems. Sites that rely on advertising revenue would get rather cranky if the default browser on the monopoly desktop operating systems was blocking the ads.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
And its even better than other tabbed solutions in that each tab appears in its own window as God intends.
I fail to see how they admitted that IE is weak.
It is quite rare that a company releases a product that is so perfect that they do not need to create a new version. Such is the case here, IE can always better... and so can Firefox. Down the line when the next version of Firefox is released... is it their way of saying that their own product is weak?
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
Please, please, implement alpha transparency for PNGs. That's all I ask. CSS2 would be nice, but it's ok if you don't have time or whatever. But just get proper transparency working. Please.
I am trolling
they didn't admitted anything. if this were a mozilla announcement, you wouldn't say that firefox 1.0 is "weak" just because they announced 2.0, would you?
Kudos to Berkeley, but they are the exception in most cases, and this is no exception to that rule. :)
As long as IE is even almost as secure and almost as feature rich as Firefox, it will probably win the browser war. That is, unless and until Linux wins the OS war (or at least makes a bigger showing).
About that word "lead". I don't think it means what you think it means. :) (Ob. quote.)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Cause face it, ff made it really on two things: blocking pop ups and tabbed browsing. With security being a third thing but really people don't immediately see that.
If microsoft patched ie to stop popups and hacked in tabbed browsing I don't think as many would have switched to ff. It's not like we would get many converts with 'Look! It open source and standards compliant!!'
Thanks microsoft for dropping the ball on this, and whatever your smoking up there in redmond, keep smoking it.
Security isn't a feature, it's expected. To steal someone else's example, you wouldn't buy a toaster that says "Now blows up less often!" We don't need IE7 to fix security holes. It should offer real new features. I doubt they will, but they should come up with browsing enhancements that aren't in Firefox, beyond just copying it. Let's not forget supporting standards as well. IE is stale now, and so far it doesn't sound like IE7 will offer any improvements.
Tell MS to call me when they have something new to offer. I'll be over here with Firefox that already works better and keeps it's security holes patched.
...
IE7 is a name for a 'hack' you can add to your web page so it renders w3c compliant in IE (the browser) because it translates the compliant code the the quirk code IE can understand.
IE7 loads and parses all style sheets into a form that Explorer can understand. You can then use most CSS2/CSS3 selectors without having to resort to CSS hacks.
The lightweight script is a single-line inclusion in your HTML/XML document. No alteration of your original markup is necessary. Neither do you have to alter your CSS.
Here's my prediction:
1. IE7 Ends up being pretty decent with tabbed browsing, increased security, and some sort of nifty integration with other MS stuff.
2. Firefox 'market share' continues to increase, but begins to lose footing as MS begins to focus on IE once again.
3. Browser battle ensues for all of a year and a half.
4. The 600 lb gorilla continues to pour part of its billions into marketing, automatically including with its OS, etc., etc.
5. Firefox hangs up its towel after a long hard battle. The general populous wins for a time, however, because IE and the last version of Firefox are what everyone needs.
6. MS neatly places all of their IE developers back in cryogen, to wait until the browser monoply is again challenged.
7. IE rots like a dead dog until another browser project starts up and begins to gain ground. The general populous loses.
8. Goto Step 1.
Haven't we all seen this story before? I *really* hope that someone else takes a strong enough hold to keep everyone in competition, but the way the Netscape dynasty played out, things aren't looking good.
You can do it Firefox!
MS really depends on blazing performance to keep its users happy. Shipping IE separately means an upgrade to those internal components, not delivery of a separate product. I doubt you'll be able to use it alongside the existing IE, for example.
.NET gives you more control, but I'm betting not for this upgrade. Most users will always equate "faster" with "better", and "more secure" will come in a distant third.
It's terrible for security, but MS's approach to security has never been to contain threats. Their approach heen been much more all-or-nothing; ActiveX signed certificates means that the program is either trusted or it's not.
Security is always a double-edged sword. Users hate it when security interferes with them, and if it gets in their way before they see the benefits of whatever you're selling them, they'll pick something less safe but whose benefits are more clearly visible.
It's vaguely possible that in Longhorn they might alter some of those balances between security and performance, since
how can Microsoft claim it's not possible to ship Windows without IE when IE can ship without Windows? or is the IE7 coming out as a part of Longhorn beta?
I fail to see how they admitted that IE is weak.
Microsoft terminates work on IE, they own the browser market, spyware runs rampant, all is good in the universe.
Firefox appears and chomps into their dominance, offering features and spyware noncompliance that makes IE6 look like a Microsoft product.
Microsoft internally goes,
shit, our browser marketshare is weak, people are acting like IE is a Microsoft product for once! We need to make it look better, pull the browser team back together, do something, and up the version number!
Actually, I dunno why they give a damn about browser marketshare, ignoring that having a dominant browser that only really works on their platform keeps people using their cash-cow OS so they can view MS-HTML websites without difficulty and reap the latest in spyware technology.
Someone set us up the bomb, so shine we are!
I have to buy an entire OS AND a new system just to get the benefits of a 'secure' browsing environment?
No thanks, I'll stick with my 2K system which happily runs Firefox.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Plain truth: people will just naturally gravitate for what's convenient. Dealing with all the BS with IE, it was just so inconvenient that it was less convenient for the average noncomputer-using-joe-user to search, download and install a secondary browser. And these are the same idiots that have trouble 'downloading pictures from their digital cameras to their computers.'
If longhorn launches with a browser that is comparitive to firefox or anything similar, then there would be no real good enough reason why people should switch, and the only people using firefox will be the hardcore firefox zealots, or linux users.
It will be fully compatible with Windows Media Image (replacing PNG and delivering amazing new possibilities through innovative two bit transparency), ActiveStyle (replacing CSS), ActiveMarkup (replacing HTML, XML and XHTML), ActiveMath (replacing MathML) and ActiveDynamicVectorImages (replacing SVG). Also, VBScript, JavaScript and animated GIF support will be dropped in favor of ActiveX.NET.
All of these new technologies will of course have mandatory heavy-duty DRM, which means that in order to look at a 10 KiB site with five 100 KiB images you'll automatically download and upload ~12 MiB worth of certificates to see if you are allowed to do so (all MS ActiveWebContent DRM certificates are valid for the duration of one session or one hour, whichever ends first).
Since all of the mentioned technologies are valid Microsoft internal standards (the specification of which are accessible after signing an NDA and a non-competition agreement), IE is the most standars-compliant browser of all - that is, once the Longhorn users have made sure that the current web standards have died out.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
Doubtful. Unlike Netscape Navigator, Mozilla Firefox is not a commercial product and as such it doesn't need to keep getting new users at a high rate (to sustain it's influx of cash) - as long as there are people using at and developers refining it then it will live. Furthermore I feel strongly that the momentum behind Firefox now is such that Microsoft/IE won't ever be able to crush it and regain almost total market dominance... this can only be a good thing for Joe Public and for web developers everywhere because Microsoft will be forced to start improving IE & the lack of market dominance means that MS-only (x)html tags should start appearing again.
There's mischief and malarkies but no queers or yids or darkies within this bastard's carnival, this vicious cabaret.
Get real. 90% of people get they browsing done without tabs just fine.
I, for one, find tabs in a browser annoying. Mostly for fact that I got used to closing whole window which is faster with a mouse then closing a tab. (I browse with mouse and don't go to keyboard most of the time)
I get my 'tabs' in taskbar if I opened multiple windows. Same thing, different location.
Screw FireFox and IE. Both will lose out in the end to Google's Browser. Everyone trusts google more than ms and when there is a link for a google browser on google's home page it will take over the market. A little to late bill.
Opera added tabs. That was neat because it can let the user group similar tasks (web browsing pages) together hierarchially under the task of web browsing (and unlike grouping in Microsoft's/KDE's taskbar, remain one click away when in the browser).
Mozilla added tabs, that was also neat.
Konqueror added tabs, this was not neat! KDE's people, unlike Opera's or Mozilla's are in the exact right position to have a bit more of a vision, and encorporate tabs into KDE's general facilities, and not just a specific program (web browser).
Instead, KDE's people choose to incorporate tabs separately in Konqeruror, Konsole, and other programs, such that non-KDE applications cannot benefit from it.
Now it seems as though Microsoft is just as short-sighted and added tabs to Internet Explorer instead of adding tabs to the core window-switching facilities (by drawing a tab under title bars of a new concept of "window-group" that contains multiple windows of same applications or such).
What I believe should have been done, is something more along the lines of what was done with Mouse Gestures in KDE. Mouse Gestures in KDE are handled by a general facility (KHotKeys) such that not only Konqueror can benefit from it, but any KDE/non-KDE application.
This is what should be done with tabs!
any one who has programmed on windows know you can put anything in tabs, dialog boxes or propertysheets, hell there was even a tab common control long before tabbed browsing became even popular. No one invented it, tabs were there and were used that is all. This would fit into another one of those stupid software patents the patent office keeps giving out like candy.
did you forget to take your meds?
I wonder what the chances are that it will support transparent PNG's. This is one of the most annoying left out features of IE, IMO. There is an ugly CSS tag hack that lets them be used currently, but it's _really_ nasty. It would be nice if the 256 gif colormap could finally be put to rest.
RFC2119
The changelog of galeon reads:NetCaptor was the first browser according to the Wikipedia article.
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Try Internet Explorer 7 Today!
"
"It doesn't suck quite as much as it used to. [No Really!]"
Nothing in the press release or IE blog post mentions improved standards support. Mixed in with the "Yay, IE7!" bandwagon blog comments are those from actual web developers still asking for better CSS and PNG support.
Which we won't get. IE7 will be (spurious) security fixes, and the large version increase (6.0 to 7.0) would imply more sweeping changes than SP2 to the Windows security model. That may be, and considering the track record of SP2, also implies more software breaking.
IE7 might include some candy that the average user can comprehend (like tabbed browsing or RSS feeds), but I'd give even odds on that. What we definitely won't see is a fixed CSS box model (or any standards improvements), and native alpha support for PNG. They've made such a mess for themselves out of the rendering engine that they can't fix it without a ground-up rewrite.
MS has no reason to allow people to stay on XP or 2k instead of upgrading to Longhorn in now() + 2 years. IE7 has two purposes:
By not addressing standards at all with this release, the press has no reason to make an issue of it. Mainstream press isn't capable of making the link between standards support and interoperability anyway.
because only Longhorn and XP SP2 will be using IE 7.0, and the bulk of Windows users won't be using it.
If Microsoft was smart, they'd release IE 7.0 for Windows 2000, Windows ME, Windows 98, and Windows NT 4.0 and help fix the security issues the older versions of IE has with those platforms.
Yet in doing so, Microsoft is hoping to force upgrades to Longhorn or XP SP2, in order to use IE 7.0, and it may backfire on them. Not to mention more spyware and adware and trojan infections from older versions of IE not patched.
So Microsoft's only option for legacy users is to upgrade to a new OS, possibly buying newer hardware.
Yet Firefox, Mozilla, Opera, etc offer users the chance to use their old OS and switch to a new web browser.
Linux, *BSD, Darwin, etc offers users the chance to keep their hardware and solve security issues as well, but at the cost of running legacy Windows applications.
Apple does have that spiffy $499 Mac Mini, which users of older computer can upgrade to if they have a USB mouse and keyboard. That is yet another option.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Why? Because we listened to customers, analysts, and business partners. We heard a clear message: "Yes, XP SP2 makes the situation better. We want more, sooner. We want security on top of the compatibility and extensibility IE gives us, and we want it on XP. Microsoft, show us your commitment."
through babelfish's bullshit -> english
Why? Because we listened to customers, analysts, and business partners. OMG!!!1 IE is teh suckx0r!!111 viruses, trojans and worms, oh my!11 my pc is fux0r3d!!111 Wh4t is thi5 coolsearch toolbar doing here? my computer ate my homework! I fancy Ellen Feissssssssss! maaaaaaaaaaaarry meeeeee!!
blame it on valentines day ok... OK... get fuzzy, dilbert... herman and pearls and some PA get my through.
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
You have no clue what you are talking about. In Kde tabs are a part of kmdi which is a part of kdelibs. Konqueror and Konsole choose to show tabs differently, (as do most other apps), but the code for both is the same on the bottom level.
So you're saying Firefox will never die, sorta like BSD.
Yeah, this is real weakness. Firefox hasnt gotten above 10% on the desktop and they're panicking. What firefox has is "developer mindshare". That's what MS are scared of losing. That's the reason for Longhorn. That's the reason for this barely dead-in-the-water browser. The whole longhorn thing is about a "rich client experience", about the browser dieing and about you being *locked* into rich internet apps built with XAML. Not about some half-arsed "standards compliant" browser. Tabs? Nah. Just a side-show.
It's a fucking zombie which they haven't the guts to kill because marketing won't let them.
Nothing to see here, move along.
Patriotism is a virtue of the vicious
so, not one of those links even mentioned improved standards support. that doesn't sound good. if they aren't going to be improving their xhtml and css handling, i really don't see anything to get excited about....
unfortunately i don't see much hope. in ie6, they could break backwards compatibility by adding the strict mode / quirks mode doctype switch. that trick isn't going to work again. so while they may add css selectors and javascript methods that are missing from the current implementation (e.g. the child selector, hover state on objects other than anchors, document.addEventListener())), i don't think they'll do anything that would break existing sites (e.g. hasLayout, the broken float model, boxes espanding to fit their contents)
but i can always hope.
If I don't put anything here, will anyone recognize me anymore?
While I won't use the language that the first replier did, I've got to agree with his fundamental point; if you've really used OSX or Fedora, you wouldn't be saying what you're saying. They're different from Windows, but just as versatile and easy to use.
I'm also not going to accuse you of being a Microsoft shill, but busting out with a marketdroid line like "No OS, however, can truly compare with the compatibility and versatility of the world's most popular OS", well, it's hard for me to believe that you could be anything else.
I suppose it's equally possible that you just work in marketing and describe all things that you like in that manner. But I'm doubtful.
Boycott everything - they're all trying to fuck you one way or another
I have recently returned from the perilous gates of Redmond, and I have seen an alpha build of Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0. Firstly, let me say this: I was quite impressed. IE7 has added the features I know I've been clamoring for: tabbed browsing, improved security management, and enhanced user interface customizability. The one thing missing is a button that enables the user to visit a webpage containing one of my highly philosophical writings at random, but that can be added as an extension later.
IE7 integrates with the Windows operating system to protect the user from malicious hacker software like Mozilla Firefox. If the user inadvertently attempts to run Mozilla Firefox instead of IE7, it will know and launch in the malware's stead, thus securing the user from harmful XPIs and open standards compliance.
As an additional feature, which as a Web designer I appreciate especially, IE7 renders HTML and CSS in ways once unimagined. With this feature, I am kept on my toes and am provided an opportunity to revisit old stylesheets and code, gnawing at the puzzle of keeping my pages rendering as intended in this new version of Internet Explorer as well as in previous versions and in other browsers, such as Hot Dog, too. My fellow Web developers, you're in for some fun!
If all that wasn't enough, Microsoft has added a feature designed for the clueless newbies and enabled by default: Clippie! Yes, your friendly Office Assistant is being integrated into yet another flagship product from Redmond. Enjoy!
On vit, on code et puis on meurt.