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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.

18 of 755 comments (clear)

  1. I wonder what MS has stolen from firefox by Prophetic_Truth · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Who wants to bet we'll see 'tabs' in IE7

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    1. Re:I wonder what MS has stolen from firefox by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Opera had tabs before Firefox did. Also mouse gestures.

    2. Re:I wonder what MS has stolen from firefox by frankthechicken · · Score: 5, Insightful

      More importantly, will Microsoft be willing to include an Adblock of some form?

      Somehow I doubt that owners of websites/advertisers would appreciate such a move.

    3. Re:I wonder what MS has stolen from firefox by kidoman · · Score: 5, Funny

      not just tabs,

      a whole lot other goodies like:

      - Poop blocker (but not MSN poop)
      - ad blocker (ofcourse, excluding those in HoTMaiL)
      - a about:firefox page which allows IE developers to speak their "minds" out.

      and others....

      --
      ~~bada bing, bada bang, bada bong and voila~~
    4. Re:I wonder what MS has stolen from firefox by axis-techno-geek · · Score: 5, Funny
      Come on, I'm sure they will create a half dozen new security holes, give them some credit :)

      --
      This is not the sig line you are looking for... -- Old Jedi Sig Line Trick
    5. Re:I wonder what MS has stolen from firefox by Rude+Turnip · · Score: 5, Informative

      Tabs go back to the 1980s...spreadsheets had them first. Putting them in a web browser isn't an innovation, it's an evolution.

    6. Re:I wonder what MS has stolen from firefox by pbranes · · Score: 5, Interesting
      Its pretty likely that the png & css problems will be fixed because when the ie 7 team at MS was formed, they acknowledged that these problems were one of the driving forces for reestablishing the team.

      As far as tabbed browsing & mouse gestures, well MS has been pretty smug in saying they provide what their customers are asking for & they aren't asking for tabbed browsing & mouse gestures - so probably not.

    7. Re:I wonder what MS has stolen from firefox by legirons · · Score: 5, Funny

      FWIW, bars had tabs long before Galeon

      (does this thread continue until we find a patent?)

    8. Re:I wonder what MS has stolen from firefox by mbsurf · · Score: 5, Funny

      My filing cabinet had tabs before all of you!

  2. Good by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Firefox could use a little competition.

  3. So? by FuzzzyLogik · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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?

  4. IE.Net? by Repugnant_Shit · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    IE.Net (or rather, mshtml.Net) would be a great way to show off the supposed security enhancements that .Net brings.

    (Aside: Is Visual Studio now written in .Net? If it is, no wonder it's so much slower than VS6.)

  5. Re:Yippee by pilgrim23 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I rememeber reading once that IE loads into memory at boot. That is, IE is substantially tied in as a portion of the operating system itself. This makes for superb integration with the UI for all system tasks, it also results in blazing fast speed as a browser. It ALSO means any threat to the browser becomes by nature a threat to the entire computer, its system its data, its hardware, and its user. If IE 7 has been decoupled from Windows that would be the one greatest security improvement Microsoft could perform.

    --
    - Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
  6. valid CSS and FULLY supported PNG? by OmniVector · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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
  7. I've seen it and its called ActiveTabs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    And its even better than other tabbed solutions in that each tab appears in its own window as God intends.

  8. Not gonna happen by jfengel · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    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 .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.

  9. Re:Wow. It's been a long time since Microsoft blin by ptlis · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

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  10. Proof that Opera had it before Galeon by ex-geek · · Score: 5, Informative
    According to Wikipedia, Opera added tabbed browsing in Version 4 in March 2000.

    The changelog of galeon reads:
    2000-12-29 Matt Aubury <matt@ookypooky.com>

    * src/browser.c
    * src/browser_callbacks.c
    * src/galeon.h
    * src/portal.c
    * src/prefs.c
    * ui/galeon.glade: VERY early code for tabbed browsing. It doesn't
    work right at all yet, but it's a start
    NetCaptor was the first browser according to the Wikipedia article.