Slashdot Mirror
IE7 Details Emerge
Varg Vikernes writes "Microsoft Watch has a story about new features we can expect in IE7 (code named 'Rincon') which they gathered through Microsoft's key partners. Apparently we can expect 32 bit PNG support, native IDN support, new functionality that will simplify printing from inside IE and, of course, tabbed browsing. The new browser also will likely include a built-in news aggregator. Apparently an important factor is security."
my concern here lies with the implementation of IDN support... a solution has not been found for the browsers that already implement it (other than turning it off - not a reasonable trade-off for those who want to use IDN sites).
. html
the original idn exploit:
http://www.shmoo.com/idn/
unicode draft technical report on security and UTF8:
http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr36/tr36-2
Without a full commitment to CSS2, this in no way comes even _close_ to FF, even the FF from last year. Pathetic.
And when you take into account the vast amount of tab control you have in FF when you have 'Tabbrowser Extensions' installed, no way is IE going to approach that level of functionality.
Looks like there may still be a place for the 'real' IE7 . *sigh*
In case you don't know, the above poster is refering to PNG. PNG was supposed to take over for GIF when it was discovered that GIFs were patent encumbered. PNG also blows GIF out of the water in that it extended this to support an alpha channel in all images, allowing you to "fade" things with the background.
Think about it this way... You know those icons with drop shadows at the top of Slashdot? If they were PNG's, you could swap them across any background and the icon would look great, the shadow would fall correctly. You could anti-alias edges without worrying about what the background image is. You can layer multiple images on top of eachother so that the front page of websites don't have to be chopped up into millions of individual images. And it all just works.
And Microsoft promised full PNG support in I.E. 4. Let me repeat that, I.E. 4. They bragged that they were going to be the first to implement full PNG support. They're actually the last. By about 7 frick'in years.
As a rough guess I'd say their lack of PNG support has cost over a million hours of web designer headaches. But they couldn't afford to put one lousy intern on the task of adding alpha channel support to PNG support. Which they promised in I.E. 4. Let me repeat that, which they promised in I.E. 4.
They even have a perfectly suitable though terribly hacky series of workaround, using javascript. If they just fed their PNG's into their own functions which you can call through javascript, you're golden. But no, they've had to have broken PNG support for the last 7 years. Since I.E. 4. Let me repeat that, frick'in I.E. 4.
If there is any reason why webdevelopers hate Microsoft, this is it. PNG support. I would guess on a big project it would shave an hour off everybody's day, for everybody who works with images. Hell, people were shouting that they would pay Microsoft to do this. People volunteered to do this for them. But no, they "couldn't figure out how to do it," for 7 frick'in years.
Push it out to everyone. I don't care if they're on XP, ME, or OS9, proper Alpha Channel PNG support would save a ton of time. It's about bloody time.
Opera supports it. Mozilla supports it. Firefox, Konq, Netscape, Safari, iCab, and Omniweb support it. The Dreamcast and Web TV browsers support it. Everyone but Lynx supports it. Oh, that is everyone but Lynx and frick'in I.E.
[/Rant]
The ______ Agenda
Tabbed browsing is a concept that was first put into implementation by NetCaptor. Even Firefox copied it. *gasp!*
-Shippy
Well no Frenchman will have to worry about that, as ä isn't in the French alphabet. *shhh*
But you have a valid point.
Be relentless!