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IE7 Details Emerge

Posted by timothy on from the finger-in-wind dept.

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."

25 of 946 comments (clear)

  1. security by Eric+Smith · · Score: 5, Funny
    Apparently an important factor is security.
    Though for real security, you'll have to wait for IE10, code named "Urysses".
    1. Re:security by stfvon007 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      There concerned with security because other more secure browsers like firefox are becoming more populer. They want a more secure position for their market share. Microsoft can be innovative, but they only do so when outside factors that threaten their market share force them to be.

      --
      All misspellings and grammatical errors in the above post are intentional and part of my artistic expression.
    2. Re:security by Pandora's+Vox · · Score: 5, Informative

      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).

      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. html

    3. Re:security by LiquidCoooled · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Actually, a fairly reasonable visual tradeoff could be to display all extended characters in a different color.

      For instance, if the extended characters were displayed in purple, but the normal characters remained black, then you could continue using it, and KNOW that its a mixed domain.

      Infact, just typing that gives another solution, have mixed domains (std and extended) come up in a totally different size/style.

      That way, all normal domains look normal, and all extended domains also look normal, but those using a combination are glagged as such.

      just a thought.

      --
      liqbase :: faster than paper
    4. Re:security by Grishnakh · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Microsoft can be innovative, but they only do so when outside factors that threaten their market share force them to be.

      No, they can't; they've never shown this before.

      What you're seeing now isn't innovation, unless you're using some alternate definition of the word. They're simply implementing features that already exist in other browsers. That's "copying".

      They may be "performing well", but don't confuse that with "innovating". You can do a marvelous job at implementing someone else's ideas, but that doesn't make you an innovator.

  2. hmmm by eobanb · · Score: 5, Funny

    an important factor is security

    well, that's never stopped them before...

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    1. Re:hmmm by buswolley · · Score: 5, Funny

      Perhaps if slashdot just ignored Microsoft for awhile Microsoft would go away.

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      A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.

  3. Secure by ackthpt · · Score: 5, Funny
    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."

    Yes, it will feature the reintroduction of Clippy, who will be wearing a policeman's hat, of appropriate costume for your region (e.g. uk get a bobbies hat) Clippy will also take certain cues from the current political climate...

    It looks like you wanted to visit some heathen site unassociated with Microsoft, you would like to do the following:

    Return to MSN

    Remove all related items from cache

    Submit your bookmarks for review

    Block all futher access to [www.google.com]

    [YES] [OK]
    "and don't let me catch you installing any other browser or it's the clink for you!"
    --

    A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
  4. Microsoft has finally been forced to innovate by msully4321 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Since they crushed Netscape, Microsoft has not had to improve their browser any significant amount. It seems the threat from Firefox is forcing them to innovate and improve in a market they once took for granted.

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    1. Re:Microsoft has finally been forced to innovate by fm6 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Firefox is not so much a threat (its market share is still tiny) as an embarassment. It's evidence that Microsoft is way behind in figuring out what kind of software people need and getting it out the door. That's always been an issue (remember how many versions of MS-DOS shipped without a decent text editor?) but when they screw up with something as conspicuous as a web browser, people notice.

    2. Re:Microsoft has finally been forced to innovate by RoadWarriorX · · Score: 5, Interesting

      It seems the threat from Firefox is forcing them to innovate and improve in a market they once took for granted.

      Have you RTFA? Tabbed browsing, IDN support, RSS news aggregator all available in Firefox in some form. So, where exactly is the innovation? Possibly anti-spyware integration??? That's like a mouse setting a mouse trap for itself.

      Additionally, Microsoft's "improvement" is really their way of saying that they are now in "catch up" mode.

      I don't mean to flame you, but customers should not look forward to the next version of IE in six months or so, when they can get virtually the same features today with Firefox.

      All I need to say is "Why Even Bother".

      --

      Coderz 4 Life
  5. printing by Phil246 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "new functionality that will simplify printing from inside IE"
    in other words, theyve fixed it so printing from IE isnt as retarded?
    how hard can it be to print a page without chopping parts off

  6. many useful features... by nick-less · · Score: 5, Insightful

    but nearly one will ever install it unless MS forces them via autoupdate...
    I bet I IE5 and IE6 will still annoy us for many many years...

  7. Re:Interesting Codename... by Rude+Turnip · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Microsoft likes to use codenames based upon the names of mountains. XP was Whistler for instance. There is a "Rincon" mountain range in Arizona.

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  8. Not too keen on Standards by PineHall · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Partner sources say Microsoft is wavering on the extent to which it plans to support CSS2 with IE 7.0.

    Microsoft still wants to be the one to set the standards

  9. Built-in news aggregator by SlashThat · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Built-in news aggregator = Advertising platform?

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  10. This sounds great but... by bmw · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Is anyone else screaming WHAT ABOUT CSS?! IE is the single largest reason I don't enjoy doing web development. If they could somehow manage to actually support some accepted standards (other than their own) it would make life oh so much better for all of us.

  11. Re:So, basically... by Tim+C · · Score: 5, Insightful

    id rather use netscape navigator from 5 years ago

    I actually used NN 5 years ago. It was a buggy, slow, crash-prone piece of shit that couldn't handle even moderately complex nested tables without slowing to an absolute crawl and needed to reload the entire page to resize it(!), and I speak as a former ardent Netscape user (I have *never* used IE as my primary browser).

    I'd rather user IE6 than NN 3/4 if I had to choose; it's simply not worth that much pain.

    --
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  12. Innovate??? by Horrortaxi · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'm not sure I'd go so far as to say they'll innovate. Innovate means they will break new ground and offer something you haven't seen before. They'll offer what all the other browsers have had for 2 years and that's it. No innovation, just keeping up with the Jonses. Now maybe they'll have some innovative marketing plan or some innovative predatory practices that will allow them to rincon the browser market again. That's where Microsoft really innovates.

  13. what about the real important stuff.... by MoFoQ · · Score: 5, Insightful

    what about the real important stuff....like real RFC and W3C compliance and not "pseudo"?
    Examples: digest authentication is not implemented correctly in IE hence most webservers use a work-around to make it work, which also happens to make it not be truly digest authentication...or the fact that if u gzip-encode all files and you have zip files, IE will convienently forget that the zip file was gzipped, leaving a file that most zip programs like Windows own built-in Zip Folders can't handle (WinRAR will correctly ungzip it before processing the zip file).

    Of course, alpha-blending support for PNG would be nice...as well as CSS2 support (for those dynamic pulldown menus that can be done purely in CSS).

  14. Re:Interesting Codename... by ackthpt · · Score: 5, Funny
    Microsoft likes to use codenames based upon the names of mountains. XP was Whistler for instance. There is a "Rincon" mountain range in Arizona.

    Hmm..

    St. Helens, Vesuvius, Etna, Krakatoa...

    'hey, this security really blows!'

    --

    A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
  15. Um...WTFN? by bonch · · Score: 5, Insightful

    No so fast. IE7 still won't be standards-compliant. That won't matter to most end-users, of course, but it matters to me as a web developer.

    From article:

    Partner sources say Microsoft is wavering on the extent to which it plans to support CSS2 with IE 7.0. Developers have been clamoring for Microsoft to update its CSS support to support the latest W3C standards for years. But Microsoft is leaning toward adding some additional CSS2 support to IE 7.0, but not embracing the standard in its entirety, partners say.

    My only question is...um, why the fuck not? Even Apple's Safari is already plunging ahead with preliminary CSS3 support.

    I predict IE7's "additional support for CSS2" will really just mean fixing the major box model and table width bugs and not changing anything else.

    1. Re:Um...WTFN? by AstroDrabb · · Score: 5, Interesting
      I would have expected a big push for compliance with the whole .NET campaign they are pushing, a lot of it revolves around web app creation
      MS's .Net sends down different HTML depending on whether you are making the request with an IE browser or a non-IE browser. It is one of the things I really _hate_ about .Net. I actually like C# a lot and use it every day, I just can't stand how MS tries to lock out everyone.

      For example, in a .Net web app, you can add validators. So if you have a text input, you can validate that it is not empty when a form is submitted. This is _very_ simple JavaScript. However, with .Net, if you are using an IE browser, you will get an error message without going to the server. If it is a non-IE browser, it requires a round-trip to the server. How crappy is that? Like the people at MS could not write some simple standards compliant JavaScript to check if a freaking field is empty or not before a form post.

      That is just one example. There are tons of others with the "built-in" web controls with the .Net framework that have all been made to work well in IE and have limited functionality in non-IE browser.

      Because of crap like MS does with .Net, it has made me use Java/JSP for web apps. At least then I can control how well my applications can work with different clients and not be subjected to MS trying to make the world MS-only.

      I really don't know what is wrong with MS. I mean, not all of their products are bad, and I really like some of MS's products. If they would just _compete_ and stop listening to their marketing/business @ssholes MS probably would not be too bad. All MS needs to do is compete and allow others to try to compete. MS needs to stop _all_ of their lock-in crap.

      Seriously, look at the amount of dedication that OSS programmers show. MS could have that same loyalty if they just gave a _little_ back to the community. I am not talking about their crap "shared" source license or the wimpy XML setup wizard they released. I am talking a few major contributions of their code that they let a _community_ improve could make a world of difference to MS and their reputation.

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      it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
  16. SHHHHHHHH Don't tell my Grandma by Skraut · · Score: 5, Funny

    I told her Firefox was IE 7 and she's been happily been using it for months, and thanking me for upgrading.

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  17. Firefox R&D for Microsoft? by hkmwbz · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Pray tell... What R&D has Firefox done "on behalf of Microsoft"? What fresh Firefox ideas are MS about to "steal"? Please be specific.

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