New IE7 Information Announced

Brandon writes "Looks like the IE team is trying to catch up to some of the major OS browsers. They have finally added proper PNG support and have fixed numerous CSS bugs. The full post is on The Official IEBlog." From the post: "We're doing a lot more than this in IE7, of course, and we're really excited that the beta release is almost here - we're looking forward to the feedback when we release the first beta of IE7 this summer. Stay tuned for more details as we get closer to beta."

Comments

Competition is a good thing

[CyberZCat]

Without software like Firefox, their would be no reason for Microsoft to ever make a better product, just look at how long IE's been in version 6! Now that Microsoft's starting to feel their browser dominance threatened they're playing for attention to their own product. Clearly competition benefits the end-user.

Re:middle-click for tabbed browsing

[NetNifty]

It wasn't the tabbed browsing, or extensions like adblock, or better standards compliance that I switched to Firefox. It was getting infected by a piece of spyware that used the same security hole I was pissing about with THREE MONTHS BEFOREHAND that I saw it on a security bullitin, and despite being fully up to date on my patches it still infected me.

Re:Too little...too late

[Husgaard]

Microsoft burned quite a few bridges with alot of people and unless they can turn that PR machine around 180 degrees, people will continue to see them as bullies who are looking out for nobody but themselves.

I think you overestimate the general population of browser users. Most of those who have not switched have nothing else to compare MSIE with, and thus think that MSIE is the best browser that ever existed. And even among those who got burned there is the general problem of short memory (ie. most will forget if they see something acceptable from MS).

And Microsofts PR machine has a history of successfully turning around 180 degress. Just thinks of the events that lead to the first browser war.

Re:min-width and hacks

[falconwolf]

If IE7 fixes the rendering bugs but keeps the parsing bugs, we'll have to figure out new bugs to update the IE6-only hacks with.

That's why web standards should be followed, so you don't end up with spagetti code trying to support different browser versions. Admittedly I don't know everything that goes into creating a standards compliant website. Nor do I work on them other than my own, which I haven't worked in way too long.

Along the lines of web standards, I liked Jeffery Zeldman's "designing with web standards". I would of liked it if there had been projects to work on in it though. I only learn and retain by doing, if I don't do it I don't retain what I read. At least he includes references to other books some of which have exercises or projects.

Falcon

Re:They want feedback? I'll give em FEEDBACK

[rpozz]

Third, could you actually put something in there to block ads and popups, and any other crap that I don't want on my screen. Al least temporairly. Eg NO AD.DOUBBLECLICK.NET !!!!!

Putting an ad-blocker (pop-ups are fair game) on something as popular as IE would cause very serious disruptions to many, many websites (ie their revenue stream gets completely cut). Not to mention the inevitable lawsuit if doubleclick.net was in by default.

I think the request for it being GPL'd is wishful thinking too. Maybe you need to calm down?

Re:min-width and hacks

[Feztaa]

This is exactly why I never use those stupid parsing bugs to "trick" IE into rendering the right thing... I'm scared to death that the resulting non-standard "tag soup" will break some obscure browser somewhere -- like IE7.

What I do is, I design a very simple design in Firefox, then I check it against IE that it renders "nicely" (nicely meaning, if IE renders it wrong, the mistake doesn't affect readability or anything). The idea is, my website designs are "so simple, not even IE could screw them up".

It really limits the possibilities, but at least the resulting pages are simple & elegant.

Re:min-width and hacks

[richard.york]

IE will (mysteriously) ignore the underscore prefix and parse the second style, while compliant browsers only recognize the min-height style.

If designers didn't rely on obscure parsing bugs like the one in your post, that wouldn't be a problem. There's nothing elegant or clever about exploiting parsing bugs to fix another bug. In an ideal world the browser developers would fix both the parsing bug and whatever other bug the parsing bug is designed to work around. Since we're never gauranteed of this, why take the risk? If you're a professional developer with past projects in the hundreds when IE7 hits the streets, can you then afford to turn back the clock and revisit most of them because you relied on parsing bugs, rather than more concrete methods. (Ahem, conditional comment style sheets) You'd be completely screwed. If you don't fix your client websites, your reputation will go the way of the dodo. If you do you'll have weeks upon weeks of unpaid work.

IE may have miserable CSS support, but at least it provides some very clear, built-in work-arounds for its problems. (JScript, behaviors, conditional comments, all that propreitary garbage that we can use to fabricate something resembling standards support).