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Windows Vista & IE7 Beta 1 Released
gdsotirov writes "Today on the IE blog the availability of two new beta tests - Windows Vista Beta 1 and Internet Explorer 7 Beta 1 - was announced. These tests are mainly targeted to developers and IT professionals. Thus the betas are only available to MSDN subscribers. Tom's Hardware has details as well." From the article: "While the code also includes an early look at the new user-interface design, the majority of end-user features in Windows Vista will not be included until Beta 2. In addition to these fundamentals, Windows Vista Beta 1 also includes the Internet Explorer 7 Beta 1 built into the platform. The technical Beta of Internet Explorer 7 for Windows XP SP2 also is available today." Any early thoughts, MSDN subscribers?
Nothing to see here, please move along.
So they're trying this again are they?
HELO
MAIL FROM: aspammer@zombiesareus.biz
RCPT TO: billg@microsoft.com
DATA
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
Just curious. I would not do anything illegal like making use of one.
"Any early thoughts, MSDN subscribers?"
Do those actually read Slashdot?
For the first time I agree with John C Dvorak.
pcmag
"Vista? As in "Hasta la Vista, baby?" That name might be appropriate as a symbolic goodbye since it might be the end of the line for Microsoft's dominance in the OS business."
"The new OS is getting zero buzz. Zero. now the name Vista, along with the new Microsoft Vista logo, has made it worse. Could anything be less exciting?"
"THE FUTURE OF DESKTOP COMPUTING: Apple. Vista will open the door to what I believe will be a radical change in the computing landscape. The trends are clear. Once the new Mac OS appears next year it will gravitate toward the existing x86 community much more rapidly than anticipated..."
"Right now, and as much as x86 users do not want to admit it, the Mac OS is already better than Windows in its modern look and feel as well as its functionality. I see too many smart people with Mac laptops nowadays."
"...it is always possible that Apple doesn't understand the power play position it's in and might actually believe that it's better off somehow keeping its OS in a small niche rather than the big market. If the world changed tomorrow to 85 percent Mac "OS x86" its laptop sales alone would triple overnight. Apple didn't put together what many consider the finest in-house industrial design teams in the world to fool around with piddly sales and more redesigns of the iPod."
"That said, how much more of Steve Jobs can we handle? Do we really want to hear him say "I told you so?" If it gets some excitement back into desktop computing, yes, we do. I think we can take it."
The privacy statement for Internet Explorer 7.0 beta lists a "phishing filter," which is said to be capable of warning users about the possibility that the Web site currently being visited is impersonating a trusted Web site. This feature is turned off by default
Why bother creating a feature like this and having it turned off by default. The people most likely to be taken in by a phishing scam seem to me to be the same people who won't know enough about a computer to turn this feature on to protect themselves. The more tech and internet savvy people could turn this off if it annoys them.
but in order for it to be used properly, the Web site's address and other information about the user's computer, are sent to Microsoft for automatic evaluation.
Then again it does scare me a little that MS would be taking a peek at my browsing habits. Hopefully it just asks a big database full of bad websites whether or not this one is good. I'd like to think that MS wouldn't be keeping tabs on my online activity. Makes me wonder if this is why that bought Gator... I mean Claria.
Finally I will be able to shut the mouth of my Mac OS 9.1 using neighbour !
A Slashdotter agreeing with John C. Dvorak, who is saying nice things about Apple?
Quick, can someone post a current weather report for Hell, please?
You cannot truly appreciate Dilbert until you read it in the original Klingon.
Tabbed browsing is in IE7 standalone, and works nicely (is doing as we speak).
Also includes some kind of "phishing site checker", RSS support (picks them out from page and can display from a single button), pop-up blocking, easy history deletion.
Seems pretty stable and not too memory hungry... so far
Protected Mode. Available in the Windows Vista beta 2 release and beyond, Internet Explorer Protected Mode will provide new levels of security and data protection for Windows users. Designed to defend against "elevation of privilege" attacks, Internet Explorer Protected Mode provides the safety of a robust Internet browsing experience while helping prevent hackers from taking over the browser and executing code through the use of administrator rights. In this mode, Internet Explorer 7 is completely unable modify user or system files and settings. All communications occur via a broker process that mediates between the Internet Explorer browser and the operating system. The broker process is only initiated when the user clicks on the Internet Explorer menus and screens. The highly restrictive broker process prohibits workarounds from bypassing the Protected Mode. Any scripted actions or automatic processes will be prevented from downloading data or affecting the system. Specifically, Component Object Model objects will only be self-aware and have no reference information by which to identify and attack other applications or the operating system. Internet Explorer Protected Mode helps protect users from malicious downloads by restricting the ability to write to any local machine zone resources other than temporary Internet files. Attempting to write to the Windows Registry or other locations will require the broker process to provide the necessary elevated permissions.
http://static.thepiratebay.org/downloadtorrent/336 2112.torrent/Microsoft.Windows.Vista.Codename.Long horn.Beta.1.32Bit.DVD.READ..3362112.TPB.torrent
"...the majority of end-user features in Windows Vista will not be included until Beta 2"
So in other words, beta 1 is just XP with RSS? They already yanked everything else out of the system as is. The reason they call it Vista is because that's all that's left of the OS; a view.
Perfecting Discordia
www.stevenvansickle.com
- Glass and new Window animation. The Windows Vista desktop experience will deliver a new visual identity -- translucent glass with more animation. Because it is visually intuitive, the glass helps users focus on the task at hand, whether reading a document, viewing a Web page or editing a photo.
Apparently the best way to develop a "visually intuitive" user interface is glass and more animation!
Paul Thurrott has a fairly comprehensive (and probably quite rose-tinted) review of the Vista beta over at his SuperSite for Windows.
It goes through the vast majority of new features, although doesn't go into a great deal of depth at this early stage. Seems there are no great surprises here - Vista is still very much watered down from initial promises - but apparently things are at least moving along noticably now.
-----------
www.markwheeler.net
www.markwheeler.net
Heh, with the exception of "Dynamic security protection", that just reads like Firefox's feature list. Tabbed browsing, 'inline' search from address bar, support for RSS feeds, transparent PNG support... revolutionary!
If I feel brave enough (and our webmasters think they can survive a potential Slashdotting ;-) ) I'll put up some blog entries about my experiences over the next few days.
Thus the betas are only available to MSDN subscribers.
And to anyone with a P2P client, probably...
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
Just because someone charges a lot for something doesn't mean that they are price-gouging.
Just because you can't afford it doesn't mean you are entitled to a copy of it.
evil adrian
Here's the current weather in Hell.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Thank you Windows Vista!
Content Management System: A pretentious way of saying "text editor."
I definitely recommend reading through ALL of this: Review
It clarified a lot I didn't know about Vista, and it's *gasp* even a critical review, but still not one written by an anti-Microsoft zealot, but trying to keep a pretty open mind about it.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
I'm going to call on you to back up your statement with facts:
Please explain how Microsoft charging for an MSDN subscription is an example of price-gouging, and if they are in fact charging too much money, what is a more appropriate price?
evil adrian
Except they do have competition, come on this is slashdot, you can't just conviently ignore apple and the 50 or so popular linux distros.
Either mac osx and linux are viable desktop os's or they aren't but you can't pretend they are half the time and then pretend ms has no competition the rest of the time.
6. Feeding generations of inept developers. check. [re: C#, anything .net, VB, ...] ... I wonder why anything .net feeds generations of inept developers and python or perl or java or any other language don't.
Oh let's return to the good old days where programmers had two big keys with 0 and 1 written on them and programmed opcodes like playing bongos..
I'm writing this post in IE7.
To tell the truth, the only "improvement" I've noticed is the tabs, but tabs have been available as extensions for quite some time.
I was hoping for some CSS improvements. When I first installed it, I immediately went to a few of the more difficult CSS sites, to see if they'd render correctly. Nope - no such luck. See http://meyerweb.com/eric/css/edge/ for example.
The toolbar has been moved around. In my copy of it, at least, the URL bar is just below the titlebar, then there are the tabs, then another bar with text buttons on the left, and some icons on the right for home, favourites, history, rss, and print.
A search bar has been integrated into the same bar as the URL entry box. I expected it to use MSN by default, but it's set to Google. Or maybe that's just on mine?
As a web developer, I was hoping for better CSS support and better debugging tools.
According to their documentation, they've addressed at least two CSS bugs. I haven't seen any improvements at all yet. I will be using Dean Edwards' script for some time yet, it seems...
On the JavaScript end, there does not seem to have been any work done on the debug tools there at all - still the old crappy "error on line X" (of what file? a bit more detail please?).
The RSS doesn't seem as good as Firefox's.
In Firefox, an icon appears on the bottom of the page you're on. You click the icon, then add the feed with another click. Immediately, you have Live Feeds, where you can open your bookmarks, scroll to the feed you want, and a list of the article headlines is immediately available.
In IE7, however, an icon highlights on the top of the page. You click the icon, which opens up the RSS and renders it (nyeh - whatever). Then you click add to favourites. Then you click to confirm that. Now, when you want to view the feeds, you open your favourites from the text toolbar, scroll down and click on the feed.
The main difference is that in IE7, you must click each feed that you want to view, whereas in Firefox, you get a preview of the new items.
Overall, I am not impressed in the slightest. Nothing innovative at all, and their CSS is still nowhere near as good as Firefox, Opera, KDE or Safari's (I know the latter two are basically the same engine...).
From Paul's article: Because Microsoft built a search box into the Start menu, you can no longer use keyboard shortcuts to navigate around. To launch the Control Panel in XP, for example, you simply hit the Windows key and then the "C" key and, voila, the Control Panel opens. In Windows Vista, however, when you hit the "C" key, the system assumes you're searching for an application (Figure). Sigh.
For me, the user interface of Windows peaked with Windows 3.11 and NT 3.51. In these systems, virtually every control in every program could be easily navigated to using only the keyboard, with consistent shortcuts everywhere. This was a significantly better environment than Apple has managed to provide even now, and probably the best feature of the Windows UI. In 95/NT4 the Start Menu and Task Bar required new shortcuts. Then companies started shipping keyboards with extra keys (making the spacebar shorter and a harder target to hit, and not really solving the problem for people who have to work on multiple computers with a variety of keyboards). Newer versions of Office applications removed the ability to keyboard-navigate through toolbars (with or without he new keyboards). What's next?
I'm sure all the linux devotees will have something to say about your 'no competition' comment.
I have no sig yet I must scream.
Isn't this just a fancy way to say playlist? I fail to see the usefullness of adding yet another layer of confusion to getting to a users files. Not to mention, this ought to make user migration a joy for enterprise users.
--WooooHoooo--
Eh?
That would work if the developer/writer/creative person knocked it up in precisely zero seconds. Otherwise how can it have no value, since somebody took some of their time to "create" it?
I think the value of information/services/software surely has to be relative to the amount of effort you would have to undertake to reproduce it yourself.
If you can't do it/find it/work it out and want it badly enough, then pay for it. Seems fair to me.
By your argument, if you want a decorator to paint your house you'll expect him (or her) to come round, paint your walls and just bill you for the paint! If you find a decorator who'll do that, can I get his number...
Thousands upon thousands of hours of work go into the production of information and software for MSDN subscribers. Do you think that all of the content and software on MSDN just *magically appeared* one day, and Microsoft just decided to put a gate around it and charge a ton of money?
Get a clue!
Your logic is severely, SEVERELY flawed.
evil adrian
It looks like they finally built a good, intuitive UI.n g
http://www.brastensager.com/images/WindowsVista.p
So a guy calls up a mechanic, because his car is acting all funny, running like crap, belching blue smoke, the works.
The mechanic looks at the car for a few seconds, rummages around in his tool box, pulls out a nut and a washer, crawls under the car with a wrench, and comes out a minute later without the nut and washer.
Then he leans in and starts the car, which runs perfectly.
Then he goes into his office and returns with a bill for 500 dollars. The customer goes nuts, screams rants yells, "You just put on ONE nut! And you're going to charge me 500 dollars for ONE NUT?"
The mechanic shrugs, goes back into his office, and returns with a new bill.
It reads:
Nut: 50 cents.
Knowing where to put the nut: 499.50
Total: 500.00
There are many things that you can't hold in your hand that have intrinsic value, moron.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Well... that was a whole lot of fuss about nothing. I truly don't know what I expected from Microsoft.
..system wide RSS integration and a whole-bunch-of-features-stolen-from-OSX branded with a Microsoft logo to make sure we all know it's high grade proprietary worthless crap that was actually and surprisingly developed by intelligent human beings and not just cobbled together by monkeys who arranged the shredded strands of 500 billion pages of printed source-code by sneezing at them.
Improved CSS support? Yeah. Right.
This is IE6 with tabs and a "phishing filter". Nothing new here. The RSS reader is abysmal, not even comparing to that of Safari 2.0.. not to mention I couldn't find a visible button to access the feeds on a website and had to dig in the tools menu for it.
CSS support has some minor improvements, but nothing groundbreaking. IE7 fails the Acid2 test miserably, which is tough luck because we're probably not going to see IE8 for 5 years now.
Microsoft have the future of SVG and CSS3 in the palms of their hands and they are content to toss it aside so they can implement a couple of silly superficial features to keep the monkey-brained masses happy and try to pass us developers off with "immproved CSS support" and a PNG transparent support which is nice, but frankly I'm having none of it. Microsoft have officially torn the final straw from my clutches and chewed it into a pulp before my very eyes.
As for Windows Vista.. whoopety-fucking-doo
And to think... how long has IE7 been in the works before it took them to come out with this shitty beta? In 10 minutes they could have handed the Mozilla group seven figures to use Gecko in their commercial crap-pile which would have made everyone happy. But nooooo, they can't even do the sensible thing.
Money grubbing idiots.
Gadgetoid.com - Gadgets & Games Journalism
It is simply my position that knowlege has, or rather, ought to have, no monetary value since it takes nearly zero effort to reproduce.
Forgetting about the huge costs of education, be that University fees, exam fees or even just books or Internet access, is not the time spent learning worth anything? If I spent 5 years of my life learning how to fix your problem, is that nearly zero effort? I think you are getting confused with the copyright infridgement isn't stealing diatribe!
The problem with slashdot is that most of its users were bullied and stuffed into lockers as kids!
The price gouging claim comes from the idea that anything that is not a tangible object should cost nothing.
We better get rid of the FSCKing stock market too, then. Not a lot of TANGIBLE stuff gets traded there. Maybe all the STOCKs should be free too.
You'd expect the price of the service to be proportional to how much work it takes to render the service.
Uh, hundreds of programmers * several years == a lot of work. When you buy software, you are paying just a small part of the total cost of producing the software. THE COST OF PRODUCING THE SOFTWARE IS MUCH GREATER THAN THE COST OF COPYING THE CD. YOU ARE PAYING PART OF THE AMORTIZED COST OF THE ENTIRE DEVELOPMENT PROCESS.
Stop making pathetic excuses for your behavior. If you're going to steal, say, "I'm stealing." If not, then don't, but don't try to delude yourself and especially the rest of us into thinking that you have some kind of moral justification for what you are doing.
Assertions like yours just make me ill.
It is simply my position that knowlege has, or rather, ought to have, no monetary value since it takes nearly zero effort to reproduce.
I can only conclude that you have almost zero education, because I seem to remember that my degree took significantly more effort than "nearly zero" to obtain.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Knowing where to put the nut: $0
Knowledge is power. They teach this even in first grade. In my school, they taught it in kindergarten.
Your comments show why you are not a mechanic. Its actually a simple idea. If the mechanic "price gouges" you on your car, you simply do it back when he walks in to get his computer fixed.
I feel appalled at how much I get paid for doing things that seem simple, like changing a registry key, and etc. That kind of work *doesn't even involve changing a nut and washer*, but do I think I should be compensated for it? Certainly!
$500 is a bit excessive for knowledge and labor, but if a mechanic charged me a hundred for fixing one thing with a simple nut and explained what to watch out for in the future so it didn't happen again, I'd gladly hand it over to him and thank him for not dragging out the work over the next two days.
I threw together some quick tests for a few of my most hated IE issues to see if there has been anything fixed.
t ml
t ml
All are still just as broken as in IE6. It looks like VERY little effort has been put into the rendering engine so far. Absolutely pathetic.
http://www.lysergic.org.nz/testcss/divhover.html
http://www.lysergic.org.nz/testcss/selectheight.h
http://www.lysergic.org.nz/testcss/selectzindex.h
That's so dumb.
Lets turn it around. Say the mechanic doesn't know where to put the nut, and it takes him 20 hours to figure that out, which isn't unreasonable if experience and knowledge count for nothing.
Hell, the mechanic is probably a former fry cook who thought, "What the hell, I'll be a mechanic from now on" and the guy who owns the auto shop also thought that was a good idea, because, like you, he doesn't value knowledge or experience.
So, in that case, at 50.00 an hour, which seems to be the figure you're using, that mechanic would give a bill for 1000.00.
Down the street, the first mechanic, the skilled one, would be billing people a dollar to fix problems the guy up the street is charging a thousand dollars to fix. He would have to fix one...thousand...cars...to make the same as the unskilled mechanic made fixing one car.
Take an example shamelessly cribbed from a book I'm sure a lot of people here have read...
Take the raw materials for an apple pie. Flour eggs, apples, butter, sugar, etc. These things are intrinsically valuable. No one would disagree with that.
Now a skilled chef could take those ingredients, and, in a short time, produce a superiour pie.
A less skilled chef could take those ingredients, and, in a longer time, produce an acceptable pie.
An unskilled chef, could take those ingredients, and, in a still longer time, make an inedible mess.
By your standards, the last chef would be the one that produced the most valuable product, because he put the most immediate work into it, followed by the second chef, with the skilled chef coming in last.
The problem is clear; the value of the object produced is not dependent on the amount of work put into producing it. The unskilled chef produced something of value zero, or even negative value because he destroyed something of intrinsic value to make something of no value. Conversely, the skilled chef produced something of higher value, because, with his skill, he produced a superior product.
That is why, here in the real world, people are rewarded based on their skill, and not based on their effort. Life is not a gimpy little league game where everybody gets a trophy, and out here, if you don't get results, you don't get paid. But if you get more and better results than someone else who is doing the same thing you get paid more than they do, even if it took you less time.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.