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IE7 Bugs and Reviews
An anonymous reader wrote to mention a Register article in which the possibility is raised of the current build dumping Yahoo and Google toolbars. At the same time, GWBasic writes "I've posted a review on IE 7 Beta 1. It is very clear that, unlike when Microsoft targeted Netscape, they are using their classic method of producing superior software by catering to the needs of the user. This is not IE 6 with a few features borrowed from the competition, but rather a clear step in the evolution of user-centric design." Flexbeta and ZDNet have looks at the new browser as well.
When it was called Firefox.
Yup, Microsoft looks like it made a poor imitation of Firefox. But hey, according to Microsoft apologists, nothing exists until Microsoft (re)invents it. So there you go.
But the next time someone says "OSS only copies from Microsoft", remind them of IE7.
Almost all the new features in that review (minus the "anti-phishing" functionality) are duplicates of things already done by firefox (tabs, customizable search box in the top right, etc).
The only thing that could be called truly new is the combined dropdown box for Back and Forward. Interesting idea, but it's certainly not "a clear step in the evolution of user-centric design."
LordBodak's journal.
they are using their classic method of producing superior software by catering to the needs of the user
What does this mean?
From TFA:OK...so IE7 fails the acid test...just like IE6. Are there any browsers out there (other than that patched-up Safari version) that have actually passed the Acid Test? Any of them available for use?
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
"This is not IE 6 with a few features borrowed from the competition, but rather a clear step in the evolution of user-centric design."
IE Clippy: "It looks like you're trying to surf porn while avoiding spyware. Sorry, that just won't happen. Would you like to do it anyway?"
The register article is wrong.
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
I think everyone is putting too much emphasis on the new IE7 GUI and not even considering if there are any major impovements in supporting W3C standards. This is our chance to push Microsoft to support the web features of 2005. I know people are already jumping on the IE7 bandwagon and leaving firefox/opera but this is not wise.
Microsoft wins if people allow IE7 to be a crippled browser in terms of web development.
The only feature in IE7 that I need is the ability to download the lastest version of Firefox.
I'm so glad IE is supporting tabbed browsing. Now when you visit a malicious website, it will be able to open up multiple tabs and install 30 pieces of adware / spyware / malware simultaneously. Isn't progress wonderful?
Tabbed browsing has been added, dropdown search, add-on manager. Now where have I seen those all before?
Seems like a good effort by Microsoft to play catch up, but that's it. Aside from the anti-phising feature, I've yet to see one new feature of any importance.
They completely broke the UI.
First they violate their own guidelines by removing the menu from the top of the window. To boot, they made the UI a whacked around version of every other browser UI, with the back and forward buttons at the top next to the address and search bars, but the home button elsewhere and stop/reload mashed into one button at the other end of the address bar. They also don't have a dropdown menu on the back button, which is essential for getting away from sites that break that functionality.
Suffice it to say, this is what we've got for "progress" thanks to microsoft's browser dominance. No true significant advancements in the technology because microsoft's held it stagnant for so long. Thankfully they've got competition now, so maybe things can improve.
They've still got a long way to go.
only because the security features might actually work this time
"Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Albert Einstein
At least the author is pretty open about his bias. The writer goes on and on about the usability of IE, but proves he knows jack-shit about usability with three simple sentences:
"When only one tab is open, the tab bar is visible. At the right of all tabs is a small tab that immediately opens a new tab. This would make more sense as a button immediately to the right of the X to close a tab."
Yeah, that's sensible, put the "open new" button right next to the "close" button, that'll make sense for 99% of the population who don't have perfectly precise mastery of the mouse pointer. He also talks about dropping non-IE browsers years ago because they were "unpolished" but then mentions he switched to CrazyBrowser, which is a cluttered mess in its default configuration! The entire article screams of unprofessionalism.
That is not the reason people switch to FireFox. Yes, it's nice when they get there, but the reason people are switching is because they are easy meat when using IE.
I haven't heard about any security enhancements to IE 7 but if we can assume any that have been added are on the same level of ability as "Genuine Advantage" then the Firefox developers have absolutely nothing to worry about.
Deleted
Does no one find bitching about a beta a little less than productive?
While a review on a website probably doesn't accomplish this, the whole point to a beta is to get user input on bugs and other criticisms so that the end product is improved from what the engineers originally thought was a good idea.
"You're older than you've ever been, and now you're even older."
is that Microsoft is Rich. And therefore: 1. Could've afforded to invest in thinking up new concepts for the new browser, rather than having reading an article on why people like firefox, and putting that stuff in IE7. 2. Will now parade around with a colossal advertising campaign about how IE7 takes you to the Next Generation of the Internet, or Enables the Future of Web Interaction to Integrate You Ass Off, or whatever.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
Yeah, what do you people think betas are for? You got comments, wait until the final release is out!
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
- "Phishing?" Do not use that word in the final version. It looks stupid, it sounds stupid, and worst of all, like the one review said, no one but Slashdot users will know what it means.
- The menus. What the hell? I can understand the concept that by placing the menus next to the browser, the options apply to the tab, but honestly, most of them don't. This is totally inconsistent and just plain stupid.
- The tabs look alright. Not great, just alright. I think the "blank" tab to create a new tab is also stupid. I mean, maybe it's a good concept, but it needs more. Maybe a different color, or a small label, but just blank, it looks dumb.
- As usual, The Register is wrong. My Google Toolbar worked fine in IE7. Problem is, it looked like Firefox with the Google toolbar, simply redundant. I disabled it.
However, there are large improvements, like the rendering engine, and the Feeds (which I didn't play around with too too much). It's a good start, Microsoft, but I hope they're not finished yet. There's a lot of work left to do.I'm not sure I was aware of this method.I seem to remember a few times Microsoft "met the needs of the user" by supplying a "good enough" solution for less cost than the competition, but if I had to pick ONE time when they may have provided a better solution to take a market it would have been IE 4 (after ealier IE versions sucked) versus an aging and slow to develop Netscape, even then they had to bundle it, make illegal deals, and include ActiveX to screw up any chance at security. Mind you the author of this review would seem to think that was not a case of superior software winning out.
I'm not saying MS has never made a good peice of software, but in the past to dominate the market, price and vendor pressure seem to have been the preferred weapons. After they GET the market they have sometimes made a product that is amoung the best of breed (Excel would be my example here)
Insert pithy comment here.
Didn't read the article, did you? The author admits to only beeing experienced in the use of the 'Crazy browser' browser. He states that the new features in IE7 are not copies of features from other browsers. It is obvious from this that he hasn't used Safari or Firefox, which combined have implement every feature he lists except for the merged history. Even the design decisions on tabs, like the single close button at the right, is stolen verbatim from Firefox, which the author is obviously oblivious to.
You want IE7? Use Safari or Firefox.
Try out fish, the friendly interactive shell.
The Slashdot introduction says "This is not IE 6 with a few features borrowed from the competition, but rather a clear step in the evolution of user-centric design."
I'm sorry but that is about as wrong as it can be. Every single "new" feature mentioned in the article is already present in every other browser that I know of as a built-in feature or an add-on. This refresh of IE is clearly borrowed from the competition. Unless IE7 includes more changes than what was mentioned in the article, it will still be behind the day it comes out in Vista/Longhorn.
The NSA: The only part of the US government that actually listens.
Does no one find bitching about a beta a little less than productive?
Well to be fair IE 7 is a very important product release, whether it's a blazing success, or a tremendous dud. A beta 1 is usually fairly feature complete.
Having said that, the so-called review was inane, poorly written, and obviously hacked together in no-time to try to get some namespace. The "reviewer" basically just shows a couple of screenshots, and hilariously claims that this is some great new paradigm, and it isn't IE 6 with some tweeks. No, my reviewing friend, IE 7 is IE 6 with some tweaks, and in some ways is inferior to some of the IE 6 "mods" (like MaxIE) released years ago. Perhaps there is something extraordinary hidden in there, but thus far it has been the most astounding is this it???? ever. That "reviewer" is yet another lame astroturfer praying that Bill Gates might read his gloating, tripping over himself "review" and hire him (which are pretty common, and universally pathetic).
it's just me who finds the new layout horrible?
% 201/screenshot.png. Why on earth did they put the "file edit view etc." menu between the tabs and the final page?
Really, look at this: http://www.clothedandy.com/Writings/IE%207%20Beta
I mean, it's stupid. It "disassociates" tabs from the page, and it puts that menu in the middle. Why put in such relevant place a menu that it's so rarely used?
It's clearly a huge usability mistake IMO. It looks like IE developers though: "saving screen space == good usability". It's not. Good usability is good usability, and seeing that "file edit" menu there hurts my eyes.
"This is not IE 6 with a few features borrowed from the competition, but rather a clear step in the evolution of user-centric design."
Wow, that's the funniest and most completely bullshit sentence I have read all year. Nobody cares about the "evolution of user-centric design" (what the fuck is that supposed to mean, anyway? It's just 100% PR waffle, straight from the arse of a dihorettic bull), the general public variety of users don't know what they want, don't really care and shouldn't be given any say in the matter anyway.
It's us DEVELOPERS who have to put up with the "nuances" (and that's being polite) of Microsoft's sub standard browser offering. It's our employers who pay us a fortune in man hours so that we can work round these "nuances". And it's our future careers that depend on browse consistency and the full implementation of standards like SVG and CSS3. I am absolutely gutted that Microsoft failed on every level to implement worthwhile technologies and bring their browser up to scratch, they insult us developers by implementing long-overdue PNG transparency which we can't use until everyone has switched away from IE5/6 anyway, and claim to have "improved" their abysmal CSS support.
Who gets the real benefit from the new IE? The people who matter most. The mindless drones who will lap up any offering from MS, or get it installed on their PC automatically whether they like it or not. The people too stupid to have switched to a better browser already. The brain-dead end users have their silly tabs and phishing scam (read: user stupidity) filter, and we get nothing.
Even if this is "just a beta" it demonstrates not days, not months, but YEARS... yes YEARS of freaking work and does not include any significant changes. It doesn't even deserve a new version number. We all know it already, but Windows is a joke, IE is a joke, and Microsoft are a joke who can't be bothered to do anything properly because as long as idiot uneducated users lap up their crappy products they have an enduring monopoly and there is not a damned thing we can do about it.
I say us developers should lobby our employers to sue over lost profits. Microsofts failure to implement standards means we are still unable to deliver cutting edge software to our users, and we still have to put up with IE's goddamned quirks. Microsoft should be sued by every company on earth with its hand in web development and FORCED to bring their crap-pile browser up to scratch and keep it that way instead of pissing away their time making sure the browser interface is just the right degree of "fucking confusing" to send any sane persons hatrid of IE into critical mass.
For lack of a better ending. GRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
Gadgetoid.com - Gadgets & Games Journalism
The only thing that could be called truly new is the combined dropdown box for Back and Forward. Interesting idea, but it's certainly not "a clear step in the evolution of user-centric design."
B rowser Helper Objects/ to delete them (try to help people with that over the phone), IE finally has a way to disable the stupid toolbars. Also evolutionary.
Boy, aren't we trollish today.
1) IE finally got with it and threw in tabbed browsing. Not revolutionary, since Opera and Mozilla came up with it before, but evolutionary for sure.
2) IE finally came up with a simpler navigational system. Until now IE needed two toolbars on the top of my screen compared to Firefox's one (not including the tab bar or the menu bar). They simplified their back and forward buttons, as well as combining the stop and refresh button, and combined two toolbars into one. Certainly evolutionary.
And the best part...
3) Microsoft included an Add-on manger with this version of IE 7. It allows BHOs to be turned on and off.
What can I say? IT'S ABOUT FREAKIN' TIME!
For those who don't know the acronym, BHO stands for "Browser Helper Objects," or as they've been described to me by other users, "Toolbars from hell." They're the adware-included toolbars littered with casino links and junk, as well as redirecting all your 404 and search inquiries to their sponsored pages. Finally, rather than having to dig through the registry to HKLM(and HKCU)/Software/Microsoft/CurrentVersion/Explorer/
However, I do still have one complaint. Microsoft can piss off for making this XP-only. 50% of businesses are still using 2K. That's a lot of people to piss off.
If you have a problem with software, the beta stage is _EXACTLY_ the time to complain it. And no, it doesn't just have to be directly to Microsoft - discussion within the community helps too.
Waiting for the final release and then saying "this feature sucks" will, quite rightly, be met with the response, "Why didn't you try out the betas and tell us about it at that time?"
-- MartinG To mail me: echo kewyjlcxyzvjfxbqwh | tr bcefhjklqvwxyz
1. Profit! ... ?
2. Profit!
3. Profit!
4. Profit!
5.
6. Catch Up
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
It also seems that Microsoft is using all its "security initiatives" to intrude evermore into consumers' lives, get more data about them, sign them up for Microsoft services, and lock out competitors. With IE7, apparently there will be yet another layer of intrusion: phishing protection by sending all visited URLs to Microsoft. Do you really think the average user will think about the privacy implications of this?
And let's not kid ourselves: Microsoft is not the only company doing this. Today I installed a Logitech mouse under Windows, and guess what -- it wanted to install a "Logitech messenger" to automatically get updates and deliver "product information". Spyware and adware, it seems, is becoming the norm, rather than the exception, even for "respectable" applications. Microsoft's interest in spyware maker Claria confirms this trend.
Now, IE7 will offer some features which competitors have had for years to average users who would never try Firefox. This is a good thing, and as some have pointed out, the gigantic feature advantage that Firefox will retain (particularly its extensibility, but also upcoming improvements such as SVG support and super-fast back/forward) will hopefully drive more users to it. I can't help but wonder, though, whether we are witnessing the development of a massively polarized information society, where some will work and play in a maximally commercialized environment full of spyware and ads, and others will have free software, built by regular people in their own enlightened self-interest. And it seems that Microsoft, rather than AOL as was predicted in the early days of the Net, is the driving force behind this.
Perhaps it is time to rethink the PC concept -- from what is preinstalled to service and support -- on the basis of free software. An "open PC" that comes with thousands of free applications and games as well as an Internet-based support and update contract could be an excellent deal. Lindows seems to have tried something like this, but they don't seem to be clued up enough to me to pull it off.
Except that your taskbar has much more than IE windows in it. Taskbar, quick launch, other apps etc. When all is running as usual, you can only fit two or three IE windows in your taskbar. Then you have no idea what you are clicking on. Then you start grouping them together which is an extra click and a headache.
Also, opening a fresh window instead of a tab is resource consuming.
You can't middle click on link in IE and expect the page to be ready when you come to it.
You can't pick up windows and rearrange them in the taskbar while you can do that with tabs (at least in many applications).
The taskbar just doesn't suit as a tab bar replacement. It just doesn't.
Here is a free download of IE7 with standard-compliant code added.
3) Microsoft included an Add-on manger with this version of IE 7. It allows BHOs to be turned on and off.
Am I the only one that's ever done: Tools -> Internet Options -> Programs Tab -> Manage Add Ons Button in IE6?
Even their evolutionary stuff has already been done, by them! The screens look exactly the same in IE6 as 7.
A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. -- William James
Microsoft doesn't seem to play catch-up too well anymore.
Virtual Earth is nowhere near Google's offering, and IE7 really is just an attempt to prevent defections.
It seems that Microsoft is trying to not look so bad, by offering something at least 'near' to what the competitors are offering.
Also, if Microsoft finds an IT company that's doing very well for itself in a lucrative market, that's Microsoft's next venture. All of the good ideas don't come from Redmond.
Linux/Open Source/Anti Microsoft News
Please excuse my fixation on appearance and design as that is my line of work.
This looks like garbage. Total fucking garbage.
I realize it is a beta but I will assume Microsoft is using the standard def'n od 'beta' in that it is feature complete but with outstanding bugs.
The entire interface is a bug. God, I don't even know where to start. The tabs are brutal, completely nonsensical placement between a menubar and the toolbar. Tiny, tiny refresh/stop button, one of the most used buttons in any browser and its about 10 pixels across. Tiny, tiny throbber - which is nothing new from old versions but again, is a vital part of the browser's user feedback. That sucker should be a lot more obvious (how much time have you spent staring at the stupid globe?). Also a second tiny icon toolbar, mixed with the menu... god damn, if they didn't set out to break every rule of good UI design, they have failed miserably in the interface department. I really can't believe how bad that is.
And - where is the antialiased text? What year is it? My fuggin' PSP has antialiased browser text!
I know it seems like I am freaking out a bit, but honestly, for one of the world's biggest software companies with more money than Satan to inflict this on such a huge proportion of the computing public is just kind of sick. This one app will deeply affect most computer users. And it sucks worse than practically anything else.
Firefox devs, rejoice. You have handed the giant its own ass.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
Most businesses are still stuck on W2k. They only get XP when they get a new machine, and for many companies (especially the small ones), this only happens when the old one dies or can't run the software anymore. As more apps move to the internets, the incentive to upgrade will go down. Don't have the .NET runtimes,
and can't install 'em on your Windows 98 box? Who cares? "Just fire
up the internet icon and click on the accounting button on the
intranet page" says the PHB.
My experience says things are different. Most people DO have an old PC, because they aren't geeks and don't care about getting the latest ATI card so they can play GTA:XXX. How old is your microwave? Why don't you 'upgrade' it? That's the same feeling the average person has towards computers.
Yeah, right.
From the review:
The stop and refresh buttons are combined into a single button that is logically separate from back and forward. The button is "cancel" while a page is loading, and "refresh" when the page is done loading. There's no need to clutter the screen with more buttons.
About the only feature of MSIE that I prefer over Mozilla/Firefox is the ability to click the stop button even after a page has fully loaded in order to stop those fscking animated GIFs.
Morons!
---------------------------------------------
SERENITY NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The key to anti-phishing is user education and keeping users informed of new cunning tricks spotted.
This will just make people feel that the technology will protect them and disengage their grey matter.
You insensitive clod!
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