Microsoft IE 7 Goes (More) Beta

Hans W. Smith writes "Microsoft has unveiled Internet Explorer 7, releasing the new "preview" version of its Web browser to the general public for testing. The latest version works only with Windows XP Service Pack 2 and includes many of the features Microsoft has been touting for months such as: privacy protection,tabbed browsing and a search box similar to Firefox. They tried to outdo Firefox tab browsing with a feature call Quick tab which shows thumbnail view of all open tabs in a single window." Yup, you saw it yesterday. Posting before coffee never works.

Comments

Slashdot Goes (More) DUPE

[TripMaster Monkey]

Story is a dupe...original story can be found here.

Re:Slashdot Goes (More) DUPE

[Rosyna]

Well, the story was so nice it just had to be said twice!

Re:Slashdot Goes (More) DUPE

[CaymanIslandCarpedie]

Hey, I thought it looked familiar ;-) Well it was 16 hours since the original was posted, so I WAS about time to remind everybody ;-)

Re:Slashdot Goes (More) DUPE

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks TripMaster Monkey! That made my day! I don't know what ever I would have done if you hadn't pointed that out to me. I mean, this really makes my Slashdot experience worth while. Since I always skip straight to the comments without reading the article, when you point out dupes it let's me know that I didn't read the very same article yesterday either. And that makes me feel good. From now on, I will always browse at the '-1' threshold just in case it's a dupe and you point it out on first post. God, I admire you. *_*

OUTGOING

[Anonymous Coward]

HELLO WORLD
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HELLO WORLD
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K-BYE

"Quick Tab"

[arcdx]

They tried to outdo Firefox tab browsing with a feature call Quick tab which shows thumbnail view of all open tabs in a single window.

This can be accomplished in Firefox by using the foXpose extension.

Re:"Quick Tab"

[masklinn]

Or the Tab Sidebar one which has more or less the same goal, but loads the thumbnails in the sidebar instead of creating a new tab with the thumbnails (it's basically a tab bar with thumbnails)

Re:"Quick Tab"

[virtualsid]

That's a cool feature - something that I've been using with Omniweb on the Mac for a few years now. Once browsers like Firefox have this functionality by default, I'll probably have little need for a commercial browser like Omniweb.

The drag and dropping of the tabs was a welcome addition to Firefox for me - it's still not as slick as Omniweb, but it's getting there.

Now they just need to implement 'Workspaces' from Omniweb into Firefox/Seamonkey in as simple a way as possible, and then I can say a sad farewell to it.

I know this post has no content about Internet Explorer in it :-)

Sid

Re:"Quick Tab"

[masklinn]

For the tab dragging&dropping, you may want to check the Super DragAndGo and TabMix Plus extensions (I don't even remember how tab dragging&dropping works in out-of-the-box Firefox though, I never use it without plugging a dozen extensions in)

Re:"Quick Tab"

[virtualsid]

I should probably add - I'm not an extensions person. I've found some to be buggy, and keeping multiple things upto date (even with auto updates) is a bit annoying...

I suppose it is good that the basic browser can be quite lightweight, but I don't want to have to pick and choose extensions either. That's too much like hard work for an end user. The (very slick) workspace and tab features in Omniweb 'just work'. Which I would hope is the goal of the Firefox browser to 'just work'.

Now that Internet Explorer will be getting this thumbnail tab feature (IMO in a not very slick way) maybe Firefox can follow suit, but preferably by taking a leaf out of Omniweb's book.

Sid

Re:"Quick Tab"

[DesireCampbell]

Can we get a couple 'o screen shots from you of OmniWeb's "quick tab" and this workspaces thing? I'm quite interested.

Re:"Quick Tab"

[dema]

A shot from OminWeb's website: http://www.omnigroup.com/images/images-5/features/ tabs.png

And Shiira on OS X has a similar feature called tab exposé: http://hmdt-web.net/shiira/screenshot/en#tabExpose

Re:"Quick Tab"

[virtualsid]

I think it's more sensible for me to post the marketing blurb by the Omniweb guys themselves:

Omniweb Features

I hope that gives a vague idea - but somethings like the Workspace feature are best to be seen in action:

Press F2, and you get your ebay workspace with it's own history and set of pages up
Press F3, and you get your online comics all loading up in their own tabs come up.
Press F1, and you get your news + slashdot workspace. etc. etc.

The thumbnail tab browsing can be turned to text/thumbnail depending on preference. I normally use text tabs, not thumbnail - I can fit more tabs in that way :-).

The best bit really is that if the browser does crash (and unfortunately, it does at times), when you restart you are pretty much exactly where you left it, including history, so you can use that back button. The only issue you will have is if the site you were browsing has sessions, then it won't necessarily 'just work' - you'll have to log in again.

I hope that helps a little.

Sid

Re:"Quick Tab"

[Lawmune]

As I wrote about here, Opera has had this type of functionality for a long time. Unlike foXpose, in Opera you can actually use (scrolling, following links) the tiled windows without remaximizing them.

Re:"Quick Tab"

[jemminger]

sorry, i just don't see how this is a useful feature for any browser... why do i need a thumbnail preview when i can just *CLICK* the tab to see it? is it saving me that much time?

Re:"Quick Tab"

[Sir Codelot]

Or you may try the Reveal extension.

Re:"Quick Tab"

[zrenneh]

I know it's no trouble to the slashdot crowd, but if the average user doesn't know how to change their homepage, how will they install the many extensions required to bring Firefox initial functionality up to the standard of IE. Firefox has many benefits for nerds, but it isn't as functional out of the box.

Re:"Quick Tab"

[milimetric]

this must be the millionth comment on this issue... so silly.
I think that quick tab thing looks like an unmentionable appendage, hangin out of its enclosure. Totally ugly. Here's a little piece of information that all you foXpose people don't realize: Double click on the tab bar and you get a new tab. Woaaaa! And you don't even have to see the ugly appendage. I bet microsoft missed that when they were looking through firefox to grab features. Also, Why doesn't Ctrl+K get you to the google search box? Because Ctrl+E does. But as all linux firefox users know, Ctrl+K is what works in linux as well as windows firefox versions.

Re:"Quick Tab"

[TheRaven64]

I believe this feature originated in OmniWeb. There has been talk of integrating it into Safari and Firefox, but the developers of both did some UI analysis and decided it was a nice gimmick with little actual use.

Re:"Quick Tab"

[milimetric]

oops... heh, my bad... quick tab is cool, foXpose has that too... yeah, hehe, wrong feature, i thought they were talking about that little new tab nub to the right of your rightmost tab.

Re:"Quick Tab"

[DesireCampbell]

The best bit really is that if the browser does crash (and unfortunately, it does at times), when you restart you are pretty much exactly where you left it, including history, so you can use that back button. The only issue you will have is if the site you were browsing has sessions, then it won't necessarily 'just work' - you'll have to log in again. I love that - I've got Session Saver for FireFox. It can save multiple windows of multiple tabs as "one session" and then save multiple sessions - i love it.

Re:"Quick Tab"

[cowens]

Because you might have nine tabs open. Sometimes it is easier to click once to show all and click on the right iconified image of the page then to go through all tabs until you find the one you are looking for.

Re:"Quick Tab"

[DigitlDud]

"Quick tabs" just show how counterproducutive tabs are in the first place. One must ask, why not just have the pages in seperate windows?

Re:"Quick Tab"

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you really want regular users using all those risky extensions?

Re:"Quick Tab"

[Anonymous Coward]

Firefox has many benefits for nerds, but it isn't as functional out of the box.

Actually IE isn't as functional out of the box as Firefox. IE 7 is MS's response that's supposed to address this, but by the time IE 7 is out, Firefox will have advanced (look at features planned for 2.0), so again IE will be not as functional out of the box.

Re:"Quick Tab"

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

"Quick tabs" just show how counterproducutive tabs are in the first place. One must ask, why not just have the pages in seperate windows?

Because the Windows task bar (and other task bars that copy it) absolutely suck at dealing with large numbers of windows at one time. Nicer Window managers utilizing virtual desktops, expose, etc. do a better job, but grouping windows as one tabbed window does make sense for certain applications. I mean, have you ever had thirty browser windows open at once and tried to find one particular one using the standard Windows interface? It is slow any annoying, thus tabs as a hack to work around it.

Re:"Quick Tab"

[DigitlDud]

Yes, when you have tons of screen space like I do, it helps to spread your windows out. =)

Re:"Quick Tab"

[Anonymous Coward]

Will it work under linux ?

bah, then I'm not interested.

Re:"Quick Tab"

[Crayon Kid]

Firefox has many benefits for nerds, but it isn't as functional out of the box.

Can we stop saying this already? Firefox is lean and mean by default on purpose. It's a well known fact that users are put off by too much customization options. Default Firefox offers a very well balanced combination of few options and intuitive functionality. Add extensions if you need them. Have a simple browser otherwise. It's the best of both worlds from my humble point of view.

Re:"Quick Tab"

[kbro_the_nomad]

Wow... Never thought that being a nerd meant being able to use the tools>extensions... feature... How standards have fallen...

Re:"Quick Tab"

[Anonymous Coward]

"isn't as functional out of the box"

huh? examples?

oh, you mean activex right?

Re:"Quick Tab"

[Cromac]

Then don't use tabs, it's not like you're forced to do it. MS even makes it harder to use tabs since their context menus is missing a "open in new tab" option like Mozilla/Firefox has.

Their option to save a group of tabs and reopen them doesn't appear to work either. When I tried it in IE 7 it saved the group fine but just opened up a bunch of blank tabs when trying to open the group. Time will tell if they get it right by release, but Mozilla still looks better. :)

Re:"Quick Tab"

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems like just yesterday I was looking through the tabbed browsing section of Mozilla Update and found yet another extension that looks almost identical.

Re:"Quick Tab"

[kitzilla]

As I believe at least one poster has pointed out, thumbnail image tabs have been around in Omniweb on the Mac platform for a while.

Thumbnail tabs aren't for everyone or every application. But they're more than a visual gimmick if you use them properly. A picture is worth a thousand words -- and you can only get about two words on a tab without clicking it. I find a row of iconified web pages easier to sort, particularly before you get really zeroed in on something. If you're a visual person, this might be the case with you, too. All you need is screen real estate and RAM.

Anyway, thumbnail tabs are more than gimmickry if you use them properly, and if you process information visually. I tend to use Omniweb for heavy lifting, and Shiira or Safari for everything else.

Re:"Quick Tab"

[imess]

If the average users don;t even know where to change the homepage, how would you expect them to find out all the functionality of of Firefox even it's provided by default?

Re:"Quick Tab"

[muszek]

Sorry for bugging you if you feel it's off-topic. After many years of using Opera almost exclusively (I recently started using FF for some neat extensions, but only on occassion) I decided to switch to FF yesterday, since most of issues that ticked me in FF were solved by either 1.5 or some extensions. Plus, somehow ./ was rendering awfully slow on my Opera (version 8.51 under Ubuntu) -- must be some nasty bug - scrolling is very slow and it seems to engage CPU as it was some _really_ demanding task (and no, I don't have legacy hardware). Things that I didn't like about FF that got fixed.

-- session restoring on a startup - Session Saver extension (link in parent's post)
-- tab duplication (I use this A LOT) - Duplicate Tab extension
-- not opening new window like 5 times per hour of normal work, which annoyed me the most - almost fixed in 1.5 (some things, like "get more extensions" still spawns a new window)
-- back button loads pages from cache (huge speed increase) - new in 1.5, I'm not sure if it needs Fasterfox extension (which is really cool, btw, just make sure you don't want to be a nasty boy who has pre-fetching turned on :) ).
-- tab reordering - new in 1.5

These are all things that are in Opera by default and I really didn't like FF 1.0.7 and earlier behavior in these areas. But - apart from zillions of cool extensions - it has some nice things by default:
-- right click on some website's search input field and select "add a keyword for this search". example: assing a "wp" to Polish wikipedia. Now you may simply type "wpl Kiebasa" in the address bar to make this search. It's doable in Opera, but requires manual editing of some ini file(s) (haven't done it, was too lazy).
-- writing a string in address bar and hitting enter works like "I'm feeling lucky" on google.com - it gets you to google's first result for that string. Saves precious time when you can't remember exact address of some website, but you're sure it will be first in SERPS for some string. Example: typing "ubuntu forums" in address bar will get you straight to ubuntuforums.org.

Re:"Quick Tab"

[Ksevio]

Opera has a similar feature in their not yet released version: http://operawatch.blogspot.com/2006/02/opera-9-to- add-tab-thumbnail-images.html

Re:"Quick Tab"

[jp10558]

I still don't really get the use - web pages are textual documents, and really, I still don't see how this is faster then just clicking on the tab you want.

Re:"Quick Tab"

[davidsyes]

The moz page was as interesting as vegemite, to me. I found the:

http://users.blueprintit.co.uk/~dave/web/firefox/T abSidebar/index.html

to be more apparent to my eyes.

But, in either case, I hope they make it to Konqueror, Gnome, and the other browsers in *nux land...

I wonder if Kasbar will be adapted to show these thumbnails like they already show the desktop. I like seeing my Lotus SmartSuite appear in a Kasbar thumbnail, especialy a giant/huge thumbnail. Kasbar is nice for showing off.

Re:"Quick Tab"

[mr_shifty]

I'm an Opera user as well (predominately), and I too have encountered some weird performance issues on Slashdot threads in Opera. I've discovered that turning off the "smooth scrolling" seems to prevent them, but I know just what you're talking about.

I also agree about FF1.5... they've fixed a lot of things, but there are still some really stupid irritating things (such as the spawning a new window when you get new extensions... I hate that) that keep making me go back to Opera.

If Opera had an "adblock" and "flash block" plugin, I'd probably never use anything else.

Re:"Quick Tab"

[muszek]

I have smooth scrolling turned off... I turned it on just to see what happens and yes, there's some weird, annoying effect plus scrolling ./ pages with a lot of comments is still very slow.

Yet another off-topic: couple of months ago I had a FF extension that let me fold/expand comment trees on slashdot. I tried to find it today with no luck. Anyone knows the URL? (and yes, I tried searching for it).

Re:"Quick Tab"

[masklinn]

Not an extension, more than likely a Greasemonkey script for Slashdot, i'd bet on Slashdot: Live Comment Tree: Lets you expand and collapse entire threads in an article's comments.

That's actually not the latest version

[elrous0]

This one has MUCH more features.

-Eric

Re:That's actually not the latest version

[Anonymous Coward]

Many more features perhaps?

Re:That's actually not the latest version

[elrous0]

No

-Eric

Re:That's actually not the latest version

[Shaklee39]

How is that funny? Firefox is a piece of shit.

Re:That's actually not the latest version

[davidsyes]

I wish FF would list the OS platforms alphabetically or by virtue and nascence. Bigger shouldn't always mean listed FIRST.

But, I hope the Kasbar maintainers extend Kasbar to do this. Is there any plugin for it, anyone?

I'm no programmer, but I imagine it could be something akin to the news tickers. You just feed Kasbar a bunch of your bookmarks or URL history/cache and then have Kasbar periodically pop up the refreshed web page in an Aqua/translucent-like form for a duration the user specifies.

Or, interestingly (possibly) Kasbar-Webar/Kwebar could feed from the screensaver module that takes random URLs from the web.

Kasbar Team?

nice editors

[Anonymous Coward]

Clearly the slashdot editors have the memory of goldfish. This is happening very frequently of late. Slashdot is really going downhill. Is spell checking articles also too much to ask?

Amateurs.

SP2?

[voice_of_all_reason]

Run aaaawaaayyy!

Re:SP2?

[Kasracer]

For what reason? I have installed SP2 on numerous XP machines with absolutely NO issues and it runs great.

Re:SP2?

[fudg3tunn3l]

Sorry, I start running at the merest mention of Internet Exploder

Re:SP2?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've installed it once and the machine went much much slower. So why risk it again? You can't back it out!

Re:SP2?

[voice_of_all_reason]

Like the above poster said, not being able to undo all the changes is a big red flag. I did try it out, but fighting with the firewall and other miscellaneous "enhancements" ended up being ridiculous, with not even a perceptible advantage to upgrading. I eventually moved all my data to one hard drive and formatted before throwing a nice, lean, torrented copy of regular xp onto it. On a positive note, the computer enema ended up improving performance across the board, for a mere day's work.

Re:SP2?

[rwven]

MS does seem to think the answer to any and all security problems is enabling that danged firewall. Since when will a firewall protect you from an E-Mail virus? (Not that viruses have anything "directly" to do with security all the time...) But the thing is, dealing with the windows firewall is a hassle. If I want a firewall, i'll get a router and use IT as a firewall. (which i have by the way). Hardware firewalls don't completely get in the way like software ones do.

Microsofts stance on security would be best placed in tha area of finding and plugging holes. Part of me wonders: Does MS have any team of people that look for security holes in windows? Or do they just wait until some 3rd party comes out with a release about a newly discovered hole and THEN decide to fix it.

This isn't intended to bash MS, because i use and pretty much depend on their products, but it is meant to maybe gander at their priorities. As a USER of their software I probably care about MS security a lot more than the people who DON'T use it and just bash it on here. :-D I do feel secure in using windows for the most part, but due to past hiccups it's just that nagging feeling... It's just an awfuly big target and THAT makes all the difference.

Re:SP2?

[Anonymous Coward]

You must not have a pretty fucked up computer or your a moron.

ive install sp2 on at least 20 machines. (i even keep a copy on my lan webserver so i dont have to wait a hour for it to download.) not once has a machine ever died while installing xp sp2.

Re:SP2?

[Spy der Mann]

Sorry, I start running at the merest mention of Internet Exploder

Sorry to inform you that this name's outdated. Internet Exploiter is the latest one. :P

IE7 is a dupe!

[Alphab.fr]

The "new" quicktab feature is nothing more than a copy of the Firefox Viewmatic Foxposé...
http://viamatic.com/index.php/firefox

And M$ says to dev, please install IE7 Beta and test your pages... except that if I do that, it kills IE6, and I can't check my pages as they'll be seen by 90% of visitors...

Re:IE7 is a dupe!

[Anonymous Coward]

. . .which in itself is still a copy of OmniWeb for Macintosh; which has had this feature for a while now. ;) (http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omniweb/)

Re:IE7 is a dupe!

[masklinn]

Not exactly, the copy of the omniweb feature would be Tab Sidebar (which is the exact duplicate of the Omniweb implementation)

Re:IE7 is a dupe!

[feste12]

To Microsoft's credit, if you install the IE7 beta, there is a one-click uninstall which reverts you back to IE6 (without even restarting your machine). The web developers out there shouldn't worry about testing their sites. They can always switch back to IE6.

Re:IE7 is a dupe!

[Anonymous Coward]

And M$ says to dev, please install IE7 Beta and test your pages... except that if I do that, it kills IE6, and I can't check my pages as they'll be seen by 90% of visitors...

With Crossover Office running on Linux you can have as many different versions of IE as you want installed at the same time, although you cannot install IE 7 yet because of the 'Genuine Advantage' thing.

Re:IE7 is a dupe!

[Anonymous Coward]

The "new" quicktab feature is nothing more than a copy of the Firefox Viewmatic Foxposé...

Which is basically a dupe of tab exposé from Shiira.

Re:IE7 is a dupe!

[Gnascher]

Hmmm I didn't find the one-click uninstall option. I had to go through add/remove programs, show updates, uninstall IE7. It required a reboot on install and un-install. This is a pain in the ass for developers, even if the one-click uninstall feature really does work. I should be able to have IE6 AND IE7 on the same machine ... websites are going to have to support BOTH versions of this shoddy browser for a long time to come. Developers need to be able to have both browsers available for cross-browser testing. Really should be released with the OPTION of installing it as a stand-alone or as a replacement.

Re:IE7 is a dupe!

[Anonymous Coward]

Web developers TEST their sites??

Fuck!

Re:IE7 is a dupe!

[Anonymous Coward]

This post is a dupe

Re:IE7 is a dupe!

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

And M$ says to dev, please install IE7 Beta and test your pages... except that if I do that, it kills IE6, and I can't check my pages as they'll be seen by 90% of visitors...

This is part of the problem with the archaic install/uninstall system for programs on Windows. On OS X, most programs are completely self contained. They use a "folder is the application" metaphor, where double clicking on the folder (which ends in .app) launches the application, but at the same time you can open up the folder and see the different binaries and resources used by that application. Further, each program writes a preferences file in the appropriate user, or system library. That means you can easily install five versions of a program side by side as simply as dragging the programs where you want them. You can uninstall them by dragging them to the trash. You can copy them to another machine by dragging them onto a network volume or portable media. Since the preferences file lives independently of the application, different versions can share one file. All your instances of a browser can easily share the same bookmarks and settings. If you trash one version and then install another it will likely still have all of your preferences and settings.

The only drawback is a privacy one for users who share accounts for some reason and are not knowledgeable enough to know that preferences can live on without an application. I think it is well worth it though to be able to easily test all the different versions of web browsers and PDF readers without having to jump through hoops.

Re:IE7 is a dupe!

[Shakes268]

Its not a problem for those that are running Virtual PC. If you are testing beta software, you really should be running it on a different machine or in something like VMWare. If you're not - you're asking for trouble.

I shouldn't have to remind people on /. that beta software should not be ran/tested on a production machine whether it's made by Microsoft, Adobe, or even a game. Beta does not mean stable!

Re:IE7 is a dupe!

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

I shouldn't have to remind people on /. that beta software should not be ran/tested on a production machine whether it's made by Microsoft, Adobe, or even a game. Beta does not mean stable!

I'd agree for servers, but for workstations it is usually not a big deal at all. I don't even bother to use a separate account for most beta software. I mean, has anyone ever had problems with this on anything but Windows? The absolute worst case scenario I've seen in the last several years was the application coring and borking its associated daemon. On modern systems, applications just don't crash the OS, or even the GUI anymore.

Re:IE7 is a dupe!

[assassinator42]

It's more of an IE being integrated with Windows problem, as many windows apps are more self-contained.

Re:IE7 is a dupe!

[mattbrundage]

And M$ says to dev, please install IE7 Beta and test your pages... except that if I do that, it kills IE6, and I can't check my pages as they'll be seen by 90% of visitors...

You can run multiple versions of IE at the same time. Another workaround, of course, is to wait until Netscape incorporates IE7's rendering engine.

Re:IE7 is a dupe!

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

It's more of an IE being integrated with Windows problem, as many windows apps are more self-contained.

The majority of Windows programs, in my experience, fail to install multiple versions of the same program, because they scatter files in many locations, including the registry. This means a new version wants to put often incompatible files in the same location as an older version. Additionally, programs often only work if files are installed in a particular location. Programs are rarely self contained and usually have a folder with an executable and a number of other files in it, as well as a registry entry and often other files in other locations.

Thumbnail view

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a plugin in firefox that does thumbnails of all the tabs, it is called foXpose. So much for IE having features that FireFox does not.

Re:Thumbnail view

[sucker_muts]

So much for IE having features that FireFox does not.

How many regular browser users ever change a setting for that browser? How many firefox users install extensions?

Microsoft realises the mose people use software out of the box, and never touch settings. They don't expect the mainstream of people wil tweak into oblivion and so they choose to make a browser which has everything as it should as default.

(This is about the same way opera does their browser. Did you ever check how many extensions there are for firefox? Are they all the same quality/stability? Do you check all those extensions once a month to see for any new ones?)

Look, I'm not trying to be a flamebait here, but simplicity is key for the most Microsoft software users. It's just that simple...

Re:Thumbnail view

[Anonymous Coward]

"they choose to make a browser which has everything as it should as default"

Two words. Bol ogna.

You must be off your rocker. As it should? ActiveX? They have "everything" by default? Like the old CSS1 standard? If you like m$ so be it but don't hide behind a cloak with this illogical crap about how they are doing things right in the browser market.

Re:Thumbnail view

[john83]

Firefox checks for updates to the extensions automatically. Which is not to say that you can't check for them manually. You're right though, most peons don't tweek anything, no matter how easy you make it. Didn't I read something about a distro of Firefox with a bunch of extensions pre-included?

Re:Thumbnail view

[astralbat]

Firefox extensions are good for testing the waters and you can be sure that if it's worth the extra resources, there would be a strong argument to migrate good ones to the main code base.

Look at IE who haven't tried anything new for years and now they're playing catch up. In this way they'll always be behind the likes of Firefox which is community driven.

Re:Thumbnail view

[sucker_muts]

They put stuff as default to make it easy for everyone. Users, website creaters, people with bad intentions.

The first rule of Microsoft is: Let's make it as easy so blind monkeys can use it. All else comes as an afterthought.

Did I ever state Microsoft should be applauded? No! But they make a coherent package, with lots of default stuff (and crap). That's my whole point.

(I actually hate Microsoft for all the right reasons and type this sentence right now in opera on my Mandriva box. Don't think I'm a Microsoft fanboy...)

Re:Thumbnail view

[Anonymous Coward]

Not trying to be anti-microsoft, but as I see it, out-of-the-box, Opera is the best browser around. Firefox is powerful for its extensions and IE is trying to catch up.

Having IE7 play catch up isn't without good reason. Firefox strides in devilish speeds because of its open source nature. Opera has a company behind it making money solely on web browsing and doing a hell of a job also (although an OSS fan myself, Opera rocks...). IE on the other hand is making microsoft 0$ and costing them millions in term of security. If I where a microsoft developer, I wouldn't want to be on the IE team, struggling not to break crappy old implementations because it is MS' policy and having to double secure check my code for security because I'll probably be the one embarrased in time. So, IE7 is simple for more reasons than it being planned as I see it! ;)

Re:Thumbnail view

[sucker_muts]

I know that, so that's why I said 'Do you check all those extensions once a month to see for any new ones?', so I mean to actually check for _new ones_, not if they're being updated.

Re:Thumbnail view

[Ubergrendle]

Mod parent up. I consider myself a bit of a software gear-head (love to try everything and the kitchen sink, tweak until the cows come home, etc) and I've stopped experimenting with the plug-ins. Most work -- by themselves! But once you get 20 or 30 plugins running, the often conflict in terms of user experience, and ultimately lead to browser instability.

Don't get me wrong...I won't be going back to IE. But I think a 'vanilla' version of Firefox or Opera is what most people will be considering, when moving away from IE. a better approach would be to 'adopt' plugins into the base code with each major release...gradually increase the featureset, that can be enabled/disabled via the default install.

Re:Thumbnail view

[Itchy Rich]

If you like m$ so be it but don't hide behind a cloak with this illogical crap about how they are doing things right in the browser market.

Right for whom? Companies act in the way that they think is right for them. Some of them think it's worth trying to keep the techno-utopian nerds happy, some think it's too expensive. The fact that you call them "m$" is a good indication that it'd take a large investment for them to get you to like them. You're just making their decision easier.

Re:Thumbnail view

[Spad]

Seamonkey has the functionality built in - no need to piss about with endless extensions.

Re:Thumbnail view

[man_of_mr_e]

I'm curious. Microsoft has been showing this feature for months now. As far as I can tell, Foxpose was only released earlier last month (Jauary 3). Did Microsoft copy Foxpose, or did Foxpose copy an early beta of IE? (Both of which copied MacOS, though I don't think Safari has that feature)

This kind of thing doesn't happen overnight. It takes time to develop, the question is, which got the idea from whom?

Re:Thumbnail view

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft realises the mose people use software out of the box, and never touch settings.

Is that why Windows comes out of the box vulnerable to every spyware and virus in the world?

Re:Thumbnail view

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

This kind of thing doesn't happen overnight. It takes time to develop, the question is, which got the idea from whom?

Perhaps they both copied it from Apple's Expose feature which does the same thing, but for all windows in the GUI. I'd guess Foxpose at least was copied from there, given the name.

Re:Thumbnail view

[man_of_mr_e]

I did mention that in my post.

However, Safari doesn't do this, so you can't see the individual tabs in a safari window through expose.

Re:Thumbnail view

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

However, Safari doesn't do this, so you can't see the individual tabs in a safari window through expose.

And it is completely inconceivable to you that multiple UI designers, when looking for a way to make a whole series of grouped windows easy to sort through, would not look at one of the more prominent new ways of doing just that, and copy it for within their application? Any GUI designer that has not looked at expose and tabs and considered them as a model for their application, should probably be fired now.

Re:Thumbnail view

[Crayon Kid]

Do you check all those extensions once a month to see for any new ones?)

They update by themselves. It's like magic.

Re:Thumbnail view

[sucker_muts]

Check this: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=175857&thresho ld=-1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&pid=14615426#14615 511

Re:Thumbnail view

[Jarlsberg]

This is a huge issue I have with Firefox. A lot of the extensions only work with certain versions of Firefox, some with .8, some with .9, some only with 1.01 - 1.04, and then some only with 1.5. I recently download 1.5 and tried installing the Web developer extension, but that was no go since it only worked with 1.01 to 1.04. Fun.

Arn't they bored?

[el_womble]

Is it just me or does Micorosft appear bored by IE7. Its not like its a finished product, they're are tens of standards that they don't conform too, its leaky and yet they're taking years between major revisions.

I know in the 90s it looked like who ever won the browser wars would take over the world, but 10 years on that seems to be the business logic of the underpant gnomes. Why don't they just give up, and distribute Firefox, SeaMonkey or some Gecko based wonder, instead of IE?

Re:Arn't they bored?

[Malc]

How can you criticise IE for being leaky when every /.er's favourite browser (Firefox) is extremely leaky. When I close tabs I don't seem to get all my memory back. With just five tabs open, it's currently using 245MB of memory.

Re:Arn't they bored?

[masklinn]

I'd suggest switching to Firefox 1.5, which does free the tab's memory (unless it's within the set cache size and stuff), and actually remembering to set the cache size.

Re:Arn't they bored?

[rainman_bc]

I'll agree with you on that - Firefox is really bad with memory management, especially on windows.

I really don't notice it though on my linux boxen...

Re:Arn't they bored?

[el_womble]

Perhaps I should have been more verbose. My issue with IE isn't so much its memory leakage as much as the security holes. My real point was, that IE is too important as a platform for MS to get bored with it. Web technology is moving at a faster pace than it would appear Microsft can keep up with, and yet their browswer is still #1. The only reason I'd suggest going with a OSS broswer is that it frees microsofts engineers to focus on something that the company as a whole is more interested in.

Re:Arn't they bored?

[Bogtha]

Web technology is moving at a faster pace than it would appear Microsft can keep up with

I don't think that's the case. If Microsoft wanted Internet Explorer to keep up with the other browsers, it would have done. But both the Internet Explorer developer teams were disbanded and the developers either left Microsoft or worked on other things. That's not a case of the developers being unable to keep up, that's a case of management deliberately discontinuing development.

Can you really say that web technology is moving at a faster pace than Internet Explorer when most developers are limited to using whatever Internet Explorer can handle? Almost by definition, the pace at which web technology is moving is the same as the pace at which Internet Explorer is moving. That's why this first real update since 2001 is so important.

Re:Arn't they bored?

[thetejon]

Actually, it doesn't free the tabs' memory in Windows 2000, which I'm forced to use at work. It doesn't even free the memory when you close Firefox 1.5 unless I kill the process.

I'm not saying anyone should use IE, and I still love Firefox, but it's not perfect.

Re:Arn't they bored?

[Jugalator]

Why don't they just give up, and distribute Firefox, SeaMonkey or some Gecko based wonder, instead of IE?

For one thing, it would break a ton of both MS and third party apps developed to make use of the IE renderer.

Re:Arn't they bored?

[bunratty]

If it doesn't, you should head over to MozillaZine where they've been discussing the memory problem for weeks. No one can demonstrate that Firefox doesn't free memory when you close tabs, even using the new leak detection tool. It sounds like the second problem you describe is a zombie process, which is not a problem of freeing memory.

Re:Arn't they bored?

[Malc]

I am using Mozilla 1.5.

After restarting the browser and restoring all of my tabs with their history (Tab Browser Extension), it's using 70MB instead of 250.

Maybe the problem is with the tab browser extension, maybe it's with Firefox. I haven't seen much improvement in its memory usage since I upgraded a while back.

Re:Arn't they bored?

[Omestes]

You should try it on OS X, it has been a persistant (and persistantly ignored) bug on OS X for the last couple version (pre-PR, even). It runs like FireFox did on Windows around 0.5 . I can't cite my own usage right now, because I'm using the G4 Deerpark port, so my memory and processor use will be slightly more in-line than vanilla Firefox.

But with use, and exstensive tab use I will still climb into the hundreds of megs, even with the process idling. (App closed). As said above, the only way to clear up this wasted memory is by killing the process.

On OS X, it becomes almost unusable. I toy with switching to Opera daily, and use Safari for all my small tasks. Sadly, Safari updates kill Pithhelmet, so I lose my adblocker. And Opera seems rather like bloatware.

Re:Arn't they bored?

[nan0click]

The insecurities of Internet Explorer are not because of the bad programming jobs at Microsoft, it's because of the fact it's the most used browser in the world (because its the only one installed by default in Windows). People who create virus' and exploit security holes will put most of their effort into hacking Internet Explorer because there are so many people who use it. If Microsoft were to switch over to Mozilla Firefox, these malicious programmers would also begin exploiting Firefox. While we all brag about our security because we use Firefox, the safety of Firefox would disapeer if Microsoft adopted it for their main webrowser in Windows.

-Nan0click

Re:Arn't they bored?

[jackchance]

check out config.trim_on_minimize it works wonders on firefox and thunderbird.

Re:Arn't they bored?

[bunratty]

That doesn't demonstrate a problem with Firefox not freeing tabs' memory. It could be an unrelated memory bug. Several Firefox extensions (most notably Adblock) have been known to cause memory problems in Firefox 1.5, for example. If you can figure out what's causing the problem, be sure to post what it is to MozillaZine, unless it's a well-known extension problem.

Re:Arn't they bored?

[Malc]

Sorry, but I'm not going to spend my free time debugging Firefox. I spend enough of work life doing things like that and I want to get away from computers in my spare time. Besides, over the years I've become very disillusioned with the Mozilla folks and their attitudes. It's (and they're) just not worth my time nor effort. Which reminds me of a previous incident where Mozilla used to cause my system to BSOD - they denied it for a long long time until suddenly it turned out there was a massive resource leak (image resources??) that was finally fixed a couple of years ago. All along they stated that it couldn't possibly be their product causing problems. Whatever.

I have 2GB of memory on my computer so I will live with the memory leaks (they're not causing *me* any serious grief). But to my original point: Firefox users and zealots shouldn't criticise IE for having memory leaks.

Re:Arn't they bored?

[masklinn]

It does, I'm using Windows 2000 pro and I did the test with some very heavy pages (a pair of Fark image threads) that bumped the memory used by FF to over 500Mb and increasing (i killed the tabs before it was completely loaded), and Firefox did get back to around 150Mb of ram consumption (which is more or less how I set it) as soon as the offending tabs were closed.

I think you should probably be very careful with the FF extensions, that's often where the worst issues lie, Adblock is a repeated and known offender for example. Extensions come at a price, and ram consumption going through the roof sometimes is part of the package

(oh, and about closing firefox and then killing it, give the poor guy some time to properly free all it's resources, you shouldn't kill it unless it takes more than 20-30s to close)

Re:Arn't they bored?

[bunratty]

If you want to save time, don't waste it complaining about something that may or may not be a problem. I'm sure you have better things to do with your time that criticize some software that may not even be to blame for the problems you're having, right?

If you don't want someone to criticize IE for having memory leaks, I suggest you don't criticize Firefox's memory usage.

Re:Arn't they bored?

[FatMacDaddy]

"the safety of Firefox would disapeer if Microsoft adopted it for their main webrowser in Windows."

I respectfully disagree. Your argument is one that can never be proven and is akin to saying that all code is poorly written (or written the same) and that anything and everything will be susceptible if enough people focus on it. This is not true.

The problems in IE came about in large part by MS's decision to place marketing ahead of engineering. They raced to incorporate IE into the OS to confound the anti-trust prosecution they were facing, and we've all been living with the consequences ever since. They have a history of sacrificing software integrity for the sake of commercial success. Their goal is not to produce bulletproof, secure software; their goal is to produce good-enough software that continues their desktop monopoly.

Re:Arn't they bored?

[Anonymous Coward]

He is correct there *is* a memory leak when using tabs and the only way to clear it is to close the browser and restart it.

What causes the leak, not sure, but I think it is something that SHOULd be fixed as it is a quality control problem.

Re:Arn't they bored?

[fbjon]

Extensions come at a price

<obvious flame>
That's why I like my features well-designed and integrated.
</obvious flame>

Re:Arn't they bored?

[fbjon]

He's not criticizing, he's providing a counterweight to all the IE-bashing.

Re:Arn't they bored?

[jp10558]

Does Opera run better or worse than the other browsers? IDK, I hate to get into the old argument, but unless you define bloat as sheer # of features (I usually put in them interfering with me, or running slow, or taking up lots of memory/processor time).

OTOH, Opera loves memory too - especially on windows with java. And the netscape flash plugin leaks memory, so on windows that's an issue unless you disable plugins/flash somehow.

I will say that for me, even on WinXP, I find Opera snappy, and not very difficult to pare down to a setup I like.

However, I'm supriese that Safari isn't more than sufficient on a Mac, I was under the impression it was pretty much the best browser for OSX.

Re:Arn't they bored?

[Malc]

1) That's not the case at all. My point was about hypocrasy, not about criticising one browser over another.

2) There is a problem. Don't try to diminish or dismiss it just because you haven't observed it. It's precisely that attitude in the past that has allowed serious bugs in Mozilla to remain present for years.

Re:Arn't they bored?

[Omestes]

Safari is quite sufficient, but I have a couple problems with it. Like its utter lack of flexibility (no extentions), and each patch breaks Pithhelmet, and the like, the only decent adblockers for it. It is, I think, the only browser other than Konquerer that does ACID2, right now, and the webkit is quite fast compaired to even Firefox and Opera. Even the RSS, aggragator funtionality is better than most Firefox extentions (such as Sage).

But I want my extentions. Even when Pithhelmet is up to date, it crashes Safari daily, something that my current load of Firefox extentions never do. In limited use, Firefox (before leakage) is even a little bit more memory friendly.

Opera, I really do like it. And it does run well, and with an hour of customization, it even looks neat. It does handle memory better than either Safari or FF. The wand feature breaks about once a week though. I have something against software holding a bunch of unwanted features, too.

I guess I use FF because I've been using Mozilla since it was Phoenix, and have a certain amount of pride for the project. Sadly, it works fine on WinXP, but didn't quite follow through the Mac transition as other projects (but better than OpenOffice.org, which is a sack of moldering feces on Macs). Also the OSS roots of FF fits my ideological bent.

I do keep Opera sitting around, waiting for me to get mad enough, though.

foXpose anyone?

[Sodki]

They tried to outdo Firefox tab browsing with a feature call Quick tab which shows thumbnail view of all open tabs in a single window.

Yeah, but we already have foXpose for Mozilla Firefox. Kazehakase also has something similar. It's really nothing new.

ie7

[Anonymous Coward]

ie7...eleven...eleven...call pizza pizza, hey hey hey

late night

Microsoft should thank Firefox

[digitaldc]

The new browser also includes tabbed browsing and a search box on a more streamlined toolbar, concepts that should be familiar to users of Firefox, a rival browser distributed by the Mozilla Foundation.

Maybe at their next huge product release, Microsoft could give some credit to Mozilla and Firefox for helping them make a better browser? Just a thought.

Re:Microsoft should thank Firefox

[octaene]

Now, you know that won't happen. That was a carefully written statement you quoted. What's left unsaid is that Firefox had all these features first. Again, Microsoft isn't going to admit that in any kind of written form.

As has been said several times in posts here, the really sad part is that a lot of people will adopt IE7 (mainly because Microsoft's EOL/EOS update cycle will force them to do so), never knowing about the alternatives.

Re:Microsoft should thank Firefox

[CyricZ]

I know you're joking, but keep in mind that many of the innovative developments which are credited to Firefox actually appeared first in other browsers, such as Opera, Konqueror, and Amaya. Tabs, ad blocking, mouse gestures, and so forth.

Re:Microsoft should thank Firefox

[Anonymous Coward]

Did Firefox give credit to Opera?

Re:Microsoft should thank Firefox

[DnasTheGreat]

Of course, and they are excellent browsers too. (I rotate between a wide variety of browsesr since I like all of them.)

But they never disrupted the monopoly.

Firefox's credit is being able to go mainstream and make the public aware of existence outside that horrid blue e.

If it weren't for Firefox, instead of nearly getting to be almost at a point of looking remotely like something that could fool one into thinking it's possibly not a pile of smelly brown stuff, IE would simply stay a pile of smelly brown stuff.

Now all we need is Linux to become more mainstream and maybe Windows will be almost useable!

Re:Microsoft should thank Firefox

[man_of_mr_e]

That's a very strange argument. By your reasoning, you can't fault Microsoft for copying anyone else because they're the one to bring the feature to the publics attention.

Justifications suck all around.

Re:Microsoft should thank Firefox

[Anonymous Coward]

many of the innovative developments which are credited to Firefox actually appeared first in other browsers, such as Opera, Konqueror, and Amaya. Tabs, ad blocking, mouse gestures, and so forth.

Any theories as to why these other browsers haven't become as popular as Firefox? How about theories as to why those innovations are still attributed to Firefox?

Re:Microsoft should thank Firefox

[kurt_ram]

Firefox was never mainstream and it will never be.

Re:Microsoft should thank Firefox

[Jarlsberg]

Yeah, but Firefox didn't have all these things first. Other browsers pioneered these concepts before they were included in Firefox.

Re:Microsoft should thank Firefox

[CyricZ]

It really has little impact on me what Firefox may have done to Microsoft's monopoly of Windows web browsers. I use OpenBSD. I use Konqueror. I don't visit websites that rely on Microsoft-specific extensions.

As far as I'm concerned, Internet Explorer doesn't exist. And thus whatever Firefox does to Internet Explorer's marketshare has little effect on me. More importantly, though, it doesn't stop the Konqueror developers from providing excellent software. And that's what matters: putting out a superior product.

Re:Microsoft should thank Firefox

[CyricZ]

I wouldn't fault Microsoft for borrowing technology that works. I mean, why shouldn't they borrow better ideas from others? It can benefit everyone if they do that.

If anything, I'd be all for Microsoft borrowing directly from open source projects. Open source software is often of a higher quality. A higher-quality release of Windows may help us all out. Those who use it directly will benefit from a far more productive experience. And those of us who run servers and networks might not have our bandwidth wasted as much by software that has exploited millions upon millions of PCs running Windows.

Arguments about Microsoft borrowing from others is a petty exercise of idealogues. Those of us who have real-world concerns realize that increased productivity is far more important than whether borrowing the best technology from others is ethical.

Thumbnail tab views of tabs

[cocoamix]

a feature call Quick tab which shows thumbnail view of all open tabs in a single window.

Sorry IE7. Omniweb beat you to that one.

Is it open-source yet?

[ylikone]

No? Thanks, but I'll stick with Firefox.

css fixes?

[oyenstikker]

Did they fix the 3 pixel shift bug?
Did they fix position:fixed?
Did they fix float messing up other blocks?

(I can't try it, as I use Windows 2000 Server.)

Re:css fixes?

[KJSwartz]

I cant use IE7 either... I have a 400MHz Macintosh G4. Just dawdling until the new intel Macs come out and doing my part to avoid the speed bumps.

Re:css fixes?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can "fool" it to run on other Microsoft Windows versions of the NT-family by:

1.) Unzipping/extracting the distro file's files to an IE7 folder

2.) Deleting the UPDATE subfolder that formed under it

3.) Deleting the shlwapi.dll in that IE7 folder you made & extracted the IE7 distro files to

4.) + lastly creating a BLANK FILE called IEXPLORE.exe.local with notepad.exe & putting it into the IE7 folder you made & extracted all the files from the Ie7 distro into.

* :)

(Fact is, in doing THAT above myself? Well, I am running/using it to post here in fact, right now, on Windows Server 2003 SP #1 fully hotfix patched as of this date).

APK

P.S.=> It runs SLOW, but works so far (not much testing). I still like Opera 8.51 better because it is SO much faster (noticeably so)... apk

Re:css fixes?

[Bogtha]

Yes, yes and yes.

I appreciate that it's a genuine question, but a completely information-free comment should not be Score: 4, Insightful.

Re:css fixes?

[oyenstikker]

"The procedure entry point of _wtof could not be located in the dynamic link library msvcrt.dll"

Re:css fixes?

[Junta]

An Insightful comment can contain no information. If it was scored informative, you have a valid beef.

Some of the most insightful statements in the world are simply important questions.

Now this comment, -1 Offtopic.

Re:css fixes?

[Strixy]

Can I call BS on that? Rhetoric, all of it and I quote from your above post on the MS IE Blog, "I wanted to make it clear that we know Beta 1 makes little progress for web developers in improving our standards support, particularly in our CSS implementation. I feel badly about this, but we have been focused on how to get the most done overall for IE7, so due to our lead time for locking down beta releases and ramping up our team, we could not get a whole lot done in the platform in beta 1. However, I know this will be better in Beta 2 "

I would like to point out that the above post is dated July 29th, 2005.

Half of the problems with IE's implementation of CSS (from a designers POV) is that they insist on sticking us with defaults other than 0, none, or off. As far as they're concerned they're not bugs - they're features.

The comments you pointed out only highlight MS's opinion that the situation with CSS has very low priority. A very low priority indeed.

According to eWeek.com, "Sources claiming familiarity with Microsoft's IE 7.0 plans said the company will add some additional CSS2 support to its new standalone browser. But Microsoft isn't planning to go the whole way and make IE 7.0 fully CSS2 compliant, sources said."

Of course, one site, 465BeraStreet.com can even wag a finger @ MS for fixing bugs at all, "When Internet Explorer 7 is released, probably later this year, it looks like one long-standing CSS selector bug in IE will be fixed: the Star html Selector Bug, also known as the Tan hack. Since the bug has been used by many web developers to target specific CSS rules at Internet Explorer as a way of working around various CSS bugs in the browser, some are worried that Microsoft fixing the bug in IE 7 may cause developers a lot of extra work."

And to highlight my point that M$ just doesn't care at all about CSS standards or compliancy thereof, CNet quotes Greg Sullivan, of the Windows client group as saying, "While it is true that our implementation is not fully, 100 percent W3C-compliant, our development investments are driven by our customer requirements and not necessarily by standards"

If they can't get around to it until after Alpha/Beta releases to fix issues they've known about for years now and because they themselves say that it isn't a priority to even try to meet the standards, No, I don't expect M$ to give any priority to the problems with CSS where I.E. 7.0 is concerned.

The worst, however, as highlighted above, Microsoft's utter lack of response to the issues in the past has now lead to a situation where any action to do anything positive would swamp designers with so much back-peddling to remove all their I.E. 5.5 hacks that new hacks would have to be implemented to cover up old hacks that are covering up old hacks... all because they didn't do anything earlier and still refuse to do anything about it now.

No my friends, CSS and IE will not be reconcicled - not now, not ever. They missed the boat.

IMHO.

Re:css fixes?

[Bogtha]

I quote from your above post on the MS IE Blog, "I wanted to make it clear that we know Beta 1 makes little progress for web developers in improving our standards support, particularly in our CSS implementation.

I've changed the emphasis in that quote for you. You are aware that this new beta is the second beta, don't you?

I would like to point out that the above post is dated July 29th, 2005.

Yes, it was made while those fixes were in the unreleased code. Those fixes are in the second beta. The one that's just been released.

According to eWeek.com, "Sources claiming familiarity with Microsoft's IE 7.0 plans said the company will add some additional CSS2 support to its new standalone browser. But Microsoft isn't planning to go the whole way and make IE 7.0 fully CSS2 compliant, sources said."

So how many browsers are fully CSS 2 compliant then?

I'm not sticking up for Microsoft unnecessarily, I hate having to deal with Internet Explorer. But you are criticising them for not doing what nobody else does either here.

And to highlight my point that M$ just doesn't care at all about CSS standards or compliancy thereof...

You are quoting somebody saying that their first priority is what their customers ask for, not that they don't care at all about compliance. Try comprehending before quoting.

By the way, I'd like to just congratulate you on demonstrating your maturity so succinctly by spelling it "M$".

Re:css fixes?

[the chao goes mu]

This is nothing new. IE 4.5 and 5.0 on Mac were not even HTTP protocol compliant. The protocol says a header line can include any amount of leading liner white space, however IE ignored a line if it contained any leading whitespaces (which broke cookies on several sites my employer developed.) When I reported it to MS I got absolutely no reply. Ignoring standards on IE is nothing new. (Unfortunately, it was nothing new for Netscape either, which was the other major browser at the time, and had its own set of bugs and noncompliant featurs.).

Re:css fixes?

[Klar]

meh. firefox still does a better job on the acid2 test. Although in general use, IE7 seems to do a pretty good job rendering pages

Re:css fixes?

[petermgreen]

update the dll then.

Re:css fixes?

[Strixy]

"So how many browsers are fully CSS 2 compliant then?"

I will assume this is a rhetorical question, by which you mean to highlight the fact that no browser is 100% CSS2.0 compliant. I'm not here to argue all browsers.

I am arguing the lack thereof where I.E. is concerned. This was the topic of the original question heading this thread. I didn't want someone walking away from this comments thread believing that by some miracle I.E. is now CSS compliant - it is not. The post to which I responded was misleading in specifically that respect. It lead the reader to believe that I.E. was in fact compliant to CSS 2.0 standards.

I stand by my response. It is not.

Choosing to call Microsoft - "M$" - as you pointed out, is a tad immature I'll grant you that point and revel in my own immaturity. At my age it's somewhat flattering.

If the entire point of my post was to highlight the fact that I.E. 7.0 will not be 100% CSS 2.0 compliant I would like to call upon your own argument and to you I ask rhetorically, "So how many browsers are fully CSS 2 compliant then?"

Nope, I.E. still isn't either. Let's not mislead anyone here by arguing otherwise.

I stand corrected on my immaturity, but I will hold fast to my original arguement. I.E. 7.0 is not CSS 2.0 compliant and MS has specifically shown that they have no interest implementing CSS 2.0 - 100%. But then, not all browsers are created equal, which means some cut the mustard and some don't. And to my knowledge no browser is CSS 2.1 compliant either so lest not banter on about that. Nor can we argue about 3.0 yet.

For example, text-shadow is not supported by any browser nor are any of the text to speech ideas (eg, speak, pitch, voice, etc..)

So in reesponse, we have discovered that I.E. is not CSS standard compliant. Great. Can we move on. What else would you like to add to the arguement?

You are quoting somebody saying that their first priority is what their customers ask for, not that they don't care at all about compliance. Try comprehending before quoting.

I did, I do, and I stand by my position. Here is another rhetorical question for you, "What do you think the average computer user knows about CSS standards and the lack of support I.E. shows?"

And to highlight my position I would like to take a survey of 1000 apples and ask them what they think about pulp-free orange juice.

If MS cared about CSS standards they wouldn't be bowing to the demands of their customers (to wit they admit they develop their software to meet the demands of the lowest common denominator). They would be meeting the requests of designers and developers who do care about such things. Let's face it, the demands of Netizen X are such that they want to see a nice web page. They don't care how they see it so long as they see it. Why bother asking them what they want in CSS standard support? How many of them even know what CSS stands for? How many of them even care? (Again, rhetorical questions).

Let's compare apples to apples and keep the low brow personal pot shots out of the arguement thankyou.

Re:css fixes?

[Bogtha]

The post to which I responded was misleading in specifically that respect. It lead the reader to believe that I.E. was in fact compliant to CSS 2.0 standards.

Nonsense. Somebody asked if three specific bugs were fixed. I said that they were and linked to an article that had more details. The article I linked to made it clear that Internet Explorer 7.0 will not be compliant.

If anybody took my post to mean that Internet Explorer 7 will be compliant, then they aren't very good at reading. I said nothing of the sort, not even close.

If MS cared about CSS standards they wouldn't be bowing to the demands of their customers (to wit they admit they develop their software to meet the demands of the lowest common denominator). They would be meeting the requests of designers and developers who do care about such things.

Large organisations with lots of customers have lots of different priorities. Pointing out that their first priority is to their customers as if it means that they cannot possibly care about anything else is naïve.

In case you haven't noticed, they are meeting the requests of designers and developers. They just aren't meeting all of them at once. Are you a web developer? Try looking at the list of things they've fixed. Most of the really annoying stuff is on there.

Re:css fixes?

[Strixy]

Good response. I will re-think my position.

It seems to me that leaving this issue until after primary development was over and starting to work on it only after the first beta was released isn't saying that it is an important issue. At least, it wasn't an important enough issue to include it on the list of issues they wanted to deal with in primary development. This tells me one of two things. Either their list of issues was just too long for CSS to be included near the top or they didn't give it significant weight to place it near the top of the list.

If there is a third option I would like to entertain it. It seems to me that the first is possible, given I.E.'s sordid past. Taking the quotes I mentioned into account it seems to me that the second is more likely. Both may very well be true.

Any thoughts?

foXpose

[buddha42]

There is a firefox extension that provides a similar feature to Quick Tabs called foXpose

Hmm, where have I seen this before?

[prisoner-of-enigma]

Oh, that's right, I've seen it here.

I can understand the occasional dupe, but this is silly. The "IE7 Goes Public" link is quite visible on the right side of the page in Yesterday's News. Further, this isn't exactly a minor story, which means somebody at /. should've remembered it.

Slow news day perhaps?

grow up

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course digg posts articles faster, but at least at slashdot, most of the users aren't fifteen year old kids with nothing better to do than post comments like "Mac is kOOL!"

About the article..as for me, I'm really looking forward to IE7. For all the great aspects of firefox, it still has many shortcoming, like being extremely slow and opening the occasional webpage incorrectly.
If IE7 can offer tab browsing and do a reasonable job, I might just switch back over. If it sucks, then I'll just stick with my current browser, Opera.

Re:grow up

[Anonymous Coward]

you spelled 'kewl' wrong lol ;o)

Ajax?

[cablepokerface]

From the FA: IE 7 also includes a number of new features for Web developers, including support for up-and-coming Web-programming technologies known collectively as AJAX. How would they go about supporting this? Would it have a javascript extension for it or something? Really the only thing a browser needs to do for ajax is support the xml http request object, which IE does since 5.0 (I believe). The rest is up to the server side code. or not?

Re:Ajax?

[masklinn]

XMLHttpRequest becomes a full-fledged independant object in IE7, which means that you won't have to instantiate an ActiveX object for MSIE (which was the only "modern" browser not presenting an XMLHttpRequest object), and that you, if we one day manage to end IE6, will be able to scrape the ActiveX code path.

Re:Ajax?

[cablepokerface]

But how would that translate into practical use? Here (at my work) we use asp.net for server side coding. Using ajax ment nothing more then implementing an interface in the page (the ICallBackEventHandler), after which you wrote some code for the callback and some javascript to 'catch' the callback and set the innerHTML for some div.

Both FF and IE reacted the same to this, it all worked fine. I never had to do any difficult ActiveX instantiation or something. Am I misunderstanding you?

Re:Ajax?

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with the old IE way was not one for developers so much as for clueful users.
The only way to allow ajax functionality in IE 7 was to allow all activeX calls. One of the first things to be turned off (did it even come turned on after XPSP2?) was activeX object instantiation by browsers.
Now, because it's done by a different route, IE7 using folks can use use xmlhttprequests based pages to their full whilst also having activeX turned off in the browser (or at least in the internet zone).

Re:Ajax?

[remmelt]

As I understand it, the .NET objects create a bunch of code that is output to the browser. The code for IE6 will instantiate an Activex object, the code for FF, IE7 and others will use the internal XMLHTTP stuff. Take a look at the source of a page that you created with .NET, the source that is output to the browser (View -> Page Source). Note the javascript.

The way it sounds like you use the development tool it will not make any difference at all.

I personally prefer to be closer to the browser and see what the actual code is, but to each his own.

Please note that "difficult ActiveX instantiation" is not that difficult at all and costs at most two lines of javascript. Just so you know.

Re:Ajax?

[masklinn]

If you're using existing framework, not much, except that users with ActiveX disabled (corporate security issues mainly) will be able to use your page, while they currently aren't.

For the framework devs or the guys who prefer to roll out their own system/architecture on the other hand, the code paths will be noticeably simplified.

Ready for prime time?

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently it passes the Acid2 Test.

It quick renders Digg.com (sometimes it takes ages on IE6), but I can barely click on the One Pixel Banner.

Re:Ready for prime time?

[Gnascher]

Apparently it passes the Acid2 Test.

Really?? It failed miserably when I tried it. The pieces were spread all over the screen, some with scroll bars, and all layered in front of a big red background.

Heh ... even if you graded them on a curve, they'd still get a D, since Firefox almost gets the acid2 test right.

It quick renders Digg.com (sometimes it takes ages on IE6), but I can barely click on the One Pixel Banner.

It renders Digg's HOME page fine, but click around the site, and you'll start noticing some positioning errors. Go to the "Digg For Stories" section, and you'll see some DIVs climbing over each other on the left nav.

Re:Ready for prime time?

[modmans2ndcoming]

actually, no, it does not pass acid 2.

Re:Ready for prime time?

[orangeacid]

Does it fuck :p

Re:Ready for prime time?

[MemoryDragon]

Well by using it you are screwed, does that count?

Re:Ready for prime time?

[tbird81]

It does not pass the Acid2 test. Although neither does Firefox. At the moment, Safari and Konqueror are the only two 'popular' browsers to pass it.

Microsoft have said that Acid2 is not a priority for them, and I doubt the final version of IE7 will work either.

Re:Are you openly-gay yet?

[Anonymous Coward]

No? Thanks, but I'll stick it in your butt anyway.

YOUR POST WAS WORTHLESS, MAC_BOY!

MS flip flop

[NoSuchGuy]

Didn't Microsoft tell me about 2 years ago that their customers don't want tabbed browsing?

In 5 years they tell everyone they invented tabbed browsing years befor Opera and Firefox...

Re:MS flip flop

[stunt_penguin]

I'd scream at my computer (more) if I couldnt browse with tabs. I have my shift and tab keys worn down to shiny smoothness.

Re:MS flip flop

[stubear]

While it wasn't in Internet Explorer, Microsoft had tabbed browsing in their help browser (based on IE) for Visual Studio long before even Opera had tabbed browsing. You do know Opera had tabbed browsing before Firefox don't you? Firefox, contrary to Slashbot mythology, did not invent tabbed browsing, extensions, nor any of the other features that are common to the application. In fact, Firefox, while a competent browser, is nothing more than a shining example of the lack of innovation in the open source community. It clearly deomnstartes the lengths that open source developers will go to in aping features and design conventions from other apps and claiming them as their own, going as far, in some cases, as to claim they were invented by the open source application.

Re:MS flip flop

[nicholaides]

You seem to forget that Firefox is REALLY GOOD SOFTWARE. There may be better browsers for different people, but Firefox seems to be the best browser for the most people.

Everybody knows that tab browsing, gestures, and extensions didn't start with Firefox. You've seem to have formulated a straw-man argument.

So, what this in fact demonstrates is that open source software can take the best features of other products and make damn good software that is better than the other products from which it borrowed.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, STFU.

Re:MS flip flop

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet MS still said their users didn't want tabbed browsing... and then stuck it in! Wtf?!

Re:MS flip flop

[Crayon Kid]

Firefox, while a competent browser, is nothing more than a shining example of the lack of innovation in the open source community.

Silly me. And here I was, thinking that Firefox is a shining example of a brilliant policy in software making: offer users an extensible platform and let them do the rest.

Are you sure you're blaming the right folks? Did the Mozilla team copy all those features? Or did users feel the need to have them and implemented them as extensions? How exactly is it a bad thing to be able to bring any feature you want in your favorite browser?

Re:MS flip flop

[stubear]

"Did the Mozilla team copy all those features? Or did users feel the need to have them and implemented them as extensions? How exactly is it a bad thing to be able to bring any feature you want in your favorite browser?"

So, you're telling me that when Microsoft adds features from other OSes or applications it's blatant copying but when Firefox or [place app name here] copies features, it's the users who are to blame and the developers are just responding to market demand? Are you really that fucking stupid? If you are, please kill yourself and do so before reproducing.

Re:MS flip flop

[mickwd]

"You do know Opera had tabbed browsing before Firefox don't you?"

I think you missed the words "Opera and" in the post you're replying to. But maybe I'm being too critical - after all, he used a whole TWO sentences, taking up a massive TWO lines of text.

Re:MS flip flop

[Crayon Kid]

You brought up the "copying" and "blaming" issues. Nobody's to blame. I don't particularly like the whole "X copied Y" take, as you can see from my other comments to this story.

Re:MS flip flop

[Anonymous Coward]

"For the most people"...

I think we'd better chek for those usage percentages... IE is still and will be the prominent one... WE are a bunch of haters.

Its still not firefox

[jmazzi]

They seem to be just copying firefox, but it's still gonna be lacking in two major areas. Extensions and Security, in my opinion, are what makes firefox stand out.

Re:Its still not firefox

[servo335]

Not exactly. They stole what made firefox and opera great and fubard it in to ie7. Brings back memories of windows 95

Re:Its still not firefox

[Jarlsberg]

Come on, they didn't steal anything. That's like saying Firefox stole tabs (cause Opera had them before Firefox did) etc. It's this kind of progress we all want. Fi., we don't want one browser patenting tabs and the idea of extensions.

Re:Its still not firefox

[jp10558]

What I find weird is why they didn't just BUY Maxathon or one of the other good IE shells. Those really are competition for Opera and FireFox, but IE7 so far seems to be barely "good enough". OTOH, MS has been going with the barely there for years.

Say what you like about IE

[ninja_assault_kitten]

But if looking at the progress between Beta1 and Beta2 I'm thoroughly impressed. The UI concerns I had with Beta1 have all been addressed. I really like where they seem to be going.

So?

[stlhawkeye]

If it can't render basic shit like min-width and respect viewport positioning, I don't care. Are they CSS 1 compliant yet? As in... fully?

Re: So?

[Slant675]

No joke! Did they suddenly become standards compliant? If not, that is really bad news. It looks great, but if I can't design a website using web standards and have IE7 display it properly, then it's no good to me as a developer. What's the point? Ooo, new pretty interface that looks nearly EXACTLY like Firefox, but with a neat tab preview thingy... but does not display web pages worth poop. Sorry, did I miss something here? Isn't the point of a browser to be able to correctly display the majority of web pages currently on the web? Not a flame, just a major concern.

Wandering

[Elixon]

It looks like it takes ages to implement few useful features in IE. The same features that are many times already available for the same or competing browsers as third-party plugging or extension that are developed by one or very few geeks.

Is it that Microsoft is short of geeks? Is it so complex software that third-party developers are more effective and progressive then in-house developers?!

Anyway, why are the browsers evolving so slowly? Look where is the 3D gaming industry! Look what progress they did. And now look what progress we (browser vendors) did on the WWW! I don't think that there is less money on the web then in the gaming industry...

So why is it?
(Is the main reason the insufficient cooperation ? Don't they see that competition in this area instead of cooperation hurts everybody? Look where IE ended up with thier individual and aggresive stance.)

Re:Wandering

[Erik Hensema]

MSIE is much more than just a browser. It's a basic component of the Windows OS. So, they have to be careful not to change the API. They also try to remain compatible with existing (broken!) sites.

Firefox is no component. It's just the browser. Compatibility is no issue. They also care less about 'correct' rendering of broken sites.

Re:Wandering

[Fearan]

Did you just say that you don't think there is less money than in the gaming industry? Maybe you should go talk to SOE or Blizzard. Or you know, any company involved in the industry that is now bigger than the movie industry. Although not all games are on the web, a big chunk of cash is now attributed to MMOs. If I misunderstood your comment, I apologize.

Re:Wandering

[norman619]

Ummm there sure is more money in the game industry than in web. The game industry pulls in more money than the film industry. MUCH more money. A good game will cost as much to make as your average film. I believe it's one of the biggest money making industries. Think about it. The web hasn't moved very much. I'm still waiting for true 3D capabilities on the web. :-)

Re:Wandering

[NiteShaed]

I'm guessing the differences in the target markets plays a big part in why browsers seem to stay unchanged for long periods compared to games. Gamers want to see something new and impressive whenever possible, so the game developers may place a much higher premium on novelty and innovation than browser developers (at least superficially). Casual (or even serious) web users would probably not be as receptive to big UI changes to their browser of choice. As for smaller additions of new features, I don't know that the average user would even notice them. For example, I've gotten many people to switch from IE to FireFox, but quite a few of them tend to still use it the way they used IE, even when things like tabbed browsing is pointed out. If this is true, it makes sense that MS wouldn't throw a ton of resources at pushing out new updates until they feel they really have to.

Just my 2 cents and a few random thoughts...

Re:Wandering

[ap65535]

Don't they see that competition in this area instead of cooperation hurts everybody? I beg to differ. There is much more competition in the gaming industry than between browsers. With IE controlling 90% of the market share for so long, they haven't had the motivation to improve. On the other hand, the gaming industry has 3 very real and viable competitors (Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo). Competition drives progress much more than cooperation.

Privacy from who?

[conan_the_trollarian]

I love how they tout privacy but is it really? I mean, sure, it might be better for the average user for average things but what if big brother wants in to snoop around? I'll be they have their own port and backend to do whatever the hell they want to do... better privacy....pfff

I wouldn't touch it

[SenseOfHumor]

It was a nightmare when I tried Beta 1. Things didn't work and I could not go back to the previous version. Microsoft Support tried to help(sent a link to google groups :-) but it only made things worse. I had the look and feel of IE7 and the version reported IE6. It was a total mess. A subsequent disk failure made me reinstall and rid IE7. My colleagues are now sending me all beta announcement links :-) I got this announcement 3 times in 5 minutes...

Re:I wouldn't touch it

[Anonymous Coward]

Well you didn't read the instructions correctly for uninstalling. It is simple. Ya IE 7 Beta 1 was a bit harsh, but I have to say Beta 2 is pretty nice. The built-in RSS 'feels' better than other RSS readers but does need some tweaks for final release. Generally I recommend giving it a try.

new screenshots here !

[Salsaman]

http://www.ie7.com/

Re:new screenshots here !

[Anonymous Coward]

here is agreat screen shot!

http://img87.imageshack.us/my.php?image=ieowned6bk .png

Page thumbnails

[Xabraxas]

The thumbnail of each page is something that AOL explorer does. It's kinda cool. Maybe someone will make a firefox extension that does the same thing.

Re:Page thumbnails

[Anonymous Coward]

They already did.

Re:Page thumbnails

[Xabraxas]

Thanks for the link. Unfortunately the extension is buggy as hell. I guess I should report the numberous bugs in hopes of getting them fixed.

Adblock

[edmicman]

Where's the adblock extension for IE? Thats a good chunk of the reason I use FF over IE, just so I can turn off all the crap that I can't in IE....I might be tempted to try out IE7 at work, though....heh, I feel "guilty" using FF for looking up things and whatnot :-P

Re:Adblock

[ad0gg]

There's tons of addons for IE. Go here. Hell with addons, there's been tab browsing in IE since 97.

Re:Adblock

[edmicman]

But all of the addons have always been based on IE, which until v7 (?) meant you still had the bugs and whatnot associated with IE6. I've played with MyIE2, Maxton, etc., and they always were good, but just felt thrown on top of IE (which they were) as opposed to Firefox whose extensible features are built in. Maybe we'll begin to see IE7 "extensions" similar to those in Firefox? Methinks I'll still be sticking with FF anyway, but for those cases where I need to use IE, maybe I'll try IE7!

Re:Adblock

[Jarlsberg]

You don't need an extension for that. Download privoxy and you can get rid of ads and do all sorts of other things, both with IE and Firefox (and Opera and any other browser). Privoxy works under Windows as well as Linux and is open source to boot. Great stuff.

meh

[ImTheDarkcyde]

I am not fond of its' interface at all, it tries to look 'sleek and future' but fails. I mean, for crying out loud I can't even find the file menu!

Re:meh

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean, for crying out loud I can't even find the file menu!

Tools Button > Toolbars > Classic Menus

That will give you the File, Edit, etc. It was a little disorienting at first for me too, but I found that there were buttons or quick ways of doing things in the default layout. Much nicer the IE 6.

Anyone remember...

[rdavis542]

...when Microsoft was innovative? I think the last time MS was pushing computing forward was the introduction of Windows 95 from 3.1, or when IE first came on the scene evolving from the dreadful Microsoft web browser, around version 4.0 if I remember. Maybe it is true that all the great engineers that were pushing home/office desktop computing have left due to the corporate environment that has taken over the mentality of the middle-managers that who's only concern is to help the stock price?

Re:Anyone remember...

[EMB Numbers]

Microsoft has never been particularly innovative. I suspect you don't perceive innovation _now_ because you are aware of the prior art. Microsoft was not more innovative back in the day. You were probably just not as aware of the copious prior art when Windows 95 appeared. For example, the Windows 95 "look" was a poor copy if the NeXTstep 1988 look... The Win 16 API was a sad copy of the Mac Toolbox. Slashdot will tell you that the only notable innovation from Microsoft was "Bob."

http://www.guidebookgallery.org/screenshots/win95
http://www120.pair.com/mccarthy/nextstep/intro.htm ld/

Re:Anyone remember...

[FatMacDaddy]

Despite the ad campaigns, MS isn't about innovation. They do that very poorly.

MS is about market share. They do that very well.

CSS Compat : ACID2 shot on IE7 on flickr !

[Anonymous Coward]

No comment :
http://www.flickr.com/photos/alaskana/93697347/

It is looking extremely bad, look like MS has done nothing !
Guys, you got no excuses, Dean Edwards has done lot of fix on his own with a bunch of JS scripts !!!
See http://dean.edwards.name/IE7/ So, why are you not able to do the same with tens of developpers on board and years in front of you ?

Plz mod this up, as IE7 is only a small upgrade and will not improve user experience (but tab browsing, RSS, XMLHttp scripting and a few cosmetics ....) this is a very limited improvement an should be called IE6.1 IMHO !!!

Sorry foXpose,

[Anonymous Coward]

but Microsoft already has a patent on this. Either put up your patent warchest for cross licensing or get out of town...

Needs "Genuine Advantage" validation

[james_bray]

Just to save some people the bother of downloading....

Re:Needs "Genuine Advantage" validation

[jisatsusha]

Not a problem

Re:Needs "Genuine Advantage" validation

[Anonymous Coward]

Does this mean only genuine windows users will be able to use IE7 final? In which case so much for IE7 solving all webdesigners' problems and stopping them from wanting to tear out bill gate's jugular on a daily basis....

Hurts: WINDOWS -} IE -} WWW -} ME {=} WINDOWS -}ME

[Elixon]

I know. But isn't now the proper time to do what Mozilla did? They split the Mozilla Suit into parts because the similar problem... I think that every Web developer is suffering from Windows this way (not only Win developers, but really EVERY deveoper!).

I don't really care if the IE is a component or not. I don't see any reason why should I break my web site compatibility with standards to be compatible with browser that tries to be compatible with Windows because it is A WIN COMPONENT.

As a web developer I know that IE is having difficulties to catch up on other browsers. It hurts me, it hurts you, it hurts everybody and at the end it hurts Microsoft as well.

I don't care about any Microsoft's internal reasons. I judge the final product. I know, it could be better. Microsoft can make it better BROWSER!

Now, I am an Opera fan

[beforewisdom]

As I was reading this article I kept thinking how MS copied these features that already existed in firefox and being annoyed how MS would get the glory for them all.

I realized at that point, I had become one of the many Opera fans who have made similar posts about firefox and how Opera had x,y, & z first.

Re:Now, I am an Opera fan

[16K Ram Pack]

At least with FF, it was FOSS.

I can't see a single good reason for wanting to use IE7.

Re:Now, I am an Opera fan

[njchick]

Then maybe the problem is with Opera, not with other browsers? Every time I try Opera I find it too distracting, even without ads. Browsing in Opera is somewhat like reading a long article using a funky font, such as "MS Comic Sans". Firefox, on the other hand, doesn't draw so much attention to itself. Sure, it can be configured to look weird, but the default is user friendly. MSIE is also quite modest by itself, but popups and security issues make it all but useless for most contents.

IE 7's Rendering Abilities seem worse

[Kasracer]

Check out Slashdot itself. On Opera, Firefox, IE 5 and 6, it seems to render nicely. Check out Slashdot with IE7. A good chunk of the bottom overlaps all sorts of stuff. I can't read the last few lines of someone's reply if they're the last comment. Also, my website www.binaryidiot.com renders perfectly with IE 5, 6, Opera, Firefox, Safari, Konquerer. In IE7, it places the add that should be on the right, between the navigation and the content. There is a HUGE space there. For some reason I am also seeing a lot of horizontal scroll bars for many pages. Looks like I'm going to need to make even MORE server side code to make sure IE7 works correctly. This is very frustrating. I wish the rumour that Microsoft purchased Opera was real. At least then we'd have a decent browser to work with. Another thing bothering me about IE7 is all the inconsistancy. Some back and forth icons, as well as the Favorites Center icon all have jaggies on them (these are seem even more with theming off) yet the icons on the right of the address bar look flawless. Also, I'd say almost 100% of windows applications have a menu at the top. Does IE7? NO! You have the option for the class menu but then it places it between the address bar and the tabs. If you unlock the bars, you can't move it up or down. There is no setting to put it where it belongs and if you have theming on, it has some odd lines on it that don't do anything. I fear for the web

Re:IE 7's Rendering Abilities seem worse

[Kasracer]

Okay, now sometimes when I look at Slashdot I see the overlapping at the bottom. Othertimes (this seems completely random), it's a HUGE amount of extra black space.

What the hell?

Re:IE 7's Rendering Abilities seem worse

[porneL]

IE7 isn't compatible with IE6 bugs and hacks anymore, but it's still far behind other browsers in standards compiliance. That's going to be a real plain for web developers - both IE and non-IE code breaks in IE7.

Re:IE 7's Rendering Abilities seem worse

[mudbogger]

If anyone has a google personalized home setup, you will see that when you attempt to drag one of the areas displaying feeds from a particular source, there is a hanging issue that prevents the areas from rearranging and moving correctly. Just one of the issues I've noticed in the first twenty minutes..

IE7 Still has incomplete PNG support

[Kasracer]

If you open up a QuickTab page, PNGs do not show themselves correctly.

To check, look at my site in QuickTabs (www.binaryidiot.com)

Microsoft manages to do the impossible

[mwvdlee]

Tabbing has been in competing browsers for ages. It has been a killer feature of these browsers; tabbing makes browsing a lot more tidy and convenient.

Yet Microsoft has managed to do the impossible; the screen real-estate reserved for the tabs is SO f**kin small, that anything more than a few tabs will already crowd the interface.

Anyway, what I want to know is; has Microsoft fixed the major bug with JavaScript closures causing memory leaks?

such innovation

[suezz]

I have had these features with konqueror and firefox for the last two years.

such innovation

developers developers developers

I tried it ... some thoughts.

[Gnascher]

1. They are requesting that developers install it and test thier sites and report back. However, it installes OVER IE6, so you can't have them both on the same machine. This is a major showstopper for a developer, since we NEED to have IE6 installed for current functionality and compatibility.

2. Fails the Acid2 test miserably

3. They've moved the Refresh button to the right of the address bar, while the Forward and Back buttons remain in the same position ... this is just dumb. All the navigation buttons should be grouped.

4. The "Stop Navigation" button has also been moved over to the right. They've also changed the look of the button to a red "X", so that it now looks like a "close something" button instead of a "stop this action" button.

5. They've "fixed" the functionality that allows you to utilize many CSS hacks to compensate for IE's rendering flaws, however they haven't fixed the underlying bugs that the "hacks" were intended to fix. As a result, a lot of sites I checked out that rendered just fine in all current browsers (including IE6) are now broken in IE7, because the "hacks" no longer work in IE7, but thier standards complience is still shoddy, and thier box-model still sucks.

6. The graphics for the tabs looks "clunky" as compared to other tabbed browsers.

7. They've hidden the main menu, so now you have to go through a few clicks to find the options that used to be only 1 or 2 clicks away.

Overall, I hope they don't think that this release is close to production readiness. They've changed a number of things just so that they look different, while in the process breaking a number of UI conventions that have long been established an work.

They've still got a lot of work to do in thier CSS support ... I don't understand why even some of the most basic CSS functionality is beyond thier ability to grasp. I can understand some of the more 'advanced' CSS features being a little tricky to interpret and implement, but basic positioning, sizing, padding and margin issues should be pretty easy to understand.

They claim to have fixed .PNG alpha channel transparency, and that's true ... to a point, but it doesn't work when the .png with transparency is used in a layer in some cases.

One thing I can applaud them on is that they've added the ability to use XMLHttpRequest without using thier proprietary ActiveX control, which will simplify those of us writing AJAX code into our web apps. They claim the old ActiveX method will still work for legacy support though.

So, that's my take. They've come a long way from IE6 ... but I beleive that they've got a long way to go in order to have a final release of IE7 that can truly compete against the other players in today's browser market.

Re:I tried it ... some thoughts.

[megame]

> 3. They've moved the Refresh button to the right of the address bar, while the Forward and Back buttons remain in the same position ... this is just dumb. All the navigation buttons should be grouped.

I'm with IE7 on this one - I like refresh and stop on this side. It is close to drop-down on address bar - and it is close to search box - my mouse will be here more offten then on the left side.

> 6. The graphics for the tabs looks "clunky" as compared to other tabbed browsers.

They look fine to me - they don't drag&drop, which is a big minus!

>7. They've hidden the main menu, so now you have to go through a few clicks to find the options that used to be only 1 or 2 clicks away.

They've cleared-up UI - there's option to bring it back (tools->toolbars->classic menu)- and pressing ALT gives you access to it (no clicks).

Re:I tried it ... some thoughts.

[Gnascher]

>They've cleared-up UI - there's option to bring it back (tools->toolbars->classic menu)- and pressing ALT gives you access to it (no clicks). Granted, I should give SOME credit where it's due. They've opened up a lot of real-estate by reducing the menubar area, and you CAN get the menu bar back ... but when you do, it goes to the wrong place ... more broken UI conventions. Anyway, all that real-estate just means that people will have MORE spyware toolbars installed before the entire client area is used up. :-D I installed IE7 HOPING that they had come up with something good. In the end, I was disappointed in the product from both a user's and developer's standpoint, and uninstalled it because A) I don't really like it and B) I need to have IE6 available on my machine for development.

Re:I tried it ... some thoughts.

[ArghBlarg]

... I don't understand why even some of the most basic CSS functionality is beyond thier ability to grasp.

It's not a matter of them 'grasping', it's a matter of them embracing (and extending, and extinguishing.. you know, the usual). If they actually implemented CSS properly, web designers might be able to make their pages work on any browser, and then what would be the incentive to use IE?

They'd have fixed CSS support by now if they actually wanted IE to be compliant. They don't, cause they know most webmasters will design for IE rather than get tons of complaints about their sites not working when they try to make it look good in all browsers at once.

Re:I tried it ... some thoughts.

[Gnascher]

They don't, cause they know most webmasters will design for IE rather than get tons of complaints about their sites not working when they try to make it look good in all browsers at once.

Several years ago, you'd have an argument. It was fairly standard practice to "code for IE, and hack for the others". Now, that paradigm has reversed itself, and most COMPETENT developers are coding to standards and hacking for compatibility. This means your code usually just works in most browsers, and then you have to hack it up for IE compatibility.

See, the problem with Microsoft's strategy is that they left IE6 as 'abandonware' for too long. In the interim, the alternative browsers started introducing new and interesting features, piquing the interest of the Internet Browsing Public, and gaining market-share.

Additionally, Mac users are on the rise, as is desktop linux ... neither of which have a version of IE to run. (Ok, the Mac has the now-abandoned IE 5.2 which was always terrible, and Linux users can run IE under Wine, but that's the long way around. I guess Mac users could too, but why would they want to) So, it's getting to the point now where if a developer is writing code for IE only, he does so at his own peril.

Now, IE7 has "fixed" their CSS support so that it essentially disables most of the CSS hacks developers were using to get around IE's poor implementation, but yet they seem to have failed to have fixed the CSS implementation flaws that the hacks were devised to deal with in the first place. The end result is that stuff that ONCE looked ok in IE, now breaks. I saw many examples of this in the hour or two that I spent browsing with IE7 yesterday.

My prediction on this IE7 release (when it comes out of beta) is that it may very well fall flat on its face. Users are going to install it, and start browsing websites, and finding sites that USED to look great suddenly look broken. They won't care what the reasons are, but they'll definitely associate it with thier newly installed IE7.

Now, lets look at it from the perspective of a website owner (not a developer, but perhaps a CPA with a website). Suddenly his website is going to look crappy in IE7 ... what's he going to do? Call the developer who is going to say, "The website is coded to standards, displays fine in all current browsers and all versions of IE prior to 7. I'll fix the problem, but it's going to cost you!"

End result? Lots of websites will continue to look broken in IE, and continue to display correctly in other browsers. MicroSoft made a HUGE mistake in thier complacency, and I think IE7 ... unless they make some major rendering changes before the final release, will turn out to be another nudge that's going to help them fall of the top of the heap in the browser market.

Re:I tried it ... some thoughts.

[petermgreen]

its no big secret anymore how to do a local install of IE

see for example http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=175857&cid=146 15222

Re:I tried it ... some thoughts.

[Busy]

5. They've "fixed" the functionality that allows you to utilize many CSS hacks to compensate for IE's rendering flaws, however they haven't fixed the underlying bugs that the "hacks" were intended to fix. As a result, a lot of sites I checked out that rendered just fine in all current browsers (including IE6) are now broken in IE7, because the "hacks" no longer work in IE7, but thier standards complience is still shoddy, and thier box-model still sucks.

I don't bother with hacks anymore. Conditional comments are much easier. Now the only thing I have to hack for is differences between Firefox and Opera, which I don't run into very much.

Re:I tried it ... some thoughts.

[ArghBlarg]

I agree with you; that was my point, really. I think that MS still wants *their* version of CSS interpretation to be the defacto, so they intentionally broke people's hacks and left the CSS model broken. They still are latching onto some hope that they can extend/extinguish the real CSS interpretation by making people start coding specifically for IE7 again.

Thank god

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank god that Slashdot is Microsoft's free news service. Where else can Microsoft-philes read about the new and cool software at Microsoft?

Not gonna try it

[TheDoctorWho]

But I thought IE7 was just for Vista? Will the final release be for XP as well? Not really that interested anyway, oh well.

Re:Not gonna try it

[ZachPruckowski]

IE7 will be in WinXP SP3, which'll come out in Vista + 6-8 months.

IE 7 and 6 live peacefully together?

[iamjoltman]

Can anyone that's installed this tell me if IE7 will live with IE6 still on the machine? My main browser is Firefox, but I'm interested in trying this out. The only thing is, I hear that IE7 doesn't necesarily show IE6-based sites right, so I think I'll only try this if IE6 stays on my machine

Re:IE 7 and 6 live peacefully together?

[Kasracer]

Nope. It just replaces it which really pisses me off. I want my IE6 back for testing dammit!

There is no point in installing it anyway. It has toop many problems.

Re:IE 7 and 6 live peacefully together?

[toddbloom7]

Just install IE 7 as a standalone version using the iexplore.exe.local hack. Viola, IE6 and IE7 are both available.

Re:IE 7 and 6 live peacefully together?

[wile_e_wonka]

When I installed IE7, it seems to have completely replaced my IE6. I thought, since it was beta, it wouldn't do this. I have no idea how to make it not remove IE6--maybe it's as easy as just changing a directory on install, but I don't recall getting that option.
So be really careful before you install IE7 because really it's nothing special.
I use Opera myself.

Re:IE 7 and 6 live peacefully together?

[Spad]

I actually setup a VMWare machine with XP SP2 on it so that I could safely test out IE7 without having to a) Install SP2 and b) Risk screwing up the PC.

but...

[Anonymous Coward]

does it run on windows?

developers

[way2trivial]

need more than one machine to test on.. tell yer boss I said so.

one of the machines has to have no more than a 15" vga 800X600 res monitor connected to the internet at 56k

Re:developers

[Gnascher]

I am a freelancer, so that means my boss is a real tightwad dick. I can't affort to dedicate a whole machine to Internet Exploder testing. I have an idea ... how about they decouple their friggin' web browser from the OS so that I can have different versions running on the same box?

Re:developers

[Anonymous Coward]

You're correct, decoupling the browser from the OS would be much more in line with MS' long, solid history of making things easier for the web developer.

Re:developers

[Gnascher]

My sarcasm detector is ringing. :) However, I think your point is misplaced. MS in fact won the browser wars precisely by making it easier for developers. So much so, that even bad HTML markup was tolerated, as were many other sloppy coding practices. In the early days, sites were far more likely to "Just Work" in IE. Nowadays, however the developer-world is re-embracing the idea of producing clean, standards complient code, and Microsoft is finding themselves in the position of playing catchup ... and tripping over themselves to get there. If MS would indeed re-embrace "MS' long, solid history of making things easier for the web developer", but do so by rigorous implementation of established standards, then I think they could produce yet another dominating browser. The only reason that IE hasn't lost the majority market share is because most users are too lazy to bother installing an alternative browser when the pre-installed IE6 is "good enuf" for most users. Heck, I even delayed for quite a while installing Firefox on my laptop because I use it only infrequently, and just never got around to it.

Re:developers

[way2trivial]

really? 400$ for a crappy desktop, 600$ for a crappy laptop, and thats for NEW hardware with monitor from dell.

used you can get a 15" 256 mb ram, 20 gig harddrive pentium with a modem for what, 150$ just to test IE6 on a lower spec machine?

Re:developers

[Cromac]

really? 400$ for a crappy desktop, 600$ for a crappy laptop, and thats for NEW hardware with monitor from dell.

used you can get a 15" 256 mb ram, 20 gig harddrive pentium with a modem for what, 150$ just to test IE6 on a lower spec machine?

That's cheap but I'd rather run VMWare or VPC and just have a virtual machine to test IE, or anything else, on.

Re:developers

[Gnascher]

So ... I should shell out another $400 bucks because Microsoft is about to spew out yet another crappy bug-ridden browser? Look, I could afford it, really, but at present I've already got a little farm of computers. 1 - Windows 2003 server 2 - Linux box 3 - Mac mini for Mac compatibility testing. 4 - winXP pro. Sure, I could dual-boot one of these machines, or even use VM ware ... but what a pain in the ass simply to test compatibility for ONE MORE FREAKING BROWSER. Here's what I predict will happen. 1. MS will eventually force users to upgrade to IE 7. 2. Many, MANY websites will not have bothered to check IE7 compatibility because the difficulties were talking about here. 3. They'll go to thier developers, and the developers (assuming they're not in-house) will say that the site was delivered according to standards, and nothing in thier contract guarantees compatibility with future browsers. They'll be happy to fix the rendering issues with IE7, but they'll have to bill them for the time. 4. Many lower-budget site owners, (and probably some bigger-budget ones) will just opt to put banners on thier site when IE7 is detected and instruct users to get a better browser. 5. Even if 4 doesn't happen, I beleive that IE7 users will see many broken websites, and get frustrated with IE7 all on thier own. 6. Alterna-browsers market share begins to decline. 7. Several years later, people will say "remember when Microsoft used to have a web browser?"

Re:developers

[edflyerssn007]

I am running the latest beta of ie7 and have been running it for a few days. So far, I have not encountered any problems displaying sites. I had one problem one day with one site, but I went to it the next day and it loaded fine. I also hadn't restarted the machine, so a restart didn't fix the probelm. The site also wouldn't load on my other machine so I can rule out that it wasn't ie7 that was causing the trouble. And yes, the site didn't load in firefox either, so I think that it was something with the webserver not responding to my machine at the time.

Re:developers

[mr3038]

I can't affort to dedicate a whole machine to Internet Exploder testing.

I think you mean you cannot afford to dedicate one whole machine per one version of Internet Explorer. One test machine can only include one version of MSIE. So you need 4 machines to test for MSIE 5.0, MSIE 5.5, MSIE 6.0 and now MSIE 7. That is, unless you try all those browsers side by side. Instructions to run multiple different versions of MSIE side by side in MS Windows.

Don't yet know if it's possible to run MSIE 7 as stand-alone version but at least you should be able to install that as the "official" browser and the rest as "local" versions.

Enough of the tabs already

[Ucklak]

Will the HTML source code be easily readable with contextual highlighting like all the other browsers or will they still use notepad?

I know a few web developers that have been IE diehards and use FF for the source code highlighting. They don't use tabs, don't know what tabs are, and don't want to know how to use tabs. It really bugs be because they'll have 5 FF windows open at one time.

Re:Enough of the tabs already

[Gnascher]

For now, view-source sitll uses notepad. I don't know if they've any intention to change this.

However, If you want contextual highlighting on IE view-source, just replace your OS-supplied notepad with one of the developer's notepad apps out there.

Re:Enough of the tabs already

[chrisjwray]

"They don't use tabs, don't know what tabs are, and don't want to know how to use tabs"

Since they are so up to date I would love to try their cutting egde products.

How about Mozilla and SeaMonkey?

[antdude]

Is there one for Mozilla v1.7.12? I will upgrade to SeaMonkey later on.

adblock?

[digitallysick]

I bet IE 7 has no ad block, because if it did, then you wouldn't see the huge flashing color ads on msn, and in the msn articles that say " lower my bills" or whatever, i hate that

Run IE7 locally without replacing IE6

[AC-x]

The iexplore.exe.local trick seems to work for IE7.

Simply download the installer, use WinRAR or similar to unpack the installer into a folder, add an empty file called "iexplore.exe.local" then run iexplore.exe.

No having to uninstall IE6, or even install IE7 at all. The interface gets a bit messed up but it's definitely running a new engine (still some CSS bugs I can see tho, tut tut....)

Re:Run IE7 locally without replacing IE6

[Gnascher]

"The interface gets a bit messed up but it's definitely running a new engine (still some CSS bugs I can see tho, tut tut....)"

Ok, so installing IE7 as a stand-alone with the hack you mentioned messes up the interface. That's a bug you can see that's obvious. What are the non-obvious bugs that get introduced as a result of this hack? I don't know, and there is no way of knowing without some serious regression testing.

For now, the only option for a developer is to have IE7 installed on another machine for testing. That's just plain stupid.

Re:Run IE7 locally without replacing IE6

[Wierdy1024]

I highly recommed AGAINST doing this - IE7 runs fine, great etc., but when you close IE you'll find that windows explorer can no longer open folders, and that Internet explorer can open a web page, but hyperlinks no longer work. If a hyperlink is clicked 152 internet explorer windows open up, all saying "Action Canceled", and then the machine runs out of memory. I spent ages with system restore and registry backups trying to undo all IE7's registry changes, but in the end I had to format and re-install windows.

So overall, DO NOT DO THIS UNLESS YOU DON'T MIND BREAKING WINDOWS EXPLORER AND IE6!!!

Re:Run IE7 locally without replacing IE6

[bayankaran]

I dont think running IE7 Beta with the iexplore.exe.local hack screws up other Windows functionality.

I am running IE7 fine with IE6 on XP Pro SP2. But I am careful not to run both the apps the same time.

Few of the settings/resources are shared by both the apps - like the temporary internet files folder.

Also, one of the big drawbacks is you cannot do an "Open link in New Tab" with your mouse. The memory allocation for IE7 and Firefox 1.5 seems to be same with few tabs open.

First crash already...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not quite sure this beta is ready to go public. After installing, I restarted my PC and started IE7. I had my first crash that required the browser to be shut down and restarted within 45 seconds, by loading a page that I use every single day in current stable releases of IE and FireFox without problems.

Re:First crash already...

[Albert71292]

Installed it yesterday. It didn't crash, but my "connection manager" would pop up continuously while web pages were loading, and I didn't like the fact I couldn't put the menu bar ABOVE the address bar. So, I uninstalled and went back to Opera. Hope the "final product" is better than the beta.

Re:First crash already...

[Anonymous Coward]

I got the same thing with the connection manager popping up while pages were loading. No matter what the settings in Internet Options for connections were...I also got the added benefit of lockup and crash. Couldn't get past 1 or 2 pages before crashing. Fortunately the uninstall worked flawlessly.

thumbnail tabs - why can't we be happy for them?

[chrisbeach]

Hans: "They tried to outdo Firefox tab browsing with a feature call Quick tab which shows thumbnail view of all open tabs in a single window."

Very "diminishing" phrasing. It would be more appropriate to say was that they have outdone Firefox tabbed browsing.

Why can't we be happy that MS has implemented a cutting edge UI feature, rather than slating them for "trying to outdo" our favourite OSS mascot browser. We see so much hullaballoo about each new Mozilla Firefox feature, but when Microsoft comes up with anything vaguely cool, Slashdotters always respond with defensive claims that it's copy-cat innovation, or that OSS product x is a better implementation, or that it's an example of "scope creep" or whatever.

Thumbnail browsing has been seen before in foxposé, but that's no reason to slate MS for implementing it. How often do you see people slating Mozilla for cloning tabbed browsing from Opera? Or cloning the information bar from IE?

Channel 9 Video

[BunkAsInBed]

http://channel9.msdn.com/showpost.aspx?postid=1594 60 has a video of some of the IE development crew talking. The interesting thing was there was a googl hat on the desk of the office he guy was in.

How to bypass the validation

[Anonymous Coward]

To install IE7b2 if you for ehmmm some reason can't pass the validation check:

Download the file.

Unzip the self-extracting executable using WinZip or WinRar, etc.

Browse to the update directory and open iecustom.dll using your fav hex editor.

Go to pos $FAC (4012 decimal) and change 95 to 94. Save the file.

Run update.exe. It should now pass the check and install.

Cheers.

[ TH ]

Re:How to bypass the validation

[Agilo]

Thank you. ^__^

"Quick Tabs" still following open source browsers.

[argent]

The Explorer "Quick Tabs" seems to be inspired by the "Tab Exposé" feature that's been a part of the the Shiira web browser on the Mac since last April (it was introduced in one of the 0.9.* releases).

Shiira is an open source browser that's based, like Safari, on Apple's KHTML port (the Webkit framework on OS X 10.3 and later)... which is also open source.

Tab Exposé screenshot

Tab Exposé movie

Shiira English home page

Is this an advertisement?

[ronjeremysjohnson]

Is this a stealth advertisement?

Re:Is this an advertisement?

[FatMacDaddy]

Interesting idea, but if it is I'd say in this case it's backfiring (based on most of the reviews I'm reading here).

How to Run Both IE6 and IE7 PB2 On the Same PC

[wolverine1999]

This page explains how you can run both on the same PC without needing a virtual machine. It works well for me.

http://weblogs.asp.net/jgalloway/archive/2005/12/2 8/434132.aspx

IE7 is NOT FOR YOU!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Since when is IE7 ever marketed to people who DON'T like IE or Windows?

People who hate IE and Microsoft et. al. aren't the target market. Tabbed browsing was a good innovation, so to please the customers of Microsoft and users of IE, they added it to their product. IE7, IE8, IEx won't cause anyone to switch because of the apparent stigma of a Borg-like Bill Gates and his evil empire and whatever other jealousies persist. So, stop whining about how they "stole other ideas". It's not for you. Nothing to see here. This isn't the browser you are looking for. Carry on. Carry on.

Where's the...

[MarkVVV]

"Open in new tab" in the context menu?

Re:Where's the...

[nordicfrost]

Just use Applekey + lefft click... ;)

"OMG IE STEALS IDEAS" - STFU plz

[Anonymous Coward]

When it comes to something as common as a web browser, there really aren't a lot of new ideas. IE of course has tabs. So does almost every browser I can think of. Someone came up with the idea first and everyone else stole it. Microsoft has tabbed browsing in visual studio and I can also browse web pages in there, so to be honest it's not like they weren't aware of the fact that tabs were possible

Listening to a bunch of greasy linux nerds bitch about IE because it's by Microsoft and not because they actually care is retarded. Hot chicks are not into listening to fat bald guys arguing who made tabbed browsing first, and how "OMG" MS is not open source, how open source is so cool (even if you don't program??? how could you even pass judgement without being a hardcore C programmer) etc.

Thx

Reveal is another Firefox Quick Tab option

[Bob Loblaw]

Along with the currently existing Foxpose mentioned above there is also the currently existing Reveal

https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php ?application=firefox&id=1942

Cluttered interface

[AJanuary]

Personaly I'm not terribly excited over the tab preview function. I tend to just move my mouse up to the tab area and scroll my mousewheel to preview what pages I have open and stop on the relevent one.
The interface looks like it's trying to be slick, and reserve as much screen space as possible to display the webpage. Kudos to them, except that without mouse gestures etc. they still need all the buttons etc. making it look cluttered.
I think I'll stick with Firefox and my two line interface (File menu and URL bar on top line, tabs on row below) with mouse gestures for the time being.

Read the fine print...

[owlnation]

A CNET reporter has an interesting article on the IE7 beta. http://news.com.com/2061-10805_3-6033611.html

Noting that M$ really means beta .

Admittedly, this would be easier to take for most users if it didn't kill IE6. Bearing in mind also that the publicity this release has will likely mean that many inexperienced users will download and click through the install buttons blindly.

I'm thinking that M$ should really come up with new terminology for their releases. Any first final release of a M$ product in the past few years has been little much more than a final RC than the actual final product. Being the reason why the large enterprise company that I last worked for didn't install SP2 until the last minute after really really thorough internal testing.

While I have some sympathy for most companies releasing new software, as it is hard to predict what will break when you can't predict what users will do with it, or want to do with it - and there's always conflict with some guy who wants to run Word Perfect for DOS from the hard drive he built from a Pringles can, a cd of Dark Side of the Moon and parts salvaged from an old dot matrix printer.

But... my feeling is a company the size of M$ should be able to release software in a manner that is either safe or with the risks more prudently stated.

For example, forget alpha, beta etc:

Release 1. Good Luck and may your god help you...
Release 2. Keep a fire extinguisher nearby at all times, only use in a well ventilated room.
Release 3. May cause seizures or induce vomiting
Release 4. Still a bit iffy
Release 5. Fingers Crossed.
Release 6. (after about a year of general release) Um, yep, seems to work...


I guess the only reason they don't is because the marketing dept won't allow it.

Anyway, I'm sticking with Firefox. I'll only be upgrading to IE7 when there is absolutely no choice.

IE7 broke a MS Java app!

[midtoad]

I installed IE7 (since it's a beta, shouldn't it install beside my IE6, instead of replacing it? But I digress). I tried to fill in my company timesheet with it - it's a Microsoft Great Plains java application, and the application malfunctioned, refusing to recognize my entries in the timesheet.

Then I noticed some garbage characters beside my name at the top of the screen, and on a hunch decided to changed the default character encoding from Western European to Auto-detect. Voilà, it worked!

BTW, it seems Microsoft is trying to be innovative by departing from its normal CUA-compliant menu structure. IE7 starts up with no menu at all! So there's no obvious way to change settings of the browser. I had to hunt around for a while, and eventually found that a small Tools icon in the upper right has a Toolbars menu that in turn has a Classic Menu command you can check off - at which point a normal menu appears. But since when is a menu considered a toolbar? Don't toolbars normally consist of icons, with out without accompanying text, that carry out some specific function? A menu doesn't carry out a single specific function, it's more like the OS for your app. Not intuitive, MS!

Re:IE7 broke a MS Java app!

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft should have told all the developers to install IE7, test web pages and post the results on /.

Why do so many people complain about not having access to beta software, and then when they get it, all they do is complain?

More beta?

[Anonymous Coward]

And when they go with their official release, it'll be even more beta.

Congratulations, Microsoft!

[sholde4]

Microsoft has finally gotten it right!

• They have perfected tabbed browsing beyond that of Firefox's wildest dreams.

• Thier RSS implementation is perfect. You can add an RSS feed with the same button as the one in Firefox; furthermore, subsequent RSS reading is much easier than in the buggy, insecure opensource browser.

• Finally, Microsoft seems to have moved forward in leaps and bounds in their standards compliance. Internet Explorer 7 renders pages that were once buggy in beautiful color using standards compliant html and css. This is by far the best browser I have ever used.

I'm deleting Firefox as I type this. I'm sold.

Who cares

[sheepcentral]

To be honest whatever super features (and plain features) it gives IE 7 it still cannot out do Firefox. This is because Mozilla has a thriving developer community and is not bound by only adding features in major releases. For example if they add say photo rss (an example, a pretty crap exaqmple but it will do) then a user would make an extension almost certainly more secure and flashy for firefox. Then on top of that it is likely to be incorporated into the next "semi-major" version of Firefox or distributed as standard if a load of people use it espically those who do not install extensions because they don't know how or whatever.

Howto Make it work on x64 / Vista

[crache]

I put up a torrent that will let you run this standalone without installing, as well as run on x64 versions of windows and as far as I know vista. Instructions are included to do it yourself if you don't trust my distro. (=

Torrentspy
Mirror of Torrent

Internet Explorer 7 64 bit version

[himanshuarora]

Is it available ??

Default can suck

[saskboy]

I agree that default settings are the key to ease of use for 95% of users. Even the other 5% like to have things working out of the box. But the 5% are generally safer from mass worms because their addons aren't known to every script kiddie and their dog.

IE's default settings have for years been a pain in the side of computer maintainers everywhere.

Resizing pixel-based font-size

[drange_net]

Can anyone confirm that it's still impossible to resize the size of the font defined in pixel in CSS?

CSS, DOM and SVG support

[CypherOz]

Surely support for STANDARDS is much more important than blinking tabs! I like tabs, but IE is broken where it really counts - supporting W3C standards.

Mac? meh

[ylikone]

I'm not Mac Boy!

I'm Linux Boy!! And proud of it.

Obligatory: aren't ALL Microsoft products in beta?

[grolschie]

... until they officially discontinue support for them? With the exception being XBox games and keyboard/mice hardware.

Wow!

[rfernand79]

Does ir run (more) on Linux? Does it play (more) Ogg?

Let's have sidebar browsing instead

[Anonymous Coward]

Tabs are useless with more than about ten sites open -- too little of the title is visible in the tab.[1]
Listing them vertically becomes more useful at that point (this is also why I favor vertical taskbars).

__________
1. And that's with the display cranked up to 1400x1050.

Oblig. Comment

[damneinstien]

Mac is kOOL.

Oh, btw, you got my age wrong. I'm 18.

What's funnier is that the image for bot checking has the word "teenage."

Ignorance, mostly.

[CyricZ]

Konqueror doesn't run well on Windows. That's perhaps one of the reasons why it isn't as widely used as Firefox, considering that many Firefox users do run Windows.

Another reason may be that it doesn't have the media hype that Firefox has had. That leads to many people, even long-time Linux users, being ignorant of Konqueror.

Going along with the ignorance issue, it must also be considered that many of the popular Linux distributions (Ubuntu, Fedora) and Solaris include GNOME, rather than KDE, by default. Thus people may get Galeon or Firefox installed as their default browser, rather than Konqueror. Then it becomes an issue similar to that between Firefox and IE on Windows; it can be difficult to convince an IE user to switch to Firefox, especially if they're unaware of the technical benefits of Firefox over IE.

As for the innovations of Konqueror, Opera, Amaya, OmniWeb and other browsers being mistakenly attributed to Firefox, that is likely also due to ignorance. People see tabs in Firefox for the first time, and wrongly assume that it was the first browser to include them. Meanwhile, other browsers have offered such features for years.

FF will integrate useful extension

[cyfer2000]

Never forget tab function was a extension at mozilla days, after some discussion, it become a basic function of mozilla and then firefox. So this will happen again.

AOL Explorer & QuickTabs

[ZekeSMZ]

Even though the average Slashdotter isn't the type who would install AOL Explorer, that browser does the best job of QuickTab like functionality. (AE calls the feature Tab Explorer)

Not only is the layout of the thumbnails a lot cooler, it also incorporates a history timeline that makes the feature much more functional than Foxpose' or QuickTabs. Using the history timeline, you can quickly jump to any page in your history in a few seconds.

Poo Poo it if you want because it's from AOL, but it's a pretty sweet implementation of this functionality.

10 bucks says Microsoft copies the history timeline feature for the IE 7 final release.

One Word

[Anonymous Coward]

SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS...

Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted! Reason: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.

Dear Lameness Filter,
YES I m trying to YELL !
Regards,
Anonymous Coward

Bill Gates: "No point to tabbed browsing"

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember once Bill Gates said there was no point to tabbed browsing. What a nub.

Who was first?

[mk2ja]

I'm curious... Which browser was truly the first to implement Tabbed Browsing? I only know that the first I personally ever heard of it was when it was included in Safari, but I have no idea if that was really the first browser to have it.

Re:Who was first?

[avail4one]

I just can't wait for tabbed browsing. It will be so exciting to finally have this feature. I'm sure MS has the patent locked up on this brilliant idea! sorry to be a pain. i just remember what happened with the SPF group. Waitman

Nonsense.

[pwhysall]

Would you like to elaborate on what IE does that Firefox doesn't, "out of the box"?