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IE7 Bug Reports Flooding In
the JoshMeister writes "According to ZDNet, bug reports are already flooding in for Microsoft's new Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 Preview. Specific issues include the possibility of arbitrary code execution as well as incompatibilities with McAfee Security Center, anti-spyware programs, and online banking sites." From the article: "... browser testers may already be at risk, according to security researcher Tom Ferris. Late Tuesday, Ferris released details of a potential security flaw in IE 7. An attacker could exploit the flaw by crafting a special Web page that could be used to crash the browser or gain complete control of a vulnerable system, Ferris said in an advisory on his Web site. Microsoft had no immediate comment on Ferris' alert."
Do I get mod points now?
... you don't get the mod points until you explain what exactly it is that Microsoft is sucking on?
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
...but I downloaded and installed and uninstalled this thing last night. Still seems there are loads of CSS problems in it (couldn't get a navigation menu to work but using :hover pseudo-class). It'll be interesting to see what MS comes up with on this one. It'll be nice to actually have a capable version of IE to test pages against.
I can't spell ripburger
people are claiming that a Preview Release ,not even a full beta yet, has bugs? Just wondering what these industry leading geniuses thought they were getting with a preview release? I have been using IE7 for a couple months now, my work provides me with a Technet Plus subscription, and I have had some issues. In most, if not all cases, I have been able to work around them and still rely heavily on Firefox. I will say that Microsoft has finally added some much needed functionality to their browser such as tabbed browsing and keyboard shortcuts which are exactly the same as Firefox's (coincidence, I think not). I guess my point is it's a preview release, it's not perfect and it has bugs, by using beta software you are agreeing to help solve some of the problems before final release, and there will be problems.
Just my two cents worth.
You must learn to be still in the midst of activity and to be vibrantly alive in repose. -Indira Gandhi
OK, yeah, I got the point. It's a beta and betas will have bugs. But this isn't IE 1.0 Beta. This is freaking IE 7, and while it's a beta, you'd figure they'd have gotten at least some of these things straightened out in the past 6 versions. I'm not so much frustrated that a beta has bugs, but that even into version 7 they're still having huge problems and potential exploits.
What kind of dumb-ass uses a beta browser for their banking anyway? It's not going to kill them to flick back to whatever their regular (non-beta) browser is.
I don't just mean IE either. Firefox in it's pre 1.0 days had a bug where tabs could read form data from other tabs. Like credit card numbers. All the way up to 1.0.
Why aren't beta's being released with some sort of self-setting desktop wallpaper that says "Look dipshit this is a beta product, and not like Google Beta TM, like buggy beta, so spare a seconds thought before you go doing your finances".
In next weeks news: some stupid fuck loses his identity and $20000 minutes after using IE7 Beta to pay his bills, therefore IE7 is bad.
IE still lacks XHTML support of any kind - I don't want to seem picky here, but it has been 6 years. Sure, I can have applications I work on spit out XHTML that's mostly like HTML 4, and send the appropriate MIME type based on the Accept header, but I'd really quite like to see IE support vaguely recent standards, y'know...
So what ever happened to "trustworthy computing"? I believe the userbase would really like to see MS redesign IE from the ground up, much like what happened to netscape / mozilla. While it's no small effort, we are talking Microsoft here - it's not a cost issue. Perpetuating a design that has NEVER emphasized security just seems like the wrong thing to do - especially when it's "an integral part of the operating system" (as MS claims.)
(via Jon Galloway) Sure, you knew IE7 Beta 1 was up on MDSN, but you don't have a free machine to test it on. Can't install it on your main work machine, because you can't afford to mess it up... plus, you need to be testing your work against IE 6, right? You thought about setting up a Virtual PC image, but it seemed like too much trouble for a Beta 1. Still, it would be nice to click around in it for a few minutes here and there... Fret no more! IE has a secret standalone mode which lets you run multiple versions side by side (thanks to Joe Maddalone for figuring this out). It's pretty simple: Download the IE7 Beta 1 Install from MSDN Open the install file with WinRAR (yep, it's an EXE, but it's a self extracting EXE) and extract them to a folder. Alternatively, you can just run the EXE, make a copy of the files which are extracted in the first step, and cancel the install. I was too chicken to do this on my work computer. Look in the folder you extracted to for the file SHLWAPI.DLL. Delete this file. Create a new text file in the folder, then rename it to IEXPLORE.exe.local. That's it. The .local file in the folder tells the IExplore.exe instance to run in local mode, which means it won't mess with your IE6 settings, registry, etc. It sounds complicated, but it takes less than 10 minutes and it goes just great with your Friday morning coffee. Of course, you can help your friends at work (who also have MDSN subscriptions, of course) by zipping the folder and sharing it with them so they don't have to go through this crazy mumbo jumbo.
Incidentally, there are archives of old IE versions converted to standalone mode over at browsers.evolt.org and at skyzyx.com. C'mon, spend a day with IE3 for old time's sake!