Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Releases IE7 Beta 3
Kawahee writes "Microsoft has released IE7 Beta 3 to the public. From TechNet Flash: 'As a result of customer feedback, IE7 Beta 3 contains some feature changes in addition to the planned reliability, compatibility, and security improvements. If you've previously installed a beta of IE7, you should uninstall it before installing this release.' For the first time, the Administrator's Kit for Internet Explorer 7 is also available, which is described as 'the most efficient way to deploy and manage Web-based solutions.'"
"If Flight Simulator 2004 stops responding after you have installed Internet Explorer 7 Beta, find the oleacc.dll file in the Flight Simluator folder and rename it to oleacc.old. Then restart Flight Simulator."
Sorry, but that gave me a chuckle. Reliability, compatibility and security are still in beta.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
IE 7 still did not correctly implement the box model, positioning, all CSS1, all CSS2, or any CSS3. The same IE-specific parsing bugs for CSS are in place in IE 7.
At this point, you have to ask; is it that the people at Microsoft are incapable of producing a specs-compliant rendering engine (when every one else in the world can?), that they are roped by backwards compatibility, or that they think people will see IE 6 + tabs as "good enough"?
It's to the point where every site I make has 2 code paths: not IE, and the IE-specific overrides (up to an additional 20kb per page!).
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
I'm sure there are improvements with this new release, but how much can you really improve upon a structurally flawed program? It's like Vista... They always tout "It's the BEST Windows EVER" and "The most SECURE OS!" and all that garbage...but what happens 2 weeks after it's public release? Flaws. Flaws, flaws, horribly unexplainable flaws that should have been caught with some basic QA *before* release.
Firefox rules. It was built from the ground up to AVOID the problems created by poor programming in IE.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Wait, wait, wait. A version of IE you can actually uninstall? Did I miss something here?
------
"And may your days be long upon the earth."
I can't seem to find any version for Vista. Has anyone heard anything regarding this? They have a separate version for XP, Server 2003, and so on, but not vista.
'the most efficient way to deploy and manage Web-based solutions.'
Thanks for this, I really know what that means.
It has some lame excuse about protecting your from phishing, but even when you select to allow popups from the site in question, it still blocks input boxes until you change the security level from "medium-high," which is the new "medium" to "medium," which is the new "low." Like the federal government with terrorists, we're supposed to trust Big Bill to choose what we may or may not do on the internet.
You have to wonder just who MS has working on IE. I see the project team as being in a rarely visited far-flung part of the basement, with cobwebs hanging around the doorways and light fittings. The team, all in their late fifties, pasty-white having not been above ground for years are hunched over their MMX pentiums testing their work on a 3-PC LAN running Windows 95 and wondering when the higher-ups will eventually get around to giving them a modem.
If only someone would pop down there and tell them about tabbed browsing and other minor details like security and malicious scripts.
while sco {
wget -O
}
Sorry, but isn't fingering a dike a little off topic?
No XML. Poor CSS. Lame.
So IE7 Beta 3 for Windows XP is any more web standards compliant than the last version? I found it ironic that IE7 for Windows Vista displayed my website correctly.
Still... no... proper... box... model...? Not even and... option or something?
Well, let me just say, as a web developer... FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK! FUCK YOU FUCKING MICROSOFT FUCKERS! ROT IN HELL YOU CHEAP IMITATION HACKS WHO COULDN'T PROGRAM YOURSELVES OUT OF A FUCKING BOX! (Whatever that means.)
Okay. I needed that. Seriously, what the fuck have they been doing all this time? Pounding their dicks with mallets?
How long has this piece of shit been in development? If this browser is any indication of Vista well... no wonder I haven't updated past 2000. There is so much nice stuff sitting in the CSS standard and it's largely being ignored. The IE team should die of gonorrhea and rot in hell.
I know the Slashdot crowd will poo-poo on this release, the zealots will shout for their favorite browser, etc. And for the most part, they're right. The media seems oblivious to this, but I've stopping thinking of IE7 as a competitor to all of the other browsers. Instead, I see it as what a baseline browser that's integrated into the OS should be.
Yes, IE7 is basically where Firefox and everyone else was at years ago. Yes, it has tons of room for improvement. But for the unwashed masses out there, having a PC that comes with IE7, or being forced to upgrade as part of Windows Update is a good thing. Sure, I could install Windows from scratch, open up Write, and begin my novel. Or, if I want and need more features, I can choose from Word, Open Office, WordPerfect, etc. Same goes for the browsers. IE7 will give the average user a higher starting point, but the alternatives will always do the job better, and I don't think IE7 will stop the adoption that Firefox is seeing. Who is seriously going to go back to IE after using and customizing Firefox to how they want it?
I use Firefox at home, and partially at work, but I also have to use IE for our Intranet development (it's easier for now, and they're too ingrained to IE for me to start using FF full time. If something doesn't work right, I'd rather not have to tell the "well, it works right in FF, it's your problem"....anyway....). I grabbed the IE7b3 yesterday and have found it leaps and bounds better that IE7b2. Pages load faster (still not as fast as FF), the UI is snappier (still not as snappy as FF), and some of the quirks of before have been fixed. It's better than IE7b2, and tons better than IE6. Is it going to replace FF at all? Heck, no.
But no mention in the FA as to whether or not IE will support the DTD specs from W3C (currently, IE 6 does not ignore entities that have the IGNORE attribute, hence XHTML 1.1 DTDs from W3C are not parsed - they throw errors.
The IE 7 team has talked in length about the changes to the rendering engine and the decisions they've made.
Some particularly interesting posts are:
Standards and CSS in IE
Improving the CSS 2.1 strict parser for IE 7
Layout Complete Announced at MIX06
What's New for CSS in Beta 2 Preview
The prolog, strict mode, and XHTML in IE
All your are belong to us
Call to action: The demise of CSS hacks and broken pages.
It's not perfect, but it's a major improvement in basically every way over IE 6.
I haven't seen any big differences between beta 2 and beta 3 (though of course there was a huge jump between IE6 and IE7 beta 2), but they did at least fix one obscure bug I'd reported back in March.
Under very specific circumstances, hovering over a link in IE7b2 could cause floated objects further up the page to disappear. Ironically, I discovered the bug on a page using a floated Get Firefox button. Yes, you read that right: a bug in IE caused a Firefox link to disappear.
It seems to be slightly faster than b2 was, but it still takes longer to load than firefox (which is hilarious, because I consider firefox to be one slow-starting mofo) and loads pages about half as fast. Probably it's a checked build or something, but it's unacceptable. I'm uninstalling and going back to IE6 (for those things for which I need IE) as soon as I feel like rebooting.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Internet Explorer Administration Kit 7 Beta 2 Looks like a real joy. Now every ISP can create their own rambling piece of crap like the Yahoo! browser!
blah blah blah
It's Still Fisher-Price. :(
I don't know about you but firefox is being a memory intensive program these days, it even crashes now and then for me. And opera is doesn't feel right on GNU/Linux (no native widget support). I suggest to you use Seamonkey http://www.mozilla.org/projects/seamonkey/ until firefox developers start to use smart pointers or add a garbage collector.
Comparing anything to perfection is a false dichotomy because nothing is perfect. The question the grandparent poster is asking is better answered by asking oneself cui bono—who benefits? Then you'll see that as long as a proprietor can keep open standards from taking hold, that proprietor benefits. If the most popular browser were to become a free software browser, such as Firefox, you'd see Microsoft change their browser implementation to better conform to standards because they wouldn't be able to compete with broken-by-design software.
Digital Citizen
Yes, you read that right: a bug in IE caused a Firefox link to disappear.
I wonder if MS didn't intentially put anti-Firefox code into IE7/Vista.
When I installed the Vista Beta, I had no trouble downloading executables using IE, including Acrobat, Creative Labs drivers, and an antivirus. But the instant I tried to download the Firefox installer, it popped up with a message telling me that it might not be safe to download.
I found that rather suspicious.
Nothing to see here
I just like the possibilities this tag brings to browsers and web applications, as well as (simple) gaming. However, I haven't heard anything about it working (or not) in any of the IE7 betas that have been released yet...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Who does MS have working on IE? Believe it or not, I know a guy from my college ( freshmen ) who is interning at Microsoft, working on IE. I was jealous that I didn't get picked ( I don't have much of a job right now ). Anyways, interesting part about this: during the interview, they asked the guy what Microsoft applications he uses most often and what he would change about them. This boy responds, "I don't know, because I'm an Apple user. I've never used Microsoft software." This guy actually gets picked for the fucking internship. He doesn't even know what IE does WRONG, and now he's supposed to help make it rigt? I understand that it's good to get a different perspective when developing software, especially from people who are familiar with the competition, but this is a bit much, don't you think?
I haven't kept up much on IE 7, but I hope they are treating it like Vista: dump the old code, and start from scratch. If they don't, then the entire effort is pointless.
You can only build on old code for so long before it's a good idea to start fresh again.
What's funny is Microsoft is still not getting it. MOst of the security problems are part of features they implemented for convienence sake. They can't maintain compatability with these technologies without making IE 7 less secure, unless they implemented some complicated embedded sandbox, with might not work for every situation and would be an unreliable solution.
Compatability, Security, Reliability. Pick two, Microsoft.
Oh, you silly Firefox users: http://www.opera.com/ ;)
Whenever I see that in a statement from Microsoft, it is always code for "We have totally ignored the wishes of our customers and instead focused on lock-in, the breaking of standards, and the complete bollixing of normal user interface conventions."
Meh.
Our intelligent designer has never created an animal that we couldn't improve by strapping a bomb to it.
Here is what Microsoft has to say about IE 7 and the ACID test:
"...I've seen a lot of comments asking if we will pass the Acid2 browser test published by the Web Standards Project when IE7 ships. I'll go ahead and relieve the suspense by saying we will not pass this test when IE7 ships. The original Acid Test tested only the CSS 1 box model, and actually became part of the W3C CSS1 Test Suite since it was a fairly narrow test - but the Acid 2 Test covers a wide set of functionality and standards, not just from CSS2.1 and HTML 4.01, selected by the authors as a "wish list" of features they'd like to have. It's pointedly not a compliance test (emphasis added) (from the Test Guide: "Acid2 does not guarantee conformance with any specification"). As a wish list, it is really important and useful to my team, but it isn't even intended, in my understanding, as our priority list for IE7."
Changes to IE7's rendering engine have been primarily in fixing bugs and catching up to established standards like CSS. came out of WhatWG (or, more precisely, came out of work Apple was doing to make Dashboard widgets possible, then submitted to WhatWG), which, so far, the IE team appears to be ignoring.
Since WhatWG's work does seem to be catching on, with Opera, Firefox and Safari all implementing features and not just talking about it, there might be some pressure on Microsoft to start adding support in IE 7.5 or IE 8.
I saw this earlier when I was downloading the IE 6 Administrator's Kit. I searched around for almost an hour trying to find a good, old-fashioned changelog listing the changes since Beta 2. Anyone found that yet?
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
IE7 is IE7 - it's the same code whichever operating system it's running on. As far as enhancements to standards support: the improvements to HTML and CSS support have been restricted to bug fixes since Beta 2, in which the major changes/improvements were introduced. Improvements to DOM support will probably come in a later version (7.5, 8, 8.5...).
You can keep up with what they're doing on the IE Team's blog.
Using HTML in email is like putting sound effects on your phone calls. Just say <strong>no</strong>.
I'm an I.T. Director at a large firm, and I've been eager to try deployment of Firefox to our corporate desktops. However, I've been stymied by this as there seems to be no MSI installation package for FF. Our desktop users are locked down and cannot install apps, so deploying FF via login script is not an option. I'd love to be able to push this out via GPO's, but with no MSI installer, that's more or less impossible.
Does anyone know of a good way to push installations of FF via GPO? If so, are patches also available to be pushed in this fashion? Note that if users don't have local admin privs, they aren't able to use FF's auto-update function.
Lastly, I'm sure there are various people who have cobbled together MSI's manually in some fashion. I don't think this is acceptable to us at this time, as we would prefer something "official" from Mozilla if at all possible. Third party hacks are great for home use, but we need something more or less "officially recognized" by Mozilla before I'm going to do a mass push to hundreds of desktops.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Nothing may be perfect, but you can acheive the best possible with reference to a clearly defined standard. For the question, "what is two plus two?" "four" is the perfect answer, given the standard of human mathematics. For CSS implementation, complying completely to all of the CSS specification is perfect.
im in ur
How come it is "released to the public" when it requires Windows Genuine Validation?
"the most efficient way to deploy and manage Web-based solutions."
If by "Web-based solutions" you mean trojans, spyware, and other nefarious exploits then I whole-heartedly agree.
Since I'm running XP in Parallels Desktop on my MacBook Pro, I decided to give it a spin.
The install kept my Google bar from the old IE, and it also had Google as the default search engine! (Not the Google bar, but IE7b3's search box.)
Just out of curiosity, did the Parallels on MacBook Pro (did I mention that it is a 17"?) give the cred I thought it would?
It must have taken the SAT before they upped the top score to 2400.
Still, I liked your analogy.
What we need is someone to branch off the mozilla project into a lean, lightweight, efficient browser. "Today simplicity, tomorrow convenience. Tomorrow convenience, the next day simplicity..." -Donald Norman
What is just as odd is that they appear to be ignoring developer feedback as well. A lot of web developer time is sunk trying to resolve problems between IE and other browsers. Why do these complaints fall on deaf ears? They should be doing a lot more to satisfy developer needs and wants than users because ultimately if dev time is lost trying to develop apps on their technology and it turns out too be too costly then fewer apps are made.
You have to give them a little time. Remember that Netscape was behind on CSS support for several years during the 4.x era. Microsoft can catch up.
And they are making visible progress. After all, the IE7 beta does fully support PNG, including the alpha channel, which is a major boon for web developers. Mozilla didn't support that until at least 1998, IIRC, so while IE might be a little bit behind, if you cut them some slack, they'll catch up on the relevant standards eventually.
And yeah, I'm posting this using the IE7 Beta 3 preview. Since part of my job involves web development, I have to test out new browsers, especially ones that are likely to become popular, whether they're my personal preference or not.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
I don't mean to troll, never have before, but I mean... I submitted this yesterday and it was rejected within 30 minutes. Why's it breaking news, now? lol... ah well. That's how the editor's job goes! :)
"Today's release is the final beta for IE7. Our next steps are the Release Candidates followed by general availability in the second half of the year." - Dean Hachamovitch So I take it no more improvements will be done? Only bug fixes? So I guess that means no SVG support for sure.
Right clicking and going to properties doesn't work either.
~= scwizard =~
You missed an option:
5. Develop to standards and ignore IE.
I know, I know, it's not an option for everybody. I'm lucky enough to work in an all-Mac company, so I've been able to ignore IE entirely for the internal sales web application I'm working on. It was a moment of pure joy when I realised I don't have to worry about IE this time. I was able to strip out a load of JavaScript and replaced it with simpler and easier to maintain CSS2 rules. And my code and layouts work first time!
It's not an option for most people, but when you have the chance to do ignore IE, you realise what a terrible cancer it is on web development productivity.
If your comment title says 'Re: Foo', I'm not likely to read it.
I interviewed for a IE7 CSS job at Microsoft about two months ago. Coming from a web development background, I was curious as to how they would present their goals/problems with meeting CSS standards. I was well aware of the "code it to standard, view in IE, and cry" web development cycle.
One of the team leads (sorry don't know how high up of a team lead he was) actually said that often when people say IE is rendering something incorrectly it is actually IE that is doing it correctly while all of the other browsers are rendering it incorrectly. I could tell he was looking at how I would respond to that statement. I just sat there and didn't move. I knew that was an arrogant lie, and was just enough for me to stop caring about the interview. Needless to say, I didn't get the job. Fortunately, I had already interviewed for another job, which I've since been hired at, which is much MUCH better (pays more too).
Two points here people:
1- With team leads holding that kind of arrogant attitudem, no wonder IE is the quagmire it is. They're more used to making standards, not adhering to them.
2- Yes, recent college CS grads can find a job! I actually had 2 1/2 offers after only 4 interviews. Just develop your skill set (more than what they teach you in class) and learn how to communicate in *English* not just C, C++, Perl, etc.
Faith is a willingness to accept something w/o complete proof and to act on it. Reason allows you to correct that faith.
I'm a web developer and the main reason I don't use CSS exclusively isn't because of poor browser support or rendering bugs, but CSS itself.
CSS is really really annoying. Sometimes you just need to use tables because even with a good standards compliant browser like Safari, it's just not possible to do what you want with CSS.
Things which use to be REALLY easy with tables in quirks mode (like a 3 column layout, 100% high with a header and footer) are almost impossible to implement using CSS. There are a multitude of websites giving example or template layouts in CSS. Some of these show 100 odd lines of CSS with loads of exceptions for each browser. The same thing can often be achieved with a single table in about 8 lines of code.
I mean just look at the CSS for slashdot - there are pages and pages of it and loads of browser exceptions. It had none of this complexity when it was a basic tables based site. They've just used CSS whereever possible for the sake of it.
The box model is really really annoying. If I tell something to be 200px wide, then it should be 200px wide all the time. However in most standards compliant browsers, it will be wider than 200px because it adds the margins and borders to the outside of it's own width. That makes it very difficult to work with as you have to subtract all those dimensions from the width you're giving it and need to alter about a million dimensions everytime you want to make something a bit wider.
CSS has a long way to go in my opinion.
Take it easy, and stay low. There are many factors affect your submission here.
So does IE 7.0 now (re-)support "position: fixed"? It worked in IE 5.0, then was broken in IE 6.0. So is it back?
I think that IE and FireFox are now more or less on a par. Unfortunately, we're going to see FireFox 2.0 over the next few months (which is fantastic by the way - try it), which is far superior in my opinion.
IE hasn't even implemented Find-as-you-type, more or less the thing that keeps me glued like a limpet to FireFox.
PocketGamer.org - For the gamer on the go!
Given Micro$atan's creative re-writing of definitions, I have to post this as only a guess. As I understood their terms, "Beta" is the big "hack together and let it ALL break at once, and spend months later sifting through zillions of error reports". AKA, it means Wood&Duct-Tape experimentation with stuff.
A Release Candidate says they're starting to get serious with their final feature set, and is supposed to be far improved. Depending upon the application's distribution pattern, you may need to have some qualification to get intermediate releases. Paul Thurrott specifically slammed M$ for not waiting 7 weeks to release what he says, for 7 weeks of work, a tremendously better "Should-Have-Been-Beta" build. Get this - it's "from a different development tree - not part of the Beta line, but part of the Release Candidate line" - Read "quit goofing around and start getting serious".
--TaoPhoenix
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I attempted to install IE7b3 but failed. I did successfully remove IE7b2 (re-exposing IE6) but now I just get a new "Internet Explorer Troubleshooting" button (with a Firefox icon!) that doesn't do anything. Anyhow, someone please go to http://pmt.sourceforge.net/gamma_test/index.html and see if it passes the gamma test. IE7b2 was still failing, with the gamma=1.96 patch matching the background better than gamma=2.2.
Oh, you mean the piece of shit that has a memory leak on top of being a memory hog leading to constant crashes, even after a clean install and having no plug-ins? No thanks, I'll stick with Internet Explorer, as it has never crashed on me yet. True, hackers might attack the exploits of Internet Explorer and not of firefox, but maybe it's because firefox crashes long before anyone has tinme to hack into IE.
To the users with mod points. If you disagree with me, tell me why you do instead of modding this post down.
ASP.NET Atlas features are not really working very well in IE beta 3. They are working nicely in FireFox and IE 6.0.
Don't worry. Beta 2 told me that /. looked like a phishing site.
I have nothing to say.
I will give you all the HTML you want, but not an Slashdot (that's offtopic at this point).
Feel free to contact me via my homepage.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
sod Ms, I code all my sites properly and bollocks to the users that use IE, if they are too stupid to change the browser what good are they to me or my sites?
body massage!
You really don't want to know what my original interpretation was. (-:
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
The "third party standard" just appears the one that every browser should ideally follow. Granted, we're living in an inperfect world, but I'd personally except Microsoft to be completely capable of allocating sufficient amount of resources to make their browser pretty close to 100% compatibility with the W3 standards without exactly going bankrupt.
And I don't think IE has had 95% share of the browsers for a year or two now; AFAIK the numbers are somewhere between 80-90%, depending on who you ask. Granted, it's still the most popular browser, but the others are getting to numbers where they can't be easily ignored anymore...
Everyone who makes generalizations should be shot.