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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!).
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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.
Wait, wait, wait. A version of IE you can actually uninstall? Did I miss something here?
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"And may your days be long upon the earth."
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.
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.
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
IE will use the W3C box model if you include an appropriate DOCTYPE in your page (as per the standards) thereby triggering "strict" rendering mode. The box model is only broken if you use"quirks" mode rendering.
This has been the case since IE5.5.
It's also how Firefox, Opera and Safari - and probably every other CSS-supporting browser of any note - cope with all the malformed HTML/CSS out there.
Using HTML in email is like putting sound effects on your phone calls. Just say <strong>no</strong>.
According to the announcement on the IE Team's blog:
Using HTML in email is like putting sound effects on your phone calls. Just say <strong>no</strong>.
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.