Internet Explorer 7 RC1 Released

Kawahee writes "Microsoft, in conjunction with the announcement that they have finished Windows Vista RC1 have released Internet Explorer 7 RC1. Further commentary from the IE Blog post: 'The RC1 build includes improvements in performance, stability, security, and application compatibility. You may not notice many visible changes from the Beta 3 release; all we did was listen to your feedback, fix bugs that you reported, and make final adjustments to our CSS support.'"

Comments

Obligatory joke

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but does it run Linux?

Re:Obligatory joke

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but does it run Linux?

Thank God, no!

CSS = ACID?

[Anonymous Coward]

does this mean it passes the acid test?

Re:CSS = ACID?

[viniosity]

I'm really curious to see what kind of CSS modifications I'll have to make to support IE7 vs. Firefox. There are a number of well known hacks for IE6 and it'll be interesting to see how people keep those in place without jeopardizing the layouts in IE7.

Re:CSS = ACID?

[linuxci]

No, they said from the beginning that IE7 would not pass the ACID2 test. Maybe in a later release.

They neglected the browser for years (not the IE devs fault but management decision) so it'll take a long time to get upto speed with the rest.

One thing that we must make sure NEVER happens is that IE gets as dominant as it was pre-Firefox otherwise they'll just stop IE development again. It's happened once, it can just happen again. Fortunately, despite the hard work of the IE team, there's still a lot of benefits to be gained from using Firefox or Opera (or Safari, etc)

Re:CSS = ACID?

[linuxci]

Firefox 2.0 won't pass the Acid test because the rendering engine in 2.0 is based on the same gecko as 1.5 (1.5 uses Gecko 1.8 and 2.0 uses 1.8.1), however Firefox 3.0 should pass the acid test because a lot of work has been done on the rendering engine (Gecko 1.9).

Basically most of the changes in Firefox 2.0 will be in the frontend, 3.0 will have a lot of improvements to the backend.

However, 2.0's CSS support is vastly superior to that in IE7.

Re:CSS = ACID?

[pe1chl]

It is a step, but it is very questionable if it is a good thing to make a step when they are still so far of the target of rendering common CSS constructs that all other browsers render without problem.
(I do not mean the ACID2 test!)

Now we will have yet another browser to make special exceptions for, different from IE5 and IE6, and we still cannot feed IE7 the same CSS as Firefox, Opera or Konqueror.
That is a step, but is it the right direction? I don't know.

Re:CSS = ACID?

[pe1chl]

They cannot install IE7 if they aren't running XP SP2 or 2003 server.
It has always been possible to install another browser, but looking at the number of IE5 and 5.5 visits I still see, I think it will be 5 years before IE6 shows any sign of disappearing.

Re:CSS = ACID?

[icepick72]

One thing that we must make sure NEVER happens is that IE gets as dominant as it was pre-Firefox otherwise they'll just stop IE development again

The popularity of IE7 cannot be stopped because it's bundled with Windows and made available through Windows Update web site which almost every Windows user frequents, knowningly or not. Therefore the browser doesn't have to be popular because it will be widely used regardless.
I've been a Firefox-only Windows user for years however if IE7 supports many of the features I like about Firefox, I will have no qualms using it instead. I want the Web, not a browser. The ACID tests are important for standards, but we know Microsoft usually doesn't adhere fully to standards that aren't their own, so it's no a surprise. With IE7 Microsoft seems to be adhering to the 80/20 rule -- in this case 80% of what the better brwosers have become with 20% of the effort expended. This is smart business practice despite the other aspects.
Microsoft has copied popular features introduced by other browsers (as they have done from each other). I know we're going to see less Firefox on Windows when IE7 is published to Windows update. Most users don't care for the ACID tests (only the developers). It's amazing the dominance the old IE browser still has even though Microsoft hasn't updated it in years. It's inevitable that IE7 will make big wave and grab back a large % of browser share with its copied features.

Re:CSS = ACID?

[lukas.mach]

I'm quite sure it won't pass ACID2, but that doesn't matter - CSS support is still pretty good in MSIE 7 RC 1 and that's more that I hoped for. I just had to port quite complex CSS layout for MSIE 7 (used position:fixed hacks in MSIE 6, maxwidth emulation and whatnot) and all it took was to change one conditional comment (to ensure that these many MSIE-6-workarounds won't be applied to MSIE 7). Now I'm using exactly the same stylesheet for Mozilla, Opera and MSIE 7.

Underscore hacks won't do the trick for MSIE 7 (which is probably good thing), pages with xml declaration are rendered in standards mode (which will cause some minor trouble, mainly because of that boxmodel change).

Re:CSS = ACID?

[linuxci]

You can download nightly builds of Firefox from the trunk (branded as Minefield to indicate use at your own risk) so you can see exactly how Firefox 3.0 is progressing. As for IE8 we can't see the current status of that so who knows how much work is left to be done on IE8?

For updates on thr trunk (which will become Fx3.0) see The Burning Edge

Re:CSS = ACID?

[Jekler]

It is absurd that it takes less time and money to design and build an unmanned vehicle to explore mars, launch the vehicle, and complete the mission, than it does to design and build a rendering engine which passes Acid2 (or is otherwise compliant with HTML 4.01, CSS1/2, and DOM Level 1). Nevermind CSS3, SVG, or any newer technology, it is shocking that after 9 years of development on the Gecko Engine, it's not even CSS1 compliant. It seems foolish to bother developing subsequent standards until foundational work is complete.

Re:CSS = ACID?

[aymanh]

Web developers can use conditional comments to target a specific version of IE, and here is an article that goes into the details of what hacks are "supported" by IE7.

Supporting IE7 will require some extra work by webdevs, but it's doable even if code already contains hacks for previous versions of IE.

Re:CSS = ACID?

[dvice_null]

> Yes, and Internet Explorer 8 should also pass the test

Really? That is huge news. Do you have ANY proof for that?

About Firefox passing the ACID2 with version 3, here is a screenshot what it looks like in the reflow branch (branch where there is a lot of work done with the CSS support, which will at some point most likely be merged with the Firefox 3 trunk branch). That is why we bulieve that Firefox 3 will pass the ACID2:
http://www.nelchael.net/varia/fireflowfox.png
( For those of you who don't like clicking links or can't see images. There is a screenshot of Firefox browser, ACID2 page open and I see no errors with it. )

Re:CSS = ACID?

[Anonymous Coward]

If Mozilla had $820 million and several hundred rocket scientists working full time and over time on only the Gecko engine for three years, then yeah, I think it might pass Acid2.

I'm not saying it's reasonable that it hasn't, I'm saying it's unreasonable to compare a bunch of cowboys that do stuff for fun with a few paid employees along with them to JPL making robots and sending them to Mars.

Re:CSS = ACID?

[WhiteWolf666]

The ACID test is not a CSS compliance test. It's more like a CSS torture test.

IIRC, Konqueror and a heavily patched Webkit (they share a similar code base, of course) are the only browsers that pass ACID 2.0 . Oh, and Opera, of course; but that's because Opera tends to be light years ahead in terms of rendering engine design (I do dislike the Opera UI, though). Even Opera on mobile devices passes.

Take a look at the results here. Look at the screenshots. Firefox fails the test, but it's pretty close. IE7 is miles and miles away. But either way, the test is not terribly relevant; ACID is a test of invalid CSS, to see how the browser handles broken code. I think that in terms of standards, a CSS compliance test is more relevant. Not that IE does well there, either.

Re:CSS = ACID?

[FST777]

I design websites and webapps for a living, and all I ever have to do is design it so that it works in Firefox (ie: stick to the standards mostly) and then make sure it works in IE6 without using browser-detects (ie: use functionality detects). I have yet to come across a situation where the result doesn't work in IE7.

IE7 is an improvement, and I'm glad I have not been stupid enough in the past to use browser-detects. That is the sort of crap that keeps coming back to you with every new major version of any browser.

Re:CSS = ACID?

[Anonymous Coward]

indeed i do

http://img241.imageshack.us/my.php?image=ie8acidgd 0.jpg

for those of you who cant view this, its IE8 passing Acid test with flying colors.

Re:CSS = ACID?

[Bogtha]

But either way, the test is not terribly relevant; ACID is a test of invalid CSS, to see how the browser handles broken code.

Please do not spread this myth. It is simply not true. If you had actually read the Acid2 technical guide instead of relying on Slashdot hearsay, you would know this. From a previous comment of mine:

Have you actually bothered to read the Acid2 page? Because I hear this repeated all the time, and it's downright misleading.

There is a checklist of about a dozen things the Acid2 page tests. Incorrect code is just one of them. It is necessary to include incorrect code in a test like this. How else are you going to check whether a browser follows the CSS error handling rules?

It's incorrect code, sure, but it's incorrect code that has a defined rendering according to the CSS specifications. It's not something a compliant browser would trip up on. There is a correct way to parse the incorrect code, and the Acid2 page tests to see if a browser parses it correctly - among many other things it tests for.

Where are you guys getting this idea that the Acid2 test is all about error handling? It's a very small part of the test, but plenty of Slashdotters seem convinced that the test revolves around broken code and nothing else. Was there a weekly meeting I missed wher eyou all got this myth drilled into your heads?

FINISHED?!

[Desolator144]

I don't think they should be allowed to call it finished. They'll probably rewrite most of it in patches over the next few years like IE6. At least it has better CSS support. And now it works better with adware applications and maybe they finally added support for the "fixed" div style so we can all get attacked by screen covering super ads that can't be removed.

Re:FINISHED?!

[linuxci]

Apparently they've already written the roadmap for the next two versions of IE (probably called 7.5 and 8.0) so they're probably going to just make security patches for 7.0 and then fix bugs, improve compliance and add features in the future releases.

Not much as been said on these future releases yet except that they're hard at work on them.

backwards compatibility

[legoburner]

From people who have been using IE7 betas/RCs, how does it handle backwards compatibility? If someone is detecting IE and then generating different javascript to get around IE6 glitches, will they now need to test for IE6 or below /and/ IE7 or above to handle the old glitches and the non-glitchy IE or do glitch workarounds not affect the output of IE7?

Re:backwards compatibility

[pe1chl]

The site at work (http://www.uw.nl/) outputs standard html/css to everyone, and uses "IE conditional comments" to feed IE5 and IE6 specialized CSS items to work around their bugs.
A workaround sheet for IE7 has not yet been written, but it is very apparent (at least in beta3) that it is not up to the quality in standard CSS handling that the other browsers (Opera, Firefox, Konqueror) are. There are still positioning and stacking bugs.

I hope they fix them before release, but I'm afraid they won't. So this will introduce yet another class of broken browser workarounds: not as broken as IE6, but still broken.

Really?

[also-rr]

listen to your feedback

So this version will actually let me punch internet trolls in the face remotley?

I suppose you could say that if they are using Internet Explorer no further punishment is really necessary. Tell you what, I'll meet you half way - if it's detected that Flash is installed the face-punching module can be turned off and replaced with an endless loop of Joanna Smith's Video Blog Installment 19 (My Trip To Blackpool) instead. Do we have a deal?

On a related note in a tainted and statistically useless sample (ie, mostly Slashdot users) even Mac users can be tempted from Safari it seems - so why everyone assumes that on the release of IE 7 Firefox market share is going to die I have no idea.

Re:Really?

[linuxci]

On a related note in a tainted and statistically useless sample (ie, mostly Slashdot users) even Mac users can be tempted from Safari it seems - so why everyone assumes that on the release of IE 7 Firefox market share is going to die I have no idea.

I definitely don't think IE7 will significantly hurt Firefox usage. Look at it this way:

• IE7 is not available for Win2000 or earlier (or and non-Win OS)
• IE7 user interface is totally non-standard on XP
• IE7's installation is more of a hassle than Firefox - it's a larger download, needs rebooting and takes longer

Re:Really?

[rts008]

You left out the part where WGA gets installed automagically during the IE7 install, even if you uncheck the box for "check for updates" at the beginning of the install.

I watched that happen on one of my boxes at home- unplugged the cat5, and the install claimed it couldnt finish without internet connection. And that's after you go through the validation process just so you can download IE7 from MS.

Be warned- if you don't want WGA, be careful trying to install IE7.

Re:Really?

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

I definitely think IE7 will significantly hurt Firefox usage. Look at it this way:

• IE7 will come down automatic update. Eventually it'll come shipped with computers.
  
  • IE7 is ripping off several FireFox features (tabs, etc.), thus making FF feel more like a pain in the butt to download for the average user since the differences won't be as large.
    
    • Microsoft actually markets their product.

what

[Bizzeh]

welcome to last weeks news.

CSS Changes for IE7

[aymanh]

I couldn't find links to this page in the summary or IE7 blog entry, so I'm posting it here as I believe many would be interested in it: List of CSS changes in IE7.

It's mostly bug fixes, notable new features are enabling :hover for all elements, implementing position: fixed, PNG transparency support, and min/max width/height.

Blink Support?

[Quintios]

It still pisses me off that IE doesn't support the BLINK tag. What a bunch of crap, MS. :\

Breaks /. new discussion system

[psycln]

IE7 RC1 makes more than enough white-space in the beta /. discussion system. http://img396.imageshack.us/my.php?image=ndsyn9.jp g my eyes hurt...

Re:In Windows Vista Build 5536?

[linuxci]

This is not the same IE build as in the latest Vista build. This release only works in XP. Actually the versions of IE in XP and Vista are not exactly the same. Some of this they blame on the underlying OS but most likely it's just to make vista more attractive.

IE for Vista was going to be named IE7+ and XP simply IE7, however they scrapped that naming convention.

Also another slight name change, on both platforms it's no longer "Microsoft Internet Explorer" it's now "Windows Internet Explorer".

PNG gamma handling is still wrong

[Glenn R-P]

PNG files with gamma=1/2.2 are still rendered differently from PNG files with the sRGB chunk
and from untagged images. See http://pmt.sf.net/gamma_test where the 1/2.2 patches
should match and the 1/1.96 patches should be lighter (use Firefox or almost any other
browser to see how the page should be rendered).

Re:Web developers have it backwards

[thelost]

because most people use internet explorer and if websites don't work in it it won't me MS they hassle, but the website designers. Designers (I'm one of them) know which side their bread is buttered on, we have to put these hacks in place because at the least clients expect sites we design for them to work in IE. They often might not know that there are different browsers or that websites render differently depending on which browser you view them with.

So in an ideal world, designers would drop tools and say fuck no, i'm not coding another box model hack till MS fix this, however MS are under *no* obligation to make IE work unfortunately. Also, to most peoples standards IE *does* work well enough unfortunately.

Who the fuck cares about CSS?

[daniil]

All the reviews I've read have pointed out that IE7's interface is way nicer than that of Firefox -- even in first betas. The default theme that comes with Firefox looks awfully outdated. Now, you may say that it doesn't matter because hey, there's all these themes and extensions you can install, but the truth is, not many people use themes (even the most popular ones only have at most a hundred thousand downloads) it will take an ordinary person only one look at IE7 before they dump Firefox. I'm very sorry to tell you this but all the technical things don't even matter -- what matters is that from what I've heard and read, IE7 is much easier to use than Firefox and it will be the way to go for the majority of Internet users.

Re:Who the fuck cares about CSS?

[WhiteWolf666]

I actually haven't been reading that at all.

Most of the reviews I've read chide MS for creating an interface that looks far, far different than anything else in the OS.

The average person does NOT like MS's new interface design. For the most part, there is a huge majority of people who run XP in "classic" mode, enjoying all applications in a one-size-fits all, boxy, ugly as sin, tan/grey everything Windows 2000-style interface. In particular, placing tabs above the menu bar seems to incite hatred; people find it confusing.

Joe Blow doesn't like UI changes; even if they could potentially increase efficency. The only people that are really moved by whiz-bang UIs are young gamers and UI engineers.

Re:Who the fuck cares about CSS?

[amliebsch]

For the most part, there is a huge majority of people who run XP in "classic" mode, enjoying all applications in a one-size-fits all, boxy, ugly as sin, tan/grey everything Windows 2000-style interface.

You are claiming that the "huge majority" of people who use Windows XP run in "classic" mode. What is your source for this?

Re:Who the fuck cares about CSS?

[Digit Machine]

I don't know about what vista looks like, but I run xp in classic mode. I cannot stand the colorful childlike buttons in the menubar and the menubar is larger in xp theme. I want to be able to see what is in the window, not a big toylike bar across the top of the screen.

Can't customize the toolbar

[bogie]

I still can't believe MS won't allow you to move some of the features around, notably the home button. It is unbeliveable awkward to go to the top left to go back and forward and then have to move way down and right to get to the home page button. You want to put all of those other little buttons off to the bottom right? Fine. But move the fucking home button back next to the navigation arrows where it is supposed to go. Oh and smart move to hide the file menu and all the other menus. Nobody uses those menus anyway.

Pluses?

Tabbed browing - Welcome to the 90s.
Shrink to fit printing - Gee why would we need that? I like having 15% of every page I print cut off.
RSS Feeds - Does anyone even use this?
Integrated Search - About time.

Overall I think this is the browser that MS should have released 3-4 years ago. It is better than IE 6 in pretty much every way but I don't see Opera or Firefox users coming back anytime soon. I know that MS sees these changes as a big deal but I honestly expected more from a company that spends $1 Billion+ on R&D per year. With all of that money and talent the best they could do is copy features that other browsers have had for years and years? Talk about a total lack of innovation.

Re:Can't customize the toolbar

[protohiro1]

Minuses...it thrashes the layout on slashdot. I don't know why, but it does. I guess we are all going to be working on IE7 fixed for the next year...

Re:Can't customize the toolbar

[oyenstikker]

"It is better than IE 6 in pretty much every way"

What?! User interface is non-standard and sucks. The CSS support is different but not right, so correct CSS is broken AND IE6 hacked CSS is broken. What way is it better in? Tabs. Thats one way, not pretty much every way.

Re:Can't customize the toolbar

[SanityInAnarchy]

My guess, Slashdot autodetects and adjusts itself for the IE6 bug suite, and that this adjustment also occurs for IE7. To make it work on IE7, we'll have to have yet another bug suite.

This is why the Acid2 test exists, folks. We are sick of having to do browser detection, especially for different versions of the same browser.

Re:Web developers have it backwards

[gregOfTheWeb]

Damn that's the truth. Who cares about standards in the marketplace. satisfy the CUSTOMER! A developer should develop against IE and make it compatible with FF. Why would you possibly do it otherwise with FF having a market share between 10-20% depending on which report you look at.

To do the reverse, develop for FF and make it compatible with IE, is elitist and foolish and wastefull.

Re:Web developers have it backwards

[reanjr]

I totally disagree. I design for Opera first, dropping in Dean Edward's IE7 scripts with a single conditional comment (that is standards compliant in every other browser as a comment), and rarely have to make any updates for IE. I usually make a minimal number of adjustments to get things to look right in FF and (depending on the site), Safari. Sometimes I don't have the time to make things look perfect in FF and Safari, but that's not too big a deal. The site still renders in a usable format, it's just the exact vision of what I had in mind.

The only thing I really spend any time on cross-browser support is with the script. I admit, alot of this has to do with the fact that I almost never use ecma/javascript (besides Dean Edward's IE7 scripts), so I am not up to date on the differences. This is the major place I would like to see updates made to IE.

Can a release candidate be released then?

[niceone]

Can a release candidate be released then? I just seems plain wrong to me.

Re:Can a release candidate be released then?

[Shadyman]

What seems most "wrong" here is that Microsoft, of all people, put out a Release Candidate. I thought their methodology was to post real verions and wait for the bug reports?

IE7 is spyware

[eneville]

http://tinyurl.com/ezeey

Don't rely on your trusty IE hacks anymore!

[Gavin86]

A lot of them have been destroyed.

For further information on CSS compatability, check out the IEBlog entry, "Details on our CSS changes for IE7", as well as the Quirksmode CSS browser compatability page.