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IE7 Released As High-Priority Update
jimbojw writes, "Internet Explorer 7 was finally released this morning and is available via automatic update or download from Microsoft." And an anonymous reader notes stats on IE7 and FF2 downloads, adding: "Looks like FF2 is already outnumbering FF 1.5, while IE7 is having a hard time to find followers. Will today's release as a high-priority, force-fed update fix this issue?" The sans.org stats site will be updated throughout the day, so perhaps we'll get an indication.
Will today's release as a high-priority, force-fed update fix this issue?
Yes of course it will. Why would the majority of Windows users go out and manually download a web browser? For most of them IE works just fine. When IE7 comes in they will just consider it another one of Windows quirks and happily chug along with it.
Yes. People on drugs were downloading IE7 voluntarily, now Microsoft release it for real, forcing people to upgrade.
I *want* people to upgrade to IE7. I don't care if they're using IE7 or Firefox. I just want to be able to write sane CSS.
In my company we have at least two programs whose functionality is broken when IE7 is installed, due to menus written using IE6's renderer. Even some of Microsoft's own software -- e.g. the file transfer function in their Xbox 360 DDK -- breaks when IE7 is installed. Pushing this major upgrade as a forced update is irresponsible. This isn't what the Automatic Update system is supposed to be for.
And even when nothing breaks, I suspect a lot of users are going to be pissed that their web browser interface has suddenly changed.
Microsoft says they've taken steps aimed at the root causes of IE security problems, as in doing a real redesign.
It's not exactly sandboxed, but it has to ask permission from a "request broker" before changing anything in the rest of the system, and the request broker is smaller, more auditable, and not handling malicious input all the time. Troublesome features like installing Browser Help Objects are off by default.
If we're lucky this could be like IIS 6. If we're not lucky, it should still be better than the malware installation engine everyone's running now.
Don't expect your friends and relatives to report fewer malware installations, though. The bad guys will just shift to a different infection vector if IE7 lives up to its promises.
For isc.sans.org (which is probably not your typical site), 50% of Firefox users already use Firefox 2.0, and 23% of Internet Explorer users use MSIE 7.0. Overall, we got about a 50/50 split between Firefox and Internet Explorer users.
The stats on the site don't say much at all about the uptake of IE7 (or FF2, for that matter) among the general internet-using population. As you can see in the quote, the article doesn't make any pretensions that they do, either, noting that sans.org isn't a typical site.
Which is obvious, given the breakdown of FF vs IE users. A 50/50 split is obviously not a representative sample.
The second half of this blurb is blatantly misleading.
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
In other news, Google's market share in the web search business has plummeted, while MSN search rose to be the most used search engine.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Good luck. IE7 fixes enough CSS to make it not work with the old IE 6 hacks but not enough to allow you to use one sane standard CSS template. Sorry.