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Microsoft Offers IE7 to All, Pirates Included
sjdurfey writes "Microsoft recently decided to open up IE7 to all users of Windows, not just the ones with legitimate copies of Windows. They claim it is in the 'end-users best interest'. As a result, Microsoft has decided to mark IE7 as a 'High-priority' update. This is essentially a forced update. Granted, its only a forced update if you are running Windows and have windows update set to automatically install all updates, but nevertheless, it's unnecessary. You can however uninstall IE7 from the Add/Remove Programs menu after its been installed. 'A blocking tool kit is still available for companies and organizations that don't use Windows Server Update Services and want to permanently prevent IE7 from automatically installing on PCs equipped with IE6.'" Update: 10/06 21:19 GMT by Z :Sorry if this seems a bit familiar.
IE7 also fixes a lot of HTML rendering and CSS bugs. Definately not all, but a considerable amount.
Of course, this being /., you didn't RTFA, but you could read just the first line. Oh, sorry, I see. You would have missed "frist ps0t"...
Windows 2000 users and Windows XP SP1 users are excluded.
Slashdot people, is there something I don't understand? and I thought no WGA on IE title means the same as Microsoft offers IE7 to All, Pirates Included, or am I wrong... no, I'm not wrong : Article 1.5 day ago
GIMME KARMA POINTS! It took me at-least 1.3292 min to find the other article!
Read and Comment at my BLOG
!!!
Yep, I've been using this setup all on one machine for a while now:
http://tredosoft.com/Multiple_IE
http://tredosoft.com/IE7_standalone
Works an absolute treat. The only problem I've come across (aside from a few sporadic crashes) is that some of the IE version don't identify themselves as the appropriate IE version when using [If IE x] tags to call different stylesheets in the XHTML. There areregistry fixes for this, but I don't have links to hand.
> IE7 also fixes a lot of HTML rendering and CSS bugs. Definately not all, but a considerable amount.
Considerable amount?
html/xhtml support went from 73% to 73%
css 2.1 support went from 51% to 56%
Yeah, sure that is better than before, but they are still far behind the other browsers:
Firefox 2:
html/xhtml: 90%
css 2.1: 92%
Opera 9:
html/xhtml: 85%
css 2.1: 94%
http://www.webdevout.net/browser-support-summary
Is there a better way to handle multiple IEs on one PC?
Yes.
The only downside is that the virtual machine image is time-bombed to expire in December 2007. They usually release a new version of the image a month or so before it expires, each image lasting around 6-8 months. Since you only use this for testing it shouldn't be a big deal.
The alternative is to use one of several methods that allow you to have both IE6 and IE7 installed on the same machine, but this rarely works 100%. The most common problems are user agent strings and conditional comments. These settings are stored in the registry and all versions of IE access the same set of values. This means that IE6 will use the IE7 conditional comments and user-agent giving you inaccurate results.
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
/)
HAHA
IE6 is still standard in many places that would have no problem with WGA (nice XP pro corprate edition with legit keys, just have to make sure your key doesn't get leaked to widely or you could have a LOT of rekeying to do). Afaict the main reason is intranet apps (either inhouse developed or bought in) that only work properly with IE6 and which are difficult, expensive or even impossible to fix.
I know that here at the university of manchester they officially do not support IE7 (though many machines that aren't centrally managed have ended up with it anyway) yet because of this.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
On the plus side, conditional comments help with that. They make it much easier to target a section of HTML or a stylesheet link to only IE6, or only IE7, or only IE up through 7, etc. And since they're intended functionality, not bugs, they're less likely to stop working in the future.
at the school i work for, we are forced to keep ie6 for some of the 'wonderful' educational packages they use. ie7 is not compatible with these, so we have to turn the update off. we are, however, moving to firefox (pretty much complete, just a few people with old habits left, but they are free to use ie still if they want) as our main browser and just using iexplore.exe links in the shortcuts that need them (rather than pointing directly to the html file)
porl
or even better
bite my glorious golden ass.
The table on that page is rather misleading. While in theory IE6 'supports' almost as much CSS as IE7 (notwithstanding that IE7 massively increased the amount of selectors and pseudo-selectors available), much of this supposed support is broken. IE7 still has its problems, mainly to do with the mysterious layout property, but is a far better implementation of CSS 2.1 than IE6.