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Microsoft Offers IE7 to All, Pirates Included

Posted by Zonk on from the so-generous dept.

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.

5 of 179 comments (clear)

  1. Re:IE7 on Linux? by micksam7 · · Score: 5, Informative

    IE7 also fixes a lot of HTML rendering and CSS bugs. Definately not all, but a considerable amount.

  2. "open up IE7 to all users of Windows" by mangu · · Score: 3, Informative

    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"...

  3. Not all users of Windows. by QuietLagoon · · Score: 4, Informative

    Windows 2000 users and Windows XP SP1 users are excluded.

  4. Re:But not on Windows 2000 by FinestLittleSpace · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

  5. Re:IE7 on Linux? by dvice_null · · Score: 4, Informative

    > 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