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As long as they're actually moving IE towards w3c standards -- good. Obviously they're not going to make a huge move towards standards right away, at the risk of truly breaking almost every site out there, so hopefully they are actually committed to gradually moving towards w3c standards.

Though I'm a bit worried that they're only going to go so far, as they tend to not like to make a product like IE a "moving target", meaning something that is constantly changing and site developers can't depend on certain rendering things to work a certain way, as is the case with FF and Opera for the most part. As MS puts it themselves, a "stable platform."

I just hope IE7 final is much much better than the steaming pile of crap that is IE7 beta2. Not that I will use it anymore than I have to (for work) even if it was good.

This article is really good if you have been developing for Windows and IE 6.0 and 5.5 users exclusively for the past few years. It's clear that, despite the noise-making of Zeldman, Meyer, and their ilk, many professional developers are still doing this for one reason or another.

While the article is helpful, it's length and complexity are also indicative of the problems associated with developing web applications by the IE/Microsoft book and not by the book of the w3c. The author cites some examples in which non-w3c attributes have been removed, and explains that exceptions made for the IE6 browser have to be re-examined and perhaps new exceptions must be made for IE7.

It's unintentionally a very compelling argument for the strict adoption of standards.

only a problem for those stupid enough to develop IE-only sites.

For the rest of us: Lean back and enjoy the show.

(WTF!? What's wrong with sappyvcv!? ... hey IE7 beta2 isn't that bad, compared with earlier versions of IE).

[edited: Oops, forgot da smiley ]

Edited 2006-04-05 14:16

IE 7 is truly pointless. The IE platform is dead; MSFT is just letting it drag on a little longer out of pride. It is already deceased on Mac, so even if you WANTED to optimize for IE, you would be insane to do so.

First of all, as far as IE is concerned, what is the difference between static HTML pages and dymanically generated HTML pages?

Overall, from reading the article I didn't see any big issues with IE7. If you are a web developer who is aware of cross-browser compatibility, web standards and HTML validation, HTML 4.01 STRICT doctype and the benefits it brings in IE6 (http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dn...) then transitioning to IE7 should require minimal effort.

As for ActiveX - no one should use those on the web in the first place.

The real biggest problem with IE7 is the challenge of making as many users as possible upgrade, so web devs can freely use new css features without fear that the site's visitors are still using IE6

Yes, *we* know that. But you wouldn't believe how many people in the corporate world bought into the ActiveX idea and created sites which are completely dependent on it. And it isn't just intranet sites...

The state of corporate web development is really sad. :-(

As a few have expressed already, this article is far too IE-centric to really be any good, let alone "excellent".

Microsoft is not changing any standards by coming out with a new browser and that means that if your application breaks, either the new browser is making bad choices or you were doing something stupid in the first place.

As sandboxing and improved standards support can hardly be considered a bad thing, the vast majority of the time I suspect it will be the latter situation causing the breakage.

And what's with the discussion about asp.net compatibility with IE? The two have nothing to do with eachother. IE is not the development platform, the web is. If the web didn't change, then there should be no problems. If you're somehow trying to tie asp.net to IE in your web application, you should be taken out back and shot right now.

They get the rendering issues under control or it's going to break static HMTL too...

Stupid stuff like if you add padding to a tag, it correctly centers the content of the tag, but NOT the bounding box, so whatever your total left padding is, that's how much text gets chopped off the right side.

THAT's bad... and it's chock full of things like that.

Hopefully nothing. IE should stick to standards more.

...if they're coded towards a standard? /sarcasm

"As for ActiveX - no one should use those on the web in the first place. "

And, thankfully, outside corporate intranets, almost no one does.

Lucky you.
Sadly, there's totally different scene in South Korea where so many major web sites depends quite heavily on ActiveX and IE-only javascripts(sometimes i also see non-standard way of coding HTML tags like div tag below html end tag! weird); club sites, download sites, bank sites and etc. i heard there are sites which require ActiveX to log in as well! As a person originated from Korea works as a web programmer and visits Korean websites alot daily, i really feel sad about this situation i hope it would be changed in the near future.

Edited 2006-04-06 01:52

What they end up doing, of course, is anybody's guess. Including their own, as you can see from the comments during the "IE Future" session at MIX last month (my article about it is here -- that info is on the second page: http://www.creativemac.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=38446 )