Microsoft has confirmed that IE7 will be released as an optional download later this month. The long-awaited next version of Microsoft’s browser software will be pushed out as an automatic update a “few weeks” later, probably as part of Microsoft’s regular Patch Tuesday update cycle in either November or December. Firms not ready to install IE7 will be able to temporarily block the update.
That’s much better than as a critical update today… Seriously, I was concerned that slashdot story was true and that anyone in IT at a small shop would be hearing “what happened to my IE?!” ten times a day.
Seriously, I was concerned that slashdot story was true
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A lot of MS related news lately?
Edited 2006-10-10 21:41
A lot of MS related news lately?
At OSNews, we don’t have quotas or something. If a lot of things are newsworthy and are related to Microsoft, well, then, so be it.
Can’t really help it.
A lot of MS related news lately?
Based on usage, it should be 97% MS for desktop items and 43% for server items.
Linux should be .4 and 12%.
Edited 2006-10-11 02:55
“A lot of MS related news lately?
Based on usage, it should be 97% MS for desktop items and 43% for server items.
Linux should be .4 and 12%.”
Sorry, but your figures are based on SALES.
Not a lot of Linux software is sold, mostly the model for Linux buisnesses is to sell support for the software.
Hence, your figures have absolutely nothing to do with “based on usage” as you claim they do.
SALES or not Microsofts OS’s is a lot more popular than any other OS.
Should OS news apply a percentage of news on usage!? Of course not. OS News should report on OS *NEWS*. Microsoft has been doing an awful lot just lately, major patch,IE7, Vista beta’s. So should get a time slice.
The only thing that does get irritating is when beta X gets released we do get a splurge of, reviewer thinks X is great/rubbish. Followed by rehashed arguments from the previous days review on beta X, rather than them all being bundled together.
Sorry, but your figures are based on SALES.
The .4% is based on usage of the internet. Unless you plan to argue that only a small percentage of Linux users surf the web … then I’ll laugh at you some more.
The 12% is based on sales of server hardware and the OS the customer intends to run on it.
Both numbers are more accurate than your method of picking a number out of hat. More importantly, those are the number that business use to make decisions where to invest money.
Edited 2006-10-11 17:16
Ooops… you mean 5 % for the desktop usage right? And Linux is larger on the server side than Windows (depending on how you define a server), so your numbers are flawed.
But that is however completely OT. Fact is that IE7 is coming, and it has been submitted to OSN and has been posted. And that’s all very fine.
//Fact is that IE7 is coming, and it has been submitted to OSN and has been posted. And that’s all very fine.//
It is indeed fine that IE7 is coming, and it just has to be an improvement over IE6.
http://www.google.com.au/search?q=svg+ie7&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8…
“SVG is not part of the plan for IE7.”
It is just such a pity IE7 is so very far behind in web standards support, though, isn’t it?
Edited 2006-10-11 06:12
Well, one can always wonder about the decision.
But with a bit of luck, a plug-in will be available.
It doesn’t have to come from Microsoft. My Xvid codec is open source, so we don’t need Microsoft to deliver everything (if anything at all).
[i]Ooops… you mean 5 % for the desktop usage right? And Linux is larger on the server side than Windows (depending on how you define a server), so your numbers are flawed.[/]
No. I mean .4% for desktop usage.
And Linux is about 1/3rd the size of Windows in the server space. Unix and Windows are trading places every quarter it seems.
But hey, so far no one has posted any numbers with references that counteract my numbers.
Linux on the desktop is around 5 %. You haven’t posted any numbers indicating anything else, while you have posted numbers indicating Linux on the desktop at 5%.
Fedora Core 6 is going to be released next week; expect more Fedora news articles around then… and the week after that, Ubuntu 6.10 will be released; I can guarantee there will be a flurry of news items about the ‘Edgy Eft’. And of course, when Mac OS 10.5 (Leopard) comes out there will be tons of reviews and opinions.
These things come in cycles. Occasionally there’s a few simultaneous articles on Haiku or SkyOS or even RiscOS.
It depends whether or not big things are happening in the project (ReactOS having to redo their entire source code database to head off potential legal issues or something like that), not on what Thom or Eugenia like.
This Microsoft binge is because, with a release date finally in sight, Microsoft is trying to drum up interest in the operating system and other new programs that have been five years (and counting) in coming, and attempting to make up for lost time by pumping lots of money into it.
Not to mention, what Microsoft does is currently going to affect a lot more people than the latest developments in other operating systems, hence the debates about all the minutia.
Will my Adblocker and NoScript extensions work in IE7? If so, I’ll be the first one to install it.
If so, does it break some sites that worked in IE6?
If so, does it break some sites that worked in IE6?
Pages that use DOCTYPE tag will be, most likely, broken.
However, quirks mode is the same.
I tried the RC1 and it broke several sites, incl. MSN Groups.
But that was also just a Release Candidate and not a final release.
When the final is here, I’m sure the worst things will have been fixed.
I am checking some 75 websites and knowledgebases from a big publisher for IE7 compatibility as we speak. While most things work, there are some problems with menu’s that become illegible and graphical elements that get misplaced, once even resulting in a login field hidden by an ad. There were some missing ads as well, which isn’t tolerable for a publisher that is supposed to make revenue from it’s sites. Most problems seem to be CSS related.
Not surprising, considering CSS support in IE 6 was “lacking”. (Or at least that’s the general notion, I don’t write websites myself).
new bugs that you need special html and css code to fix ?
As a web developer, I am very familiar with the damage to productivity that the bugs in the various IEs have caused. Having said that, even though IE 7 doesn’t fix everything, and may have introduced some more bugs, it fixes more than it breaks by far, including all of the most infamous bugs out there. And that’s a good thing.
But we’ll still be supporting IE6 for some while…
when there are so many other browsers out there to use!!!!!!!!
I’ve been using it instead of FireFox for about a week, and I have to say it feels very ‘tight’ and well integrated.
Well integrated?? What does that mean?
With the OS? Of course it’s well integrated with Windows, it’s practically inseperable.
With the Internet? Well, it is a browser…
Either way, I don’t see how it would be better integrated than another browser.
Well integrated?? What does that mean?
With the OS? Of course it’s well integrated with Windows, it’s practically inseperable.
With the Internet? Well, it is a browser…
Either way, I don’t see how it would be better integrated than another browser.
I don’t know if it is that well integrated, even with the internet.
Take scalable graphics for example.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svg
“Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) is an XML markup language for describing two-dimensional vector graphics, both static and animated, and either declarative or scripted. It is an open standard created by the World Wide Web Consortium.”
OK, so SVG is a web standard.
“Plugin support
In browsers such as Internet Explorer and Safari (Mac OS-only), a plugin is needed to view SVG content. The most widely available SVG plugin on the desktop is from Adobe Systems and supports most of SVG 1.0/1.1. (Adobe’s SVG download page now says “Please note that Adobe has announced that it will discontinue support for Adobe SVG Viewer on January 1, 2007.”) The current version of Safari ships with the plugin, while Internet Explorer users must separately download it. A legacy plugin was once offered from Corel.”
But IE currently only supports it via a plugin.
As an experiment, download the SVG example file from the Wikipedia page. OK, even if you can see it in your Internet Explorer, try importing it as a graphic into a Word document …
Oops! Out of luck there!
Not so well integrated at all, it would seem.
I wonder how well open web standards such as SVG are supported by IE7 and Office 2007?
Actually, it’s good it’s supported through a plug-in. It ought to be a part of system-wide plug-in structure akin to datatypes on Amiga or translators on the BeOS/Zeta/Haiku/Syllable/SkyOS systems or akin to the kits in *step.
Applications shouldn’t worry about what elements they support natively – they should support virtually nothing natively, but support virtually everything through systemwide plug-ins. So no place for MS-bashing here.
Plug-ins are good.
“Actually, it’s good it’s supported through a plug-in. It ought to be a part of system-wide plug-in structure akin to datatypes on Amiga or translators on the BeOS/Zeta/Haiku/Syllable/SkyOS systems or akin to the kits in *step.
Applications shouldn’t worry about what elements they support natively – they should support virtually nothing natively, but support virtually everything through systemwide plug-ins. So no place for MS-bashing here.
Plug-ins are good.”
You will all be pleased to know I found a way to get an SVG graphic into a Word document!
First I downloaded OpenOffice.org. Then I used OpenOffice.org writer to start a new document, and then I inserted a picture of the SVG graphics file. Then I saved the result in MS Word .doc format.
Mind you, once I have got the OpenOfffice.org suite on the system, I’m not at all sure exactly why I needed that last step. I could have just used Firefox to browse the web, and used the OpenOffice program for my document without involving MS Word at all, and save my documents in ISO standard ODF formats, and be standards compliant and integrated all along in the first place. Much easier, and way cheaper to boot.
This way, I don’t need any half-baked plug-ins that run out of support and don’t properly integrate with the whole desktop environment.
1) Site stopped working with IE7? Try Firefox.
2) Site is IE6-only? People can’t use it anymore, unless the designer get off their butts and do some real code.
Nice going, Microsoft.
And before people mention it, I don’t think major upgrades like this should go into a stable product. That’s like Debian, for example, that still maintains Firefox 1.0. Unlike SUSE and Red Hat though, which upgraded their customers from Firefox 1.0 to 1.5, possibly breaking several things. Oh well.
Did 1.5 break anything?
AFAIK, it didn’t really change a whole lot rendering-wise – though I can respect the stability that Debian has to offer, on must inevitable MOVE ON at some point.
I’ll be the first to say, however, that MS has yet to learn HOW to do this reasonably.
1.5 broke a lot of extensions. It’s not cool to do an ‘update my software’ and have it accidentally downgrade my browser functionality.
Wow, can Microsoft be any slower? In the time it took them to announce IE7, Firefox has released a new version, opera has released a new version, safari has gone up in a version, and firefox might even release two new versions. (1.5 and 2.0)
Seriously, how can Microsoft be so slow with all the money they have?
IE played it’s role for MS during 5.5/6 times: hook the web to Windows. After that they moved on, the more inconsitencies with starndards it exchibited the better for MS (i.e. worse for rest of the world).
Only after alternative browsers gained some media coverage, tech crowd switched (incl. most important: web devs. hooked by firefox’s nice free developement extensions lineup), high profile sites had to start supporting web standards again (10% is not easy to ignore). Outcry from web devs surged.
This release has been virtually dragged out of MS throat and only on the premise that XAML will replace MSHTML as next defacto standard they control.
The most ironic part of this story is that MS fscked up the web as a byproduct of their fight for intranets domination.
You do realise that microsoft has already demo’ed an xaml plugin using linux-firefox
Browser: SAMSUNG-SGH-ZV10/1.0 SHP/VPP/R5 NetFront/3.2 SMM-MMS/1.2.0 profile/MIDP-2.0 configuration/CLDC-1.1
There’s going to be a lot of busy web developers when this is released, as the CSS Holly Hack no longer works with ie7:-
http://www.positioniseverything.net/articles/poll/star-html.php
Anyway, I’m hoping this release finally pushes my boss to consider dropping support for ie5+ !
You’re correct that the * html hack will disappear (when in standards compliance mode) but then so will many of the reasons for using it.
There are still instances where you may need to target IE7 specifically, but you should use conditional comments to serve a separate stylesheet in those instances – http://msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/author/dhtml/overview/ccomment_o…
http://www.google.com/news/url?sa=t&ct=:ePkh8BM9E-LQYilLzMw34BRiBRp…
Interesting that they’re not bring out IE7 for windows 2000, it’s not as if they’re going to upgrade to XP now is it?
Looks like more intrest for Firefox/Opera then, for all us 2000 users.
As Firefox remains the prime browser on my machine, IE6 will stay for bad sites compatibility reasons – and web page testing – until windows update stops working
Well, while I cannot get myself to use it as my default browser, I was rather happy with the RC1. I mean, I saw many things done right, and I sort of liked the “toy” interface (sorry, I am a sucker for shiny things, feel free to dislike the interface as much as you want though
) and it was not slow or felt too bloated. I liked it overall.
But, of course, I missed the firefox extensions. With my slow connection Adblock is more a necessity than a convenience, I use Flashblock to show flash on demand only, Mouse Gestures for Opera imitation, DownThemAll, and Imagebot. Once you get used to such commodities it’s hard to browse without them.
But, then again, introducing such a feature into IE7 would mean another potential open door for Mr.Spyware and pals. (Remember average users just go forward without reading anything on screen, so the IE7 extension “Super Emoticons For Your Cell Phone Toolbar” and its seven different custom ads will feel at home…)