IE7 Announced for Longhorn and WinXP

sriram_2001 writes "There is now an official announcement from Bill Gates on Internet Explorer 7. It will be available in beta form this summer for Longhorn and XP SP2. The IEBlog has commentary about the decision making process that went into the new browser version." Coming on the heels of the June Beta announcement for Longhorn, if things go as planned it will likely be here in early summer. The new browser's early arrival was first discussed last year.

I wonder what MS has stolen from firefox

Who wants to bet we'll see 'tabs' in IE7

Re:I wonder what MS has stolen from firefox

Opera had tabs before Firefox did. Also mouse gestures.

Re:I wonder what MS has stolen from firefox

My filing cabinet had tabs before all of you!

Re:I wonder what MS has stolen from firefox

FTR, Galeon had tabs long before Opera.

Re:I wonder what MS has stolen from firefox

FWIW, bars had tabs long before Galeon

(does this thread continue until we find a patent?)

Re:I wonder what MS has stolen from firefox

Looks like bars got it from tablets... Galeon probably got it from the folders version (short strap, etc...)

Dear Word Detective: Can you tell me the etymology of "tabs" when used to mean to watch something or someone, as in "to keep tabs on ...." I'd also like to know why it is used in plural as above and also in singular "to keep a tab on ...." I had imagined that it must have some relationship to the usage of "tab" which refers to the protrusion from a file folder or index card. However, a dictionary I consulted said that the etymology was unknown. -- G.H. Gena.

Oh, please. Dictionary editors always pull that "origin unknown" stuff when it's Friday afternoon and they're in a hurry to tie one on. Most people accept Samuel Johnson's definition of lexicographers as "harmless drudges," but the truth is that the average dictionary office would give Animal House a run for its money. I'll bet the Editor-in-Chief took a big swig of Old Webster's as he tossed the entry for "Tabs" into his out box, shouting "Origin unknown!" as the room collapsed in drunken laughter.
Just kidding (although many lexicographers probably wish I weren't). The origin of "tab" in the "file folder" sense is indeed unknown, but the root of "tabs" in the "I'm watching you" sense is more certain.

The sort of "tab" found at the top of file folders is an extension of the root sense of "tab," which is, as those party animals over at the Oxford English Dictionary put it, "A short broad strap, flat loop, or the like, attached by one end to an object, or forming a short projecting part by which a thing can be taken hold of, hung up, fastened, or pulled." This "tab" appeared at the start of the 17th century and may simply be a modification of "tag."
To keep "tabs" (or "a tab") on someone, however, is short for "tablet" in the sense of "writing tablet," i.e., an account book or written record. Thus, when Santa Claus is described as "making a list and checking it twice," he is "keeping a tab" (or "tabs") on all those naughty and nice kiddies, much as John Ashcroft does with computers. This use of "tab" is relatively recent, first appearing in the late 19th century. The same sense of "tab" meaning "written account" is found in "tab" meaning "restaurant check."

Re:I wonder what MS has stolen from firefox

"Tabbed browsing? That was MY idea! But I never thought to get a patent!"

Proof that Opera had it before Galeon

According to Wikipedia [wikipedia.org], Opera added tabbed browsing in Version 4 in March 2000.

The changelog of galeon reads:

2000-12-29 Matt Aubury <[e-mail]>

* src/browser.c
* src/browser_callbacks.c
* src/galeon.h
* src/portal.c
* src/prefs.c
* ui/galeon.glade: VERY early code for tabbed browsing. It doesn't
work right at all yet, but it's a start

NetCaptor was the first browser according to the Wikipedia article.

Re:I wonder what MS has stolen from firefox

Microsoft press release gives a lot of good information. After changing their earlier position that IE 7 would only be released with Longhorn, Microsoft intends to release an IE7 beta this summer. Right now, it is only for Windows XP SP2 customers.

The Microsoft Antispyware program will stay free for personal users, but for sysadmins who need a managed solution, Microsoft will charge for that package.

Also, a unified Microsoft OS & application update service focused on consumers and small businesses, called Microsoft Update, will be released this March. The enterprise Microsoft update product, Windows Update Services (WUS) - the follow up to SUS, will be released sometime in the first half of this year.

Re:I wonder what MS has stolen from firefox

Its pretty likely that the png & css problems will be fixed because when the ie 7 team at MS was formed, they acknowledged that these problems were one of the driving forces for reestablishing the team.

As far as tabbed browsing & mouse gestures, well MS has been pretty smug in saying they provide what their customers are asking for & they aren't asking for tabbed browsing & mouse gestures - so probably not.

Re:I wonder what MS has stolen from firefox

No, they already do have tabbed browsing done.

At least in the stripped-down IE they ship with the SDK -- the tabs there are working nicely. Not as good as on FireFox with TBE, but better than on bare-bones FireFox.

Of course, everything else is still the old crap.

Re:I wonder what MS has stolen from firefox

More importantly, will Microsoft be willing to include an Adblock of some form?

Somehow I doubt that owners of websites/advertisers would appreciate such a move.

Probably not...

This would arguably be opening themselves up to some huge legal problems. Sites that rely on advertising revenue would get rather cranky if the default browser on the monopoly desktop operating systems was blocking the ads.

Re:Probably not...

Not unless/until MS becomes an arm of the government. The First Amendment only applies to governmental action.

Re:Probably not...

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

freedom of speech applies only to the government. microsoft, or anyone, is allowed to block whatever they want. just like your employer can make you sign a NDA (which limits your right to speak about what you know).

Re:I wonder what MS has stolen from firefox

not just tabs,

a whole lot other goodies like:

- Poop blocker (but not MSN poop)
- ad blocker (ofcourse, excluding those in HoTMaiL)
- a about:firefox page which allows IE developers to speak their "minds" out.

and others....

Re:I wonder what MS has stolen from firefox

and others....

Among the others, MS should definitely include the Abe Vigoda Status [mozilla.org] extension in IE7.

Re:I wonder what MS has stolen from firefox

*sigh*

I hate Microsoft too, but let's be fair. Firefox didn't invent tabbed browsing, Opera did. If IE has "stolen" tabs, then so has Firefox.

There's nothing wrong with adding features developed by the competition. That's one of the most important parts of competition.

Re:I wonder what MS has stolen from firefox

Tabs go back to the 1980s...spreadsheets had them first. Putting them in a web browser isn't an innovation, it's an evolution.

Re:I wonder what MS has stolen from firefox

Come on, I'm sure they will create a half dozen new security holes, give them some credit :)

I've seen it and its called ActiveTabs

And its even better than other tabbed solutions in that each tab appears in its own window as God intends.

Re:I wonder what MS has stolen from firefox

I don't see any benefit to an IE7 without the tabbed browsing. It's just such a big part of the browsing experience these days that I couldn't image being without it. In fact, I invite them to take all keystroke commands used by Firefox tabbed browsing just to keep things consistent. There are times when you just have to use IE and for those times they should want to appear as similar to Moz/FF as possible.

Re:I wonder what MS has stolen from firefox

TITLE: I wonder what MS has stolen from firefox

Who wants to bet we'll see 'tabs' in IE7

Geez people. You've been bitching how IE doesn't have tabbed browsing. And if Microsoft adds it you're going to bitch that they stole the idea.

Microsoft just can't win with you idiots.

Good

Firefox could use a little competition.

Re:Good

No, I don't think it's a surrender, it's more of a call to arms.

Why did IE become the dominant browser? because Netscape stopped at 4.5 while IE kept updating and improving. Once IE got far enough ahead (about 5.0), it stopped still in the water, only releasing versions because of security bugs. So why is Firefox gaining popularity? Because IE hasn't done anything new since 2000, and doesn't have the kick-ass features Firefox has.

Surrendering would involve using something other than IE as the default Windows browser.

Improving it significatnly (which MS has been working on for about a year now, with not much to show for it besides popup blocking) is a step to stem the tide of defections to Firefox and win back the 5% Firefox has taken from it.

Re:Good

"Why did IE become the dominant browser?"

I think mostly because IE came pre-installed with the OS on new computers. Most idiots out there came to associate Internet = IE. They don't know the concept of different parts and protocols of the internet...they don't know about other 'browsers' or how to download and install them. This was a few years ago when the 'Web' was new in the public mind. And most people weren't too internet savvy.

Problem is....still lots of idiots like that out there today, probably more so....

Re:Good

"Idiots"? People are idiots because they lack knowledge and experience in computers? A little less arrogance might be a good idea...

As for why IE became the dominant browser, you're only telling half the story. IE up to and including version 3 sucked big time; Netscape Navigator wiped the floor with it. Then IE 4 was released, and suddenly Navigator was the one looking a bit sick. Netscape then compounded its problems by throwing away the codebase and starting again from scracth; by the time they finally managed to get NN 6 out, it was far too late. Everyone but a small hardcore group of us had switched to IE, and with good reason. IE 4 was at least as good as NN4, but IE 5 trounced it (and I speak as someone who went NN->Mozilla->Firefox; I have *never* used IE as my primary browser). NN4 crashed frequently, had to reload the page to resize it, choked on moderately complex table structures, and the rendering engine was dog slow for all but trivial pages.

In short, IE became dominant for two reasons:

1) it's bundled with Windows, so every Windows user already has it
2) it was just plain better than the alternatives for a long time

Sorry to burst your superiority complex, but people being idiots had nothing to do with it.

Re:Good

Funny? Why's that.

It's true. I think it was rated funny for MS "never doing anything good ever in computer software history", but even if IE 7 won't be better than Firefox (and let's hope it is on par! competition is good), it might still get a few new features that the Mozilla team can copy. If it weren't for IE, Firefox wouldn't have had identical yellow "info bars" instead of annoying popup boxes for example. Or maybe the functionality down to the color choice and identical look was a pure coincidence. ;-)

Beta Release?

Hasn't IE been in beta since, well, it was released?

Re:Beta Release?

Hasn't IE been in beta since, well, it was released?

Doesn't 'beta' mean feature-complete? ;-)

Re:Beta Release?

Mod parent as insightful.

The early releases of IE were rushed to allow microsoft to bundle their own browser with their OS. Let's ignore the whole DOJ thing though...

The first versions of IE sucked. There's absolutely no way around saying that. They were horribly written, barely standards-compliant, and buggy as hell. Unfortunately, once Microsoft realized that the web browser would become an integral and vital part of the OS, it was already too late.

You see, Microsoft prides itself upon backward compatibility. And they're damn good at it too. I can still run programs compiled for Win95/3.1 on my XP box. No other OS today will run a program designed for an Operating System 10 years old while still having the features one would expect from a modern operating system.

Same thing goes for their web browser. They have customers using ActiveX that they ARE OBLIGED TO SUPPORT. The absolute worse move a company can make is to alienate its customers (SCO and the RIAA have learned this the hard way). And, to be frank, Microsoft is pretty nice to its users compared to other software vendors. Let's not forget that a lot of corporations are using ActiveX for much of their in-house development. They can't just rip it out; IE would lose most of its features that way. Netscape Plugins / Firefox Extentions are not necessarily any more secure.

Now that Microsoft has their woefully buggy ActiveX implementation, it has certain quirks that programmers have grown used to. If microsoft squashes a bug, they risk breaking compatibility. Same thing goes for standards compliance -- back when HTML4 and CSS were in their infancy, Microsoft chose to support them, but did a crappy job at it. This set the precedent that now since developers had designed sites around these quirks, THEY COULDN'T FIX THEM. Some legitimate programs may inadvertently use security holes in the browser. Closing them up will break compatibility.

That's one reason why this beta concerns me. If it has its own quirks, developers will start coding around them, and microsoft will once again have dug itself into a hole.

that's what was easy for apple when it made OS X and Mozilla when they rewrote their browser. They were starting fresh and had virtually no expectations and were able to COMPLETELY break compatibility with older versions for the sake of standards compliance. NT could have been just as fast and secure as OS X or Linux had Microsoft chosen to dump compatibility for Win9x apps. NT started out as a lean, fast, secure operating system. It has the capability to do Unix-style file-permissions which would close up 99% of the security holes present. Implementing a system like that would, however, break compatibility for older programs which expect the operating system to allow them to write to any portion of the drive. Instead, microsoft had to maintain backward compatibility and painstakingly close up every tiny security hole.

Microsoft's not stupid. I would be VERY surprised if IE 7 wasn't a huge improvement over 6. They've been working a long time on this release, and they're well aware of the competition from firefox. If it's secure and standards compliant, the reasons to use firefox become far less compelling.

In short, IE sucks today because the first betas sucked, and that's what the developers based their apps off of.

Re:Beta Release?

No other OS today will run a program designed for an Operating System 10 years old while still having the features one would expect from a modern operating system.

Mac OS X still runs almost all programs written for System 7 and up via Classic (not too dissimilar to Microsoft's approach), and even many programs from the original 128K (if you can find them - Illustrator 0.8 runs, for example, as do many old black and white games). Meanwhile, we've undergone a complete shift in processor architecture and OS architecture, but all of our ancient 68K software keeps on working.

THAT is an amazing feat, far moreso than the pure evolution of x86 and Win16/Win32.

Yippee

Any word yet on substantive changes? Like separating IE from the fabric of the OS?

A friend's computer is virtually unusable because something corrupted IE, and that in turn broke Windows Explorer.

Re:Yippee

I rememeber reading once that IE loads into memory at boot. That is, IE is substantially tied in as a portion of the operating system itself. This makes for superb integration with the UI for all system tasks, it also results in blazing fast speed as a browser. It ALSO means any threat to the browser becomes by nature a threat to the entire computer, its system its data, its hardware, and its user. If IE 7 has been decoupled from Windows that would be the one greatest security improvement Microsoft could perform.

Not gonna happen

MS really depends on blazing performance to keep its users happy. Shipping IE separately means an upgrade to those internal components, not delivery of a separate product. I doubt you'll be able to use it alongside the existing IE, for example.

It's terrible for security, but MS's approach to security has never been to contain threats. Their approach heen been much more all-or-nothing; ActiveX signed certificates means that the program is either trusted or it's not.

Security is always a double-edged sword. Users hate it when security interferes with them, and if it gets in their way before they see the benefits of whatever you're selling them, they'll pick something less safe but whose benefits are more clearly visible.

It's vaguely possible that in Longhorn they might alter some of those balances between security and performance, since .NET gives you more control, but I'm betting not for this upgrade. Most users will always equate "faster" with "better", and "more secure" will come in a distant third.

Re:Yippee

Don't expect exhaustive feature lists soon. The purpose of this post was to communicate to large clients that they shouldn't switch to firefox because IE7 will be here "soon". It's classic tried and true delaying strategy from MS. Anyone who has been around long enough has seen them do this tons of times. They probably don't even know exactly what features IE7 will have. All they know is firefox is getting good enough clients are considering switching away from MS products, and they need to stop those clients from doing that.

Maybe they'll do it right this time...

All IE needs to be good is: tabbed browsing, popup blocker, standards compliance, and fewer security issues. Sounds simple, doesn't it? Firefox was able to do it, let see if, given enough time Microsoft can do the same. Although I will still use Firefox, it will be nice to have a competent browser when I use, for example, a computer at school.

Re:Maybe they'll do it right this time...

Don't forget alpha-channel transparency in PNG files.

(without the nasty DirectX hack)

Re:Maybe they'll do it right this time...

So...standards compliance?

Re:On standards compliance:

It will be fully compatible with Windows Media Image (replacing PNG and delivering amazing new possibilities through innovative two bit transparency), ActiveStyle (replacing CSS), ActiveMarkup (replacing HTML, XML and XHTML), ActiveMath (replacing MathML) and ActiveDynamicVectorImages (replacing SVG). Also, VBScript, JavaScript and animated GIF support will be dropped in favor of ActiveX.NET.

All of these new technologies will of course have mandatory heavy-duty DRM, which means that in order to look at a 10 KiB site with five 100 KiB images you'll automatically download and upload ~12 MiB worth of certificates to see if you are allowed to do so (all MS ActiveWebContent DRM certificates are valid for the duration of one session or one hour, whichever ends first).


Since all of the mentioned technologies are valid Microsoft internal standards (the specification of which are accessible after signing an NDA and a non-competition agreement), IE is the most standars-compliant browser of all - that is, once the Longhorn users have made sure that the current web standards have died out.

Wow. It's been a long time since Microsoft blinked

So they've admitted that IE is weak and Firefox et. al. is a compelling product. Knocks aside, I am very interested in seeing how this plays out.

Re:Wow. It's been a long time since Microsoft blin

I fail to see how they admitted that IE is weak.

It is quite rare that a company releases a product that is so perfect that they do not need to create a new version. Such is the case here, IE can always better... and so can Firefox. Down the line when the next version of Firefox is released... is it their way of saying that their own product is weak?

Re:Wow. It's been a long time since Microsoft blin

I fail to see how they admitted that IE is weak.

Microsoft terminates work on IE, they own the browser market, spyware runs rampant, all is good in the universe.

Firefox appears and chomps into their dominance, offering features and spyware noncompliance that makes IE6 look like a Microsoft product.

Microsoft internally goes,
shit, our browser marketshare is weak, people are acting like IE is a Microsoft product for once! We need to make it look better, pull the browser team back together, do something, and up the version number!

Actually, I dunno why they give a damn about browser marketshare, ignoring that having a dominant browser that only really works on their platform keeps people using their cash-cow OS so they can view MS-HTML websites without difficulty and reap the latest in spyware technology.

Re:Wow. It's been a long time since Microsoft blin

Here's my prediction:

1. IE7 Ends up being pretty decent with tabbed browsing, increased security, and some sort of nifty integration with other MS stuff.
2. Firefox 'market share' continues to increase, but begins to lose footing as MS begins to focus on IE once again.
3. Browser battle ensues for all of a year and a half.
4. The 600 lb gorilla continues to pour part of its billions into marketing, automatically including with its OS, etc., etc.
5. Firefox hangs up its towel after a long hard battle. The general populous wins for a time, however, because IE and the last version of Firefox are what everyone needs.
6. MS neatly places all of their IE developers back in cryogen, to wait until the browser monoply is again challenged.
7. IE rots like a dead dog until another browser project starts up and begins to gain ground. The general populous loses.
8. Goto Step 1.

Haven't we all seen this story before? I *really* hope that someone else takes a strong enough hold to keep everyone in competition, but the way the Netscape dynasty played out, things aren't looking good.

You can do it Firefox!

Re:Wow. It's been a long time since Microsoft blin

Doubtful. Unlike Netscape Navigator, Mozilla Firefox is not a commercial product and as such it doesn't need to keep getting new users at a high rate (to sustain it's influx of cash) - as long as there are people using at and developers refining it then it will live. Furthermore I feel strongly that the momentum behind Firefox now is such that Microsoft/IE won't ever be able to crush it and regain almost total market dominance... this can only be a good thing for Joe Public and for web developers everywhere because Microsoft will be forced to start improving IE & the lack of market dominance means that MS-only (x)html tags should start appearing again.

So?

This is disappointing because we all know microsoft won't fill the giant security hole that is active x. Sure they have a "popup blocker" and this beta will have "tabs." But will it actually follow the W3C standards or is it going to be as hard to work with as IE6? I mean we KNOW they won't clean the issues up because they're releasing their own Anti-Spyware application. So really, what's the point?

Part of Microsoft's Press Release

"In yet another example of innovation, Microsoft has invented a feature called Tabbed Web Surfing (tm) (r). Tabbed Web Surfing is a revolutionary user interface for web browsing that Microsoft as its inventor has received over 7,000 patents on."

The real question is:

Will all you Firefox users now be quiet [msdn.com]? Oh, they are talking about me, as well?

IE.Net?

I think the most interesting question about IE7 is: will it be written with .Net? Microsoft seems to think that developers should all jump on the .Net bandwagon, but they seem rather reluctanct to do it with any of their big products.

IE.Net (or rather, mshtml.Net) would be a great way to show off the supposed security enhancements that .Net brings.

(Aside: Is Visual Studio now written in .Net? If it is, no wonder it's so much slower than VS6.)

Re:IE.Net?

They don't have enought time for that.

Re:IE.Net?

Is Visual Studio now written in .Net? If it is, no wonder it's so much slower than VS6.

I have VS6 and VS .NET on the same system, and performance is roughly pretty close. VS .NET seems a tad slower, but I think this is probably a result of "creeping featurism" (i.e. bloat, and every programmer is guilty of that) than any compilation or programming differences. The pretty, graphics-hungry interface of VS .NET may make more of an impact. But I find that it starts faster than, say, Firefox;)

All things considered, both are good. I use VS 6.0 more because old habits die hard (same reason I still use Borland C++Builder for certain kinds of projects - I'm used to the debug/stepping interface in certain circumstances).

I'm afraid Berkeley isn't very representative

Consider, though, that almost everyone I know either uses Firefox now or avoids windows altogether. Heck, Firefox is even the default browser on the public computers on the UC Berkeley campus these days. I work there - I know how notoriously slow the PC techs are to change anything.

Kudos to Berkeley, but they are the exception in most cases, and this is no exception to that rule. :)

As long as IE is even almost as secure and almost as feature rich as Firefox, it will probably win the browser war. That is, unless and until Linux wins the OS war (or at least makes a bigger showing).

IE7, great. Microsoft will probably integrate it more tightly into the OS. In the meantime, the Mozilla foundation has at least 4 more months to get even better. Lets hope they build an even stronger lead.

About that word "lead". I don't think it means what you think it means. :) (Ob. quote.)

So Bill buys himself a reprieve.

Announcing IE7 allows Bill to spend some "capital" to get the unwashed computing masses to try IE one more time.

They just better get it right this time.

Otherwise the pendulum swings over to the browser with the Netscape Pedigree.

Now... how ironic would *that* be...

valid CSS and FULLY supported PNG?

if we got just these two things, and nothing else, i might actually stop slitting my wrists as a web designer. PLEASE MICROSOFT. PLEASE. that's all i want god damnit.

Re:valid CSS and FULLY supported PNG?

You also need them to support that on OSes other than XP. So they need to release standards support on all the OSes which are still under their support clock from MS. So 2000 would need to have all this as well.

The real question is will this raise the bar for minimum features supported by a browser. If they build IE7 and no one upgrades than we are still where we are today.... Screwed.

Market speak translated

IE developer/lead says "I think of today's announcement as a clear statement back to our customers: "Hey, Microsoft heard you. We're committing (to ie7)."

What he means : "Damm firefox took a lot of market share. Even with our monopoly people are downloading this better and free product"

Mircosoft intended to use its domenence in browsers to control the desktop. IE distribute apps with IE/Longhorn and proprietary extentions (.net) that only worked on windows.

Firefox's success caught them off guard and now there running to catch up. I think MS was hoping to bundle ie7 with longhorn, causing massive corporate forced upgrades, but delay after delay nixed that idea.

Just one request

Please, please, implement alpha transparency for PNGs. That's all I ask. CSS2 would be nice, but it's ok if you don't have time or whatever. But just get proper transparency working. Please.

So what....

Security isn't a feature, it's expected. To steal someone else's example, you wouldn't buy a toaster that says "Now blows up less often!" We don't need IE7 to fix security holes. It should offer real new features. I doubt they will, but they should come up with browsing enhancements that aren't in Firefox, beyond just copying it. Let's not forget supporting standards as well. IE is stale now, and so far it doesn't sound like IE7 will offer any improvements.

Tell MS to call me when they have something new to offer. I'll be over here with Firefox that already works better and keeps it's security holes patched.

You mean. . .

I have to buy an entire OS AND a new system just to get the benefits of a 'secure' browsing environment?

No thanks, I'll stick with my 2K system which happily runs Firefox.

Shortsightedness (of tabbed-browsing)

Opera added tabs. That was neat because it can let the user group similar tasks (web browsing pages) together hierarchially under the task of web browsing (and unlike grouping in Microsoft's/KDE's taskbar, remain one click away when in the browser).

Mozilla added tabs, that was also neat.

Konqueror added tabs, this was not neat! KDE's people, unlike Opera's or Mozilla's are in the exact right position to have a bit more of a vision, and encorporate tabs into KDE's general facilities, and not just a specific program (web browser).
Instead, KDE's people choose to incorporate tabs separately in Konqeruror, Konsole, and other programs, such that non-KDE applications cannot benefit from it.
Now it seems as though Microsoft is just as short-sighted and added tabs to Internet Explorer instead of adding tabs to the core window-switching facilities (by drawing a tab under title bars of a new concept of "window-group" that contains multiple windows of same applications or such).

What I believe should have been done, is something more along the lines of what was done with Mouse Gestures in KDE. Mouse Gestures in KDE are handled by a general facility (KHotKeys) such that not only Konqueror can benefit from it, but any KDE/non-KDE application.

This is what should be done with tabs!

Transparent PNG support?

I wonder what the chances are that it will support transparent PNG's. This is one of the most annoying left out features of IE, IMO. There is an ugly CSS tag hack that lets them be used currently, but it's _really_ nasty. It would be nice if the 256 gif colormap could finally be put to rest.

Re:Longhorn and XP converging

While I won't use the language that the first replier did, I've got to agree with his fundamental point; if you've really used OSX or Fedora, you wouldn't be saying what you're saying. They're different from Windows, but just as versatile and easy to use.

I'm also not going to accuse you of being a Microsoft shill, but busting out with a marketdroid line like "No OS, however, can truly compare with the compatibility and versatility of the world's most popular OS", well, it's hard for me to believe that you could be anything else.

I suppose it's equally possible that you just work in marketing and describe all things that you like in that manner. But I'm doubtful.

New IE 7 Beta Moniker

"
Try Internet Explorer 7 Today!
"

"It doesn't suck quite as much as it used to. [No Really!]"

Version numbers as marketing tricks

Nothing in the press release or IE blog post mentions improved standards support. Mixed in with the "Yay, IE7!" bandwagon blog comments are those from actual web developers still asking for better CSS and PNG support.

Which we won't get. IE7 will be (spurious) security fixes, and the large version increase (6.0 to 7.0) would imply more sweeping changes than SP2 to the Windows security model. That may be, and considering the track record of SP2, also implies more software breaking.

IE7 might include some candy that the average user can comprehend (like tabbed browsing or RSS feeds), but I'd give even odds on that. What we definitely won't see is a fixed CSS box model (or any standards improvements), and native alpha support for PNG. They've made such a mess for themselves out of the rendering engine that they can't fix it without a ground-up rewrite.

MS has no reason to allow people to stay on XP or 2k instead of upgrading to Longhorn in now() + 2 years. IE7 has two purposes:

• to show people that they care about security (while skirting around the fact that their security sucks now)
• to attempt to take some momentum away from Firefox

By not addressing standards at all with this release, the press has no reason to make an issue of it. Mainstream press isn't capable of making the link between standards support and interoperability anyway.

It doesn't really matter

because only Longhorn and XP SP2 will be using IE 7.0, and the bulk of Windows users won't be using it.

If Microsoft was smart, they'd release IE 7.0 for Windows 2000, Windows ME, Windows 98, and Windows NT 4.0 and help fix the security issues the older versions of IE has with those platforms.

Yet in doing so, Microsoft is hoping to force upgrades to Longhorn or XP SP2, in order to use IE 7.0, and it may backfire on them. Not to mention more spyware and adware and trojan infections from older versions of IE not patched.

So Microsoft's only option for legacy users is to upgrade to a new OS, possibly buying newer hardware.

Yet Firefox, Mozilla, Opera, etc offer users the chance to use their old OS and switch to a new web browser.

Linux, *BSD, Darwin, etc offers users the chance to keep their hardware and solve security issues as well, but at the cost of running legacy Windows applications.

Apple does have that spiffy $499 Mac Mini, which users of older computer can upgrade to if they have a USB mouse and keyboard. That is yet another option.

from the blog

Why? Because we listened to customers, analysts, and business partners. We heard a clear message: "Yes, XP SP2 makes the situation better. We want more, sooner. We want security on top of the compatibility and extensibility IE gives us, and we want it on XP. Microsoft, show us your commitment."

through babelfish's bullshit -> english

Why? Because we listened to customers, analysts, and business partners. OMG!!!1 IE is teh suckx0r!!111 viruses, trojans and worms, oh my!11 my pc is fux0r3d!!111 Wh4t is thi5 coolsearch toolbar doing here? my computer ate my homework! I fancy Ellen Feissssssssss! maaaaaaaaaaaarry meeeeee!!

blame it on valentines day ok... OK... get fuzzy, dilbert... herman and pearls and some PA get my through.

no mention of standards

so, not one of those links even mentioned improved standards support. that doesn't sound good. if they aren't going to be improving their xhtml and css handling, i really don't see anything to get excited about....

unfortunately i don't see much hope. in ie6, they could break backwards compatibility by adding the strict mode / quirks mode doctype switch. that trick isn't going to work again. so while they may add css selectors and javascript methods that are missing from the current implementation (e.g. the child selector, hover state on objects other than anchors, document.addEventListener())), i don't think they'll do anything that would break existing sites (e.g. hasLayout, the broken float model, boxes espanding to fit their contents)

but i can always hope.