Ie7 — Tag

Firefox 2 was released last Tuesday to a flurry of internet excitement - perhaps more than the IE7 release the week before.

And the download numbers prove it. Microsoft was pleased in announcing three million downloads in four days. Now, this is not “forced” download numbers - it is still to reach Windows Update (this will happen in a couple of weeks, most likely in the next update rollup).

Mozilla one-upped them the next day - 2 million downloads in one day.

Good work to Mozilla. Remember, no matter what browser you use, you should upgrade. If your main concern is extension compatibility with Firefox, remember that a lot of extensions have already been indicated to work with Firefox 2, and you won’t have to do anything.

A lot of extensions work out of the box anyway. Here’s how,

• Type about:config into your address bar and press Enter.
• In the Find box, type checkCompatibility.
• Double-click the lone option to read “true”.

Now it will ignore compatibility information in the extensions. Be careful though, this can break your browser!

Microsoft has finally released Internet Explorer 7.

If you still use Internet Explorer (I know many of you do), upgrade now! While the browser is still 11MB (Firefox is 5MB and Opera is 6), there are a lot of new features, including better web standards support.

Microsoft are also committed to release a new version every year.

Some of your favourite websites may break. But that should only be temporary, it is IE afterall (Firefox and Opera fans live with it for months until something is done). I know this site does look better in IE7 than it does in IE6.

I would upgrade, but I’m a web developer and can only have one version of IE installed at once. I’m going to hang out for about six or so months before upgrading so then I can make sure my websites look decent in it (plus, I have Vista installed elsewhere so it’s no big deal).

In a few weeks, Windows Update will notify you of an important security update, which will be IE7. It will give you a choice of getting that, or sticking with IE6.

Microsoft’s IEBlog is warning of the approach of IE7 in the coming month. After a few weeks, it will be available via Windows Update (possibly in the patch cycle for November).

I encourage you all to upgrade. IE7 isn’t as near standards-compliance as Firefox is, but they have taken strides in the right direction.

I am developing a new theme for this blog, and it does stuff that IE6 just cannot do (and it is pissing me off), so IE6 users will get a dumbed down version with a pretty warning.

A developer of Internet Explorer 7, Chris Wilson, has been trying to defend the browsers lackluster support for browser standards, and was then flamed for it. He admitted that IE7 would still be behind other web browsers in standards compliance, but went on to say,

In fact, we prioritized IE7 around 3 things – security, end user experience, and standards improvements in the platform. When I look back at the work my team has done in the platform, we have done only these things. No proprietary features added, just standards improvements.

Which I guess is good, and at least they didn’t add anything weird, and also admit that IE still has a long way to go to improving on that situation.

After getting very annoyed at the comments on that post, he posted again,

Few of you believe it - occasionally, someone who knows me really well does - but I actually believe in open standards. Real open standards. The ones built by a group of people with an interest in making the world better, not just in their own private vested interests. I’ve championed that in one way or another since I joined Microsoft, and I continue to do so today. It’s been a hard road, but not one I can imagine myself not choosing to walk down. It’s been gratifying to me over the past couple of years to see my championing pay off in the change of direction in Microsoft. It’s been frustrating, though, to be continually identified as the personal screw-up responsible for IE not supporting more standards today, when it’s actually because of my personal influence that CSS is IMPLEMENTED in IE.

Now in these posts I am finding some assurances that IE is heading towards a direction that it should have done a long time ago. But I’m also rather dubious. We here in New Zealand know a thing or two about what one company says can change from day to day (*cough*Telecom*cough*). However it seems that the new IE team is really looking for us to say a big “Thank You” to them. Well, that isn’t coming any time soon, at least for now. There have been some previous blog posts from Microsoft where they’ve announced new standards support and I’d just loudly go “Thank god! It’s about fucking time!” But then I look at things like this chart and weep myself to sleep.

Arstechnica has some comments.

I’ll quote what I just said in ClassForum,

Really though, why would you use a product that has basically been dumped for 5 years now? If it was any other software program, you would’ve replaced it with something else a long time ago. What made IE different?

It has recently been announced that IE7 will be a high priority update when it is released. There are some good points and some bad points I’d like to raise.

The good point is everyone will automatically be getting the latest version of the browser, it is pretty slick (yes, you heard me) and has lots of feature enhancements. It can make my job of modifying this site easier as a lot of people will get the latest version right off the bat.

The bad point though is that I cannot test my web browser in both versions at the same time. This is a terrible thing. When I made the Gallery posts (the ones where there are lots of images and you can click on them to view images and videos) I tested it in Firefox and Internet Explorer 7. I assumed IE6 would be alright. Shortly, I uninstalled IE7 for various reasons that I can’t remember. Checked out the website and it was broken in IE6. Now, I’m not going to be one that’ll install and uninstall IE7 just to test my websites.

A lot of other web developers are having the same gripes. IE7 does have a lot of changes, they have fixed a lot of stuff meaning that hacks are no longer necessary (IE6 has lots of hacks to get it working correctly). How are we supposed to test on both IE6 and IE7 without having Windows installed twice? Terrible!