The information published in this post is now out-of-date. —IEBlog Editor, 21 August 2012 Today at RSA, Bill Gates talked about Internet Explorer 7. As the guy responsible for IE, I wanted to say a couple of things about it. First, some basics: we’re committing to deliver a new version of Internet Explorer for Windows XP customers. Betas of IE7 will be available this summer. This new release will build on the work we did in Windows XP SP2 and (among other things) go further to defend users...

I’m very happy that we’ve shipped IE 7 beta 1. I wanted to make it clear that we know Beta 1 makes little progress for web developers in improving our standards support, particularly in our CSS implementation. I feel badly about this, but we have been focused on how to get the most done overall for IE7, so due to our lead time for locking down beta releases and ramping up our team, we could not get a whole lot done in the platform in beta 1. However, I know this will be better in...

In Dean’s recent Internet Explorer 8 and Acid2: A Milestone post, he highlighted our responsibility to deliver both interoperability (web pages working well across different browsers) and backwards compatibility (web pages working well across different versions of IE). We need to do both, so that IE8 continues to work with the billions of pages on the web today that already work in IE6 and IE7 but also makes the development of the next billion pages (in an interoperable way) much easier. Continuing...

We’ve decided that IE8 will, by default, interpret web content in the most standards compliant way it can. This decision is a change from what we’ve posted previously. Why Change? Microsoft recently published a set of Interoperability Principles . Thinking about IE8’s behavior with these principles in mind, interpreting web content in the most standards compliant way possible is a better thing to do. We think that acting in accordance with principles is important, and IE8’s default is a...

Just as he was the first to talk about IE7 , Bill Gates kept the tradition alive and discussed IE8 at the Mix ‘n Mash event here on campus yesterday. Bill was talking to some bloggers about IE.Next and called it IE8, the same way we do here in the IE team hallway. So, yes, the version after IE7 is IE8. We looked at a lot of options for the product name. Among the names we considered and ruled out: IE 7+1 IE VIII IE 1000 (think binary) IE Eight! iIE IE for Web 2.0 (Service Pack 2) IE Desktop...

First of all, I’d like to introduce myself. My name is Chris Wilson; I’m the lead program manager for the web platform in IE. (I am NOT Chris Wilson the drummer for Good Charlotte. :^) ) I joined the IE team shortly before we shipped IE 2.0 in 1995, and worked in various releases for every major release from then until IE 6.0’s release in 2001. After IE 6.0 shipped, I worked on the Avalon project until I decided to rejoin the IE team four months ago. During my tenure on the IE team, I’ve frequently...

We’re just about a month after the Windows 7 launch, and wanted to show an early look at some of the work underway on Internet Explorer 9. At the PDC today, in addition to demonstrating some of the progress on performance and interoperable standards, we showed how IE and Windows will make the power of PC hardware available to web developers in the browser. Specifically, we demonstrated hardware-accelerated rendering of all graphics and text in web pages, something that other browsers don’t do...

As a team, we’ve spent the last year heads down working hard on IE8. Last week, we achieved an important milestone that should interest web developers. IE8 now renders the “ Acid2 Face ” correctly in IE8 standards mode. If you’re not a web developer, the details of this blog post probably aren’t all that interesting for you. I’d like you to know that we’re building IE8 for many different customers (consumers, web service providers, independent software vendors, enterprises, web developers,...

We are currently locking down IE7 for shipping and I wanted to give an update on the CSS work that went into IE7. Chris originally outlined our plans for IE7, and we listened to a lot of feedback ( blog , connect database , conferences , our WASP partnership etc.) to help us address the most grievous bugs and prioritize which features to put in for IE7. I like to thank especially the contributors on this blog for their participation. Your feedback made a difference in deciding what issues to address...

The Release Candidate of Internet Explorer 9, available now at www.BeautyOfTheWeb.com in 40 languages, reflects our unique approach to building the best experience of the Web on Windows. IE9 also reflects a more open and transparent approach with its regular cadence of platform previews for developers and enthusiasts. With the Release Candidate, we’ve taken to heart over 17,000 pieces of feedback about IE9. You will find the product has made progress on all fronts—performance and standards, user...

It’s been a little over a year since we released IE7 on Windows XP and for Windows Vista, so I thought it would be worthwhile to talk about where we are after the year. According to internal Microsoft research based on data from Visual Sciences Corporation, there are over 300 million users are experiencing the web with IE7. This makes IE7 the second most popular browser after IE6. IE7 is already #1 in the US and UK, and we expect IE7 to surpass IE6 worldwide shortly. Perhaps more important...

We’ve heard some great feedback on what web developers would like to see in IE7, both from the responses to my last post and from the resources I referred to.  The rest of the team was cranking away while I was away on parental leave, and I wanted to share a few details about what they were doing: The first couple of things they’ve done are: Support the alpha channel in PNG images. We’ve actually had this on our radar for a long time, and have had it supported in the code for a while now. We...

Hello, I’m Max Stevens, and I recently joined the IE team as a Program Manager working on the user experience. In anticipation of our next major pre-release of IE, I’d like to give an overview of some of the great work we’ve done in the UI, especially a lot of the progress we’ve made since Beta 1. For more in depth looks at specific features mentioned here, Jeremy, Aaron, Jane and others will be posting soon. Main Browsing UI One of the most obvious changes since Beta 1 is in the toolbar area...

Hi everybody, Max here. I posted before about " A New Look for IE ” back when we released the beta 2 preview, and with the launch of beta 3, I wanted to take a moment to tell you about some of the new functionality we have added and changes we have made specifically related to your feedback. First and foremost, let me thank everybody who has put the time and effort towards giving us feedback, whether it’s through our connect site , participating in our monthly online chats , talking with us at...

IE10 Platform Preview 1, available for download today is the first step in delivering the next wave of progress in native HTML5 support. Web sites and HTML5 run best when they run natively, on a browser optimized for the operating system on your device. We built IE9 from the ground up for HTML5 and for Windows to deliver the most native HTML5 experience and the best Web experience on Windows. IE10 continues on IE9’s path, directly using what Windows provides and avoiding abstractions, layers...

Today we’re excited to release the final build of Internet Explorer 8 in 25 languages. IE8 makes what real people do on the web every day faster, easier, and safer. Anyone running Windows Vista, Windows XP, and Windows Server can get 32- and 64-bit versions now from http://www.microsoft.com/ie8 . (Windows 7 users will receive an updated IE8 as part of the next Windows 7 milestone.) We’ve blogged a lot here about what’s in IE8. Stepping back from individual features, Internet Explorer is focused...

The final release of IE7 is fast approaching … and I mean really fast … and will be delivered to customers via Automatic Updates a few weeks after it’s available for download. We want to ensure that you are ready and the information below will help get you there. Compatibility with sites, extensions and applications has been a very high priority for us as we develop new features, enhance the existing features and move the platform forward to be more secure and standards compliant. We are continually...

As we get close to the final availability of Internet Explorer 7, I want to provide an update on our distribution plans. To help our customers become more secure and up-to-date, we will distribute IE7 as a high-priority update via Automatic Updates (AU) shortly after the final version is released for Windows XP, planned for the fourth quarter of this year. During the past year, we’ve discussed many of the advanced security features in IE7 that will help make our users more secure, including ActiveX...

The information published in this post is now out-of-date and one or more links are invalid. —IEBlog Editor, 22 August 2012 Hi, I’m Jason Watters, a Program Manager on the Internet Explorer Team. As Dean just announced, the IE7 Beta 2 Preview is now available for download. We hope you are looking forward to installing and testing it as much as we are looking forward to hearing your feedback on it. We have several different ways for you to send us your feedback. First, you can post any...

The information published in this post is now out-of-date. —IEBlog Editor, 20 August 2012 I hopefully got your attention with the title of my first post. And it is definitely true for me, as I have loved browsing the web since I started way back in the mid 90s, and I really love browsing with IE. Yet, you may ask who I am or who we are that will be posting on this blog. I am Scott Stearns, the test manager for the Microsoft Internet Explorer team (as Dean says we will be pulling together full...

We’re excited to release IE8 Beta 2 today for public download. You can find it at http://www.microsoft.com/ie8 . Please try it out! You’ll find versions for 32- and 64-bit editions of Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, and Windows Server 2008. In addition to English, IE8 Beta 2 is available in Japanese, Chinese (Simplified), and German. Additional languages will be available soon. While Beta 1 was for developers, we think that anyone who browses or works on the web will enjoy IE8...

We’re starting to see the first round of sites and pages breaking due to the CSS fixes we have made. We would like to ask your help in cleaning up existing CSS hacks in your pages for IE7. It is has been our policy since IE6 that under quirks doctype we will not make any behavioral changes so that existing pages will continue to render unmodified, but under the strict doctype we want to change behavior to be as compliant as possible with the web standards. For IE7, we introduced new CSS functionality...

The information published in this post is now out-of-date and one or more links are invalid. —IEBlog Editor, 21 August 2012 Beta versions of both Windows Vista (formerly codenamed “Longhorn”) and IE7 for Windows XP are now available. Back in February we committed to releasing betas this summer. I’m sure it surprises some people, but we did what we said we’d do. How interested you are in actually running pre-release software should depend on who you are. For example, I think that...

The announcement of IE8 Beta 2 started an important and public phase of the product development cycle getting broad public feedback . The team is providing detailed information and answering questions about the product in many different places. Now’s a good time to talk about what comes next. Since the release of Beta 2, the team has been absorbed in the data we get from real people about the product. We have combed through instrumentation of over 20 million IE sessions and hundreds of hours of...

Our approach to building a faster web browsing platform, as seen in the Platform Previews, involves using everything the PC and its hardware have to offer. Before IE9, browsers used perhaps 10% of the PC’s capability. IE9 has shown the clear performance benefits with full hardware-acceleration of webpages. Our approach in designing a site-centric web browsing experience also involves using everything available around the browser. We see all the pixels and code that people need for a significantly...