IEBlog

Get ready for a VERY ANGRY Slashdotting...

My MSDN subscription is library-only

The technical overview - a word document - doesn't require downloading a .exe! Good to see that's fixed. Kudos to the Microsoft Download team.

I'm not happy about this at all, for months and months and months we were told this would be public. It feels like we've been stabbed in the back to be quite honest. I am extremely dissapointed by this move. Microsoft and the users would have been greatly benefited if this was made more widely available.

You think Vista and IE7 are just interesting to developers and IT Professionals? Are you kidding me? Have you been to any of these huge forums (I won't name the names but one has over 120K members)?

Dean, this really should have been more widely avaliable. Not all web developers have MSDN subscriptions, but making things better suit them (by giving them access to the IE7 beta) will better suit everyone using IE as you will have feedback on what the issues with IE7 are sooner.

Currently IE7 for XP doesn't seem to be available on MSDN. Has it been posted yet?

I agree with Shining Arcane. I really like IE, and it would have been great to give your long-time users the opportunity to test out IE without having to spend a lot for the MSDN subscription :)

MS doesn't follow industry practice in that alphas can get new features and betas have the feature set locked, correct?

The Technical Overview made very interesting reading I look forward to reading more about the new features on this blog.

I have to admit though, I did burst out laughing when I read: "Web developers have expressed some frustration with certain peculiarities in the behavior of Internet Explorer 6, especially in the areas of standards support."

Nice bit of humour there :)

Why don't the devs this beta is restricted to have the FRIGGIN' CHANGELOG. They have no idea of the details of each change.

You say you've improved CSS standard support. PROVE IT. WHERE'S THE DOCUMENTATION OF THE CHANGES?

very terrible choice to restrict this to msdn and beta testers. a lot of people were looking forward to the promise made of a public beta. as usual microsoft fails to deliver on its promises.

I can't wait for Dean Edwards to post his reaction.

I'm sure Dean was invited into the Beta.

what happened to the IDN's support?
we've been waiting for more than 5 years for the release of IE7 and in the end Microsoft failed to deliver as always.
I don't have the smallest bit of faith on Microsoft anymore.


hasta la vista windows
gustavo

Microsoft is just asking for an illegaly leaked version of IE 7 B1 floating around. Yes, I'm really disapointed in this decision. But as soon as I saw "IE 7 B1 Released" headline, I knew it was too good to be true.

I don't see it in the list of downloadable products in my MSDN list either. Is it a separate download, or is it only part of Vista?

Man, what a bunch of CRY BABIES!!

Of course the MSDN subscribers get their hands on the beta first - THEY PAID FOR IT!

I just confirmed that I'll be getting beta 1 of Vista and, I assume, IE7 in my TechNet Plus subscription this September.

It makes sense to start small with a first beta distribution. If MS released the beta to everyone, 99% of all the feed back would be slashdotters who are looking for yet another excuse to flame (read: most of you).

You want your initial round of feedback to come from SERIOUS users of the product (read: almost none of you).

James

I can tell you that you don't need small feedback from 100,000 participants for you to realize that IE7 desperately needs to fully support CSS 2.0 at the very least

I eagerly await my copy. :-)

And then you wonder why Microsoft are frequently slammed. It is a perfect example of why Microsoft are clueless as to how to listen and talk to customers. Widely reported as going to be a public beta, they limit it to a small subset of developers and MSDN subscribers who in all probability are MS fans to begin with.

So the exercise then is to attempt to control the feedback as opposed to exposing the beta to a wide range of people who will critique the beta from all perspectives?

Well, I am glad to see that something is moving along, even though I still am disapointed in it being not public.

According to numerous reports... THE IE7 BETA IS CORRUPTED!

When on MSDN Subscriptions is it? I have Universal, but don't see it...

Thanks

Microsoft just made two big mistakes:
Promising a public beta but only delivering a restricted beta, and not providing enough documentation.

A restricted beta is a great way to test a product, but if Microsoft wants to improve its, when it comes to IE, dirty image, it had better keep its promises, and we got a promise for a public beta during the summer. It's not about being a "crybaby", like James suggested above - it's about delivering on your promises!

Second of all, and I'd think Microsoft would nail this regarding the amazing size of the MSDN Library and other documentation, the "Improved handling of CSS" genre of writing your revision history is not a good way to go. It's insanely important that rendering bugs such as the guillotine are fixed (since they shouldn't have been in there to begin with), but for a company that promised harder work on CSS, there's not really any details on what's been added or even what's been fixed, not even a hint in the general direction of the changes.

I can't help ending this comment with the note that the Technical Overview is a Word document. Doesn't Microsoft trust its own browser to render that correctly?

wow, here I was thinking MS were trying to be helpful.

I don't remember seeing anything that said we had to subscribe to try the beta. Not to mention that you have to PAY to subscribe!

Can I just ask WHY you haven't release the beta publicly?

I was expecting to be able to download it before (the US) summer was over, but I guess the vast majority of us can't.

You decieved us, where's the trust?

Um, they say the beta build of IE7 on connect was corrupt anyways!

Scale-to-fit printing is an excellent idea. A related feature that Acrobat has had for years that would be exceeding useful: reverse printing. A lot of users with bubble jet printers that print face-up would benefit from this.

A public beta would have been nice though.

LOL! The Acid2 rendering looks even worse in IE7...

I'm looking at past blog entries to find who said "public beta" when. I think we all assumed it was a public beta. I can't find a place where a Microsoft person said "It is a completely wide open public beta for everyone."

I see Vista on the MSDN downloads, but nothing for IE7. I have seen different press releases here and elsewhere but no IE7 on MSDN. Someone says wait until aug 3, but this post indicates its available now? what gives?

As compared to FF 1.0.1, 1.0.2, 1.0.3, 1.0.4, 1.0.5, 1.0.6...?

Some of you claiming "Well MSFT didn't say it wasn't a public beta" are not thinking this through. The point is that we, as users, were *decieved*. When people claimed "Can't wait for the Beta," no IE dev bothered to mention "Oh yeah, it won't be public." They didn't even say that it was a possibility. That's a very dirty marketting trick, and from the reviews I'm reading, IE7 doesn't look very impressive anyway. At all.

thanks microsoft, i'll be getting my copy from a p2p client since you BS'd the public yet again.

Just because Microsoft have released a non-public beta doesn't mean they can't still release a public beta.

More testers always mean more errors will likely be found. Restricted version won't be going anywhere.
Remember XP when it is first released. Why don't the MSDN testers find all the security holes before it is released? It is the general consumers reporting XP crash and spyware attack help us having a stable XP like it is today.
Most likely no thing wil change if things keep going this way. Sign! Microsoft, you will never learn...

Simon is correct. If they said they'll release a public beta this summer, they still might release the next beta publicly before summer is over.

That being said however, I'm normally a MS fanboi, but I'm pretty disappointed by what I've seen so far in the screenshots of IE7. The weakness in IE6 for me is *NOT* the interface (tabs maybe, but I consider it a minor issue), and it's not security (again, for me, as I don't install ActiveX as readily as your average idiot user). The weakness in IE6 for me is the underlying rendering engine, which they better have improved upon by IE7 beta 2 or I'm so going to give Firefox a try.

And to top it off, the RSS feed was fubar again with this blog entry.

Hey this new browser is awesome. Just one request for now. Saveing session state. Like when i close the browser it gives the option to save last opened tabs and open them back up.

Oh also maybe be able to have personal settings for the browser itself saved to like an XML file so that people can share preferences.

hasta la vista windows
gustavo

--

Microsoft will sorely miss Gustavo

*wah*

Who do I have to "upgrade" to beta test for Microsoft. I've signed up for all the appropriate sites. I'm a full blown "bithead" and I'm jonesing for my beta software. I'm also a desktop tech who desperately wants to know this software backwards and forwards so that I can market myself for that.

Awesome check this out
http://mywallop.com/wc2%5C878649_per%5Cpic%5C13211356.jpg

and microsoft fix the css support.

The betas may not have been intended to be public... But I'm sure warez groups and crackers are going to have a field day with all the stuff that came out today.

With that out of my system, I'd like to comment on the beta from 5 minutes of use: This "beta" feels more like a "pre-alpha", Microsoft Update and Windows Update are now rendered "wrong" (With MS standards, you can never tell)...

guys, I just downloaded it, it's crap

It keeps crashing trillian

God, this is worse than netscape 8, I'mm ditching it straight away, and have advised everyone I know with the link to it to stick with opera and firefox

IE team, what the hell have you been doing,t his is awful

Great work on IE7. I'm really liking the minimal interface, and this release has ensured that less-stellar, foxy 3rd party software on my PC has been uninstalled.

For a beta, this is impressive. Can't wait till Beta 2 :)

Where on MSDN Universal? I see Vista, but no IE7 download is listed.

Can I install IE7beta as a separate application on a production-system without breaking IE6?

And people, remember it's a beta before being to hard against MS. Also the "real public beta" might arive later in the summer.

I'm confused. I thought this version was supposed to improve upon the standards support. I guess that was supposed to be NEXT version, because as far as I can tell, all that was changed was a few bug fixes in the already supported features. This isn't a new version of a browser, it's a new shell for the same browser.

I have to say, if you honestly think that you're answering the wishes of the web development community, you are dead wrong. You have completely betrayed us, and I'm sick of it. The web development community will continue to strongly promote Firefox, Opera, Safari, and other alternative browsers until you finally decide to quit doing the bare minimum for the public and start doing it right for developers.

The following is a list of bare minimum features that must be fully supported by the time IE 7 is released. If you don't at least meet this basic list, then you have proven that you simply don't care about developers.

Proper HTML object fallback model, abbr element, q element, properly handle the application/xhtml+xml mime type, CSS "inherit", CSS child selector, adjacent selector, all four attribute selectors, active and hover pseudoclasses for all applicable elements, first-child pseudoclass, before and after pseudoelements and content property for strings and urls, table display values, max/min height/width, position:fixed, right and bottom, reasonable support for the standard DOM event model, and gamma correction in PNGs.

I don't care how long it takes, I just don't want to see IE 7 until at least this list is met. You say you are listening to the developers? Well, here it is. Nothing here is unreasonable; most other major browsers have supported everything here for quite a while now. Support for all of this would put Internet Explorer near halfway to the level that the competition is at. Please, for once, impress me.

1. REFRESH button missing (can right-click instead)
2. Toolbars don't stay locked (Google, Canon Easy-WebPrint, & Pluck being used)
3. Cannot move tabs bar from beneath Address bar. Top or bottom of browser window would be reasonable.
4. Need more options on where and when to open new tabs versus new window.
5. How do I import RSS feeds from OPML file?

Allen

I am a developer, but not an msdn subscriber. It is distressing that I cannot try out IE7. I really need to see if any changes have an impact on my work.

I hope Beta 2 will be a public beta like Whidby. I just want to wipe out my semi-useless Linux system (cant get onto the net) and stick something good on. Explorer.NET. Sounds cool!

(THE REFRESH BUTTON IS POORLY PLACED TO THE RIGHT OF THE ADDRESS BAR, IT TRIPLES AS THE GO/REFRESH/STOP BUTTON!)

BTW, did I say this beta blows hard?

Trust me, I gave it a chance... 15 minutes to impress me. What I saw on my screen was a 15 month leap sideways...

What I have noticed so far regarding standards:

PNG Alpha Transparency is not fixed completely.

The transparency disappears if you highlight the image. The transparency is supposed to remain even when highlighted.

All What i want to say is that ie7 is very diappointting. Pls study the Firefox carefully!
i dont like firefox, but it is better than ie7.
At current time, i use Maxthon based on ie kernal.
ie7 is ugly and very ugly!

Could someone, who had the chance to play around with the IE 7.0, kindly confirm that new IE supports IDN (Internationalized Domain Names)?

Best Regards

I was hoping for at least better JavaScript debugging information - none of that "error on line 3" (of what file?) "character 4" (what??).

For some reason, IE7 refuses to display my site (http://verens.com/) - it's not like there are any HTML errors or anything, so what's up?

The empty gray tab... couldn't you at least put an icon or something in it, to hint that it might do something?

I just had a look through http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/css/edge/complexspiral/demo.html - IE still doesn't render them correctly.

I'm definitely not impressed.

Can someone point out where in the MSDN subscriber downloads this is? I've downloaded Vista but can't see IE7 at all.

Anyone found out where the download link is on MSDN? I found IE6 in the operating systems menu (?!?) and Vista also but no IE7. I may be being thick but a nice "download here" link wouldn't go amis...

...Microsoft posted the IE7 beta to MSDN. It's under "Operating Systems|Internet Explorer".

Now all...

Hello,
I have used IE7 really it's great, the best thing is when we meddle click on a link it opens in a new TAB, Great :), like that can you guys make this in IE7, when we double click on a TAB it should Close that TAB. Please reply on this. Thank you :) .

Matt -- I heard that IDN plumbing is mostly done; it's not exposed in the product yet.

I am developing a next generation tabbed browser(currently based on IE engine, firefox engine will be next year, Pro version may have a little price). No kidding, what is the next generation of tabbed browser? You will see, not just the user interface and ergonomic features, but also include easy and natural way of storing, organizing and retrieving information. Now Google, Yahoo, MSN compete compete fiercely on the search market, the fire can be found on desktop as well. Search the internet is right, because it is uncharted territory,but the emphasis is wrong on desktop. This is your computer, you already touched the document, why you can not find it easily? Do we search or fumble a lot in our daily life? No! Don't blame the explosion of information, don't blame yourself not organizable. There must be something wrong,or haven't developed properly. Our new browser will give you a critical part which is missing in the information chain for you browser experience.



BTW, Should I release it before IE7 launch or after it launch?



mikexml2002(at)yahoo.co.uk

Presumably if you install IE7 beta it will replace IE6 and do all sorts of dodgy OS type stuff? Is there a way to install it side-by-side?

I find it quite bizarre that a web browser comes under "Operating Systems" in MSDN..!!!

Also, will the finished version supported Windows 2003?

Why not open a new TAB when click a site in Favourite?

Dear Microsoft,

I don't want to spend over $1000 to test a beta.

Regards

p.s. Why do you make it so difficult for us?

I AM SO FRUSTRATED, MAD that sometimes when I type a LONG post, and then ACCIDENTALLY I hit some keys on my keyboard, and BAM my post is ALL GONE!!!

And, YES, it just happened again when I was posting in another forum!!!

I could hit F5 by Accident, or I could click on a link by accident, or I could be using a different browser during my posting, and by clicking in that browser, it uses the browser that I am typing in (Without my permission).

ALL these has happened to me, before! And, if I were lucky, text were saved, but a lot of times, Hell NO, Text were ALL gone and pisses me off after!!!

Microsoft, please Please please Come up with a save-what-I-am-typing method, so I don't Lose my text again!

Accidents DO happen, but what can you do to prevent it" should be the NEW slogan for Internet Explorer 8 or 7.5...

Save what I write every Second, and when I press F5, or click a link or cause any other accidents.... texts will not disappear!

Can you do it, Microsoft?

There is already a small review of IE 7 within Vista with some nice screen pics here:
http://www.winsupersite.com/reviews/winvista_beta1_03.asp

IE7 fixes TWO CSS bugs?! TWO?!! And this is some big advancement?

After playing around with IE 7 for a while, I can only say that I am truly disappointed.

First thing I did was to test it with some of Eric Meyers CSS edge demos. And to my surprise (well, not really) none of them that didn't work in IE 6 worked fine in IE 7.

Not even
http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/css/edge/complexspiral/demo.html !!!
This means that IE 7 still doesn't have full CSS1 support. Year 2005.

I also tested out CSS2 selectors with no luck, :hover for example, still only works on links. This means no CSS menus in IE. I also tested other irritating bugs, such as:

<div style="float:left; margin-left:100px;">this will have a margin-left of 200px instead of 100px</div>

And again, bug was still there. So actually, what was really fixed in this release? I read about 2 CSS bugs being fixed. Wow, you work on this browser for years and you fix 2 CSS bugs? I don't know if I should laugh or cry.

IE 7 feels like IE 6 but with a new GUI. While the tabs are nice (welcome to the new millennium IE), this beta is nothing more than a big disappointment. Actually this even beats the Netscape 6 disappointment, and I would never imagine that could be beaten.

Internet Explorer, R.I.P

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Blair

images are broken in IE7

"I'm confused. I thought this version was supposed to improve upon the standards support."

I'm afraid you're mistaken. IE7 is only a desperate attempt to stem the flood of people switching to Firefox. Improved web standards aren't part of the deal, since the user can't see them. They only see the tabs and the search box. Guess why these features have been implemented, while only two or three CSS bug-fixes have made the cut...

> http://mywallop.com/wc2%5C878649_per%5Cpic%5C13211356.jpg

I'm not surprised that IE7 doesn't improve on standards really. MS obviously woke up far to late, and didn't have time to make any real improvements: "Hey guys, we need a new IE with something new, something cool. You guys could whip up some tabs and a search box couldn't you? Let me know when you think you could have it finished."


"IE7 fixes TWO CSS bugs?! TWO?!! And this is some big advancement?"

It's obviously quite enought to bump the version number a notch anyway.

"This means that IE 7 still doesn't have full CSS1 support. Year 2005.

I also tested out CSS2 selectors with no luck, :hover for example, still only works on links."

That's sad. Let's just hope for a version 8 with some real improvements.

This is in regard to a post made earlier where someone stated that "of course MSDN subs got it first, they paid for it".

We've paid for XP (and more), we've used IE6 and MSN, we've bought many many programs that run on Windows.

Is that not enough? Guess not.

On the part of CSS support does this release represent what we (webdevelopers) may expect of "improvements"!?

Nice job on IE7 B1; I am very pleased so far. Couple of bugs however; where should they be posted?

Thanks,
Chad

Beta versions of both Windows Vista (formerly codenamed &amp;ldquo;Longhorn&amp;rdquo;) and IE7 for Windows XP...

Well I think the developers have certianly attacked the right areas, but we'll just have to wait and see how good the standards support really is.

I like the fact that they will finally be supporting other search engines, lets hope they sypport the same plugin standard as mozilla - the last thing we want is another set of competing standards.

The browser looks good - not bad at all for a first beta. My comments would be;

1) As already mentioned, complete and reliable CSS 2 support is absolutely essential (although obviously not expected in this initial beta).

2) The interface really needs some work - the tabs / menu / address bar mix up all feels extremely clunky at the moment. Especially when using 'Windows Classic' style. I really hope there will be some improvements in this area before the next beta - take a good look at Safari because it does such a good job with the interface.

3) I managed to get it to crash completly by double clicking a Favorites folder. Although I can't seem to make it do it again!

> when we double click on a TAB it should Close that TAB

I kept trying to do this as well! Not sure why, but it feels like a really intuitive way to close a tab. An alternative might be a little 'x' to the right hand side of the open tab.

The 'x' on the right doesn't really do much for me, and it just makes it look like a FF clone! ;)

I have a couple of questions.

> Internet Explorer 7 is prioritizing compliance to CSS standards by first implementing the features that developers have said are most important to them.

Now, fixing two bugs isn't a feature, so presumably there are at least *some* additions to Internet Explorer's CSS support. So what are they?

Do you plan on fully complying with the CSS 1.0 specification in the final release of Internet Explorer 7.0?

> The final release of Internet Explorer 7 will focus on improving the developer experience by reducing the time needed for developing and testing on different browsers.

Will Internet Explorer 6.0 and 7.0 installed alongside one another be a supported configuration?

Will the colleges who have the "Microsoft Alliance" (I think that's what it's called) get this beta? Email please.

tcoulter at acm dot org

Jim: Where did you get that second quote from? That's quite a promise really. But it means there is loads of work for them still to do, and it must be done before Beta 2 (unless they're completetly crazy of course).

(First off, what in the world is a Fiery Kitsune?)

It looks like so far IE7 is out to mixed reviews. I've looked at screenshots and don't know that I like what I see on the visual front. The design doesn't seem well laid out or finished, but I guess that's to be expected. Maybe I just need to warm up to it.

Now some have raised concerns about the need to have an MSDN subscription to get this beta...I don't know for sure, but I'm inclined to think that Microsoft did mention a public beta... I guess I have high hopes that either this will be reconsidered or there will be one later on. It's so very hard to wait.

I sure can't afford such a subscription (at least not when I priced them) but I would really like the opportunity to put IE7 through its paces. If that means that I need to commit to telling Microsoft of my every experience in some way, then that is fine with me. That's what I want to do--I want to really hammer on the product and (assuming you guys and gals on the IE team are really listening) relay the information I gather while using it. I'm not just looking to play around with IE7 and tell nobody of what happened.

Anyway, I hope there will be some thought given to a controlled-but much less restricted-release of the first IE7 beta.

David: I got it from the Microsoft Word document (why on earth can't we get this stuff as HTML?) linked to above as "IE7 Technology Overview".

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=718E9B3A-64FE-4A4C-9DDF-57AF0472EAD2&displaylang=en

Lot's of people complaining about the availability. My experience says this is normal and historical in regards to OS's at MS. You don't typically see these things publically until they reach the RC (Release Candidate) stage.

I installed IE7, rebooted; when Windows came back up IE7 now crashes.

I rather like the new interface, I've just started using it, so I really haven't tried anything special with it.
Some points:
1. Everytime I open a new tab, the same unneeded icon buttons pop open. A new tab should have the same buttons as the old tab, unless a user decides to change it.

2. Opening a new tab should have the option of going to the home page, not a blank page.

3. Tabs from other IE windows should be able to be dragged into another IE window, to consolidate the tabs from a popup (say, hotmail) into one IE window.

Thanks for the notification! Downloading now through MSDN! Feedback is surely to come. Can't wait for full CSS2.0 support (HELLO WORLD! :)

What proportion of web developers (i.e. the people interested in IE7) have MSDN subscriptions?

I've also heard that running the installer *itself* requires 'Windows Validation' (not just the download page) - seems overkill to me, but there you go.

As for the 'Phishing filter' - who wants *any* details of their browsing history transmitted to MS for checking of suspect sites?

As a developer, I'm disgusted by what I've read so far with regards to the CSS 'improvements'. I know Microsoft is a business; but seriously - think about what you're doing. You're turning your back on what is possibly the most important step forward in website development.

I've lost hope now. It's clear you're not going to get even CSS2 support implemented properly for the final release if this is where the program starts. From a developer's point of view - this is HIGHLY frustrating. From a business point of view - this is utterly foolish.

If I were a suspicious type, I would find it interesting that webstandards.org triggers a suspect site warning. MS Policy or just a bug?

Wow - so many complainers. "I gave it 15 minutes and gave up". LOL! Are you married? I bet not... If so, good thing she/he said yes when you popped the question... cause if she/he had said... "let me think about it" you would have responded "you have 15 minutes".

Seriously, it only makes sense to release it on MSDN first. Do any of you people complaining not realize that this is the general process MS follows?!?

Oh and regarding the bugs... It is a BETA people!!!!! And for that matter, it is beta *1*!!!

Ok, now that I am past my rant, I wanted to make a couple comments. First off, it is available on MSDN download under "Operating Systems" and is only 10MB for the download. I love that part of it - it is small!!!

Second comment - overall, stability seems decent with one exception that I have found this far. Amazingly, Windows Update page no longer works. That is annoying for obvious reasons.

Another comment regarding the refresh button... Once I found it, I was semi-ok, but I do miss it. It would be nice to at least have the option of putting the refresh button on the menu where I like it. IMO. Which brings up another suggestion... it would also be nice to be able to customize the toolbars and their locations better. I don't think this is too much to ask.

On a side note - I love how compact everything is at the top. Very nice if you ask me. And another awesome improvement... THANK YOU FOR TAKING AWAY THE MENU AT THE TOP IN FULL SCREEN MODE!!!!

Overall, for a beta release, I would give this a A-/B+ rating. And for you complainers... go download firefox and stop spamming here. :P

Holy crap! I've never seen so many whienrs in my life.

Did any of you whiners even read the documentation listed in Dean's post? Beta 1 is a restricted beta. Beta 2 will be a public beta.

Grow up. And learn to read.

A review by me, a web developer, can be found here:
http://www.robertnyman.com/2005/07/28/ie-7-beta-1-a-first-glance/

Okay, the download is back in Operating Systems, it was missing for a while this morning.

Feedback:

1. tabs should be below menu bars not above- File,Edit etc. have alway sbeen top left of program. Why not now? Is that just my install, can I change it? Given that the UI layout is a firefox clone (and why not, that's not criticism - it works!), this should have been kept the same.

2. See comment above Re: Acid2 test. I mean really... I know it's beta 1 and all but did you think you'd get away with it and not anger a LOT of people?

3. NICE rss reader, saw the demo on channel 9 and it's fairly good. Is a 'live bookmarks' or similar feature in there? I can't see it so far and I use this all the time in FF to monitor read rss feeds 'on the side'

That's all for now, this feedback is for XP sp2 version, not seen vista yet. Are the two (IE versions) exactly the same? I assume not.

Anyway. a LOT more to do (esp. re: CSS 2.1 etc. you gus know more than anyone how important it is to do this or risk killing the IE brand forever as a browser) but it's nice that you're willing to show some progress is being made.

Two CSS bugs fixed ??? I'm disgusted...

While we're posting IE7 reviews/posts:

http://naylog.blogspot.com/2005/07/few-words-on-ie7-beta-1.html

"Both the peekaboo and guillotine bugs have been addressed, and work on other issues is under way to provide web developers with reliable and robust CSS functionality. "

I guess a lot of people don't read anything at all. Clearly MS states that more issues with CSS will be dealt with. Clearly they weren't finished with it in time for this beta 1 release. So why not wait for that then, in beta 2 or the final beta/release candidate before complaining so much about the CSS.

Because it's so vague, there's no mention that IE7 will support CSS2 fully, which - I feel should be a paramount specification. The fact that only 2 CSS bugs have been dealt with thus far doesn't leave me with much confidence at all.

And the fact that they're releasing Beta 1 to DEVELOPERS makes this fact even more poignant, as they should have dealt with DEVLOPER ISSUES before the GUI.

Yes hAl that is true but Fen is right. There is no mention of other CSS2 issues. They should have made mention of this. Probably would have alleviated some of the bad press they are getting from developers.

I personally am a bit concerned that many of outstanding CSS issues were not fixed in beta 1. ACID2 test should have been better.

Lets just hope that BETA 2 follows very soon. Microsoft needs to step it up. Remember the Firefox betas were much more robust in execution than IE 7.

Personal opionion, "I agree with much that has been said and unfortunately a little underwhelmed by the continued CSS issues"

Keep working IE Team, I look forward to the next release.

> I guess a lot of people don't read anything at all. Clearly MS states that more issues with CSS will be dealt with.

And at the rate of one CSS bug fix every two years *, we can expect Internet Explorer to get CSS support on par with the rest of today's web browsers in the year 5000 or so.

* Peekaboo and Guillotine bugfixes since Internet Explorer's release four years ago. Any more to add to the list, or is one bugfix every two years about right?

I've written down my thoughts on the release:

http://kurafire.net/log/archive/2005/07/28/ie7-beta-1-release


I must say, first feeling was of disappointment, but you can see from that post that I turned around on that somewhat.

For goodness' sake - this is a FIRST BETA. It's way off production. I loathe IE6's CSS support as much as anyone else, but read what it says. It's NOT a finished product!

"CSS Updates - Internet Explorer 7 includes fixes for issues with the Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) feature. Both the peekaboo and guillotine bugs have been addressed, and WORK ON OTHER ISSUES IS UNDER WAY to provide web developers with reliable and robust CSS functionality."

"Please give us feedback on all of the features and changes in Internet Explorer 7 Beta 1; MANY OF THEM, including the User Interface, ARE PRELIMINARY AND UNDER DEVELOPMENT and your feedback is important in perfecting Internet Explorer 7 for shipment to all of our customers."

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/workshop/essentials/whatsnew/whatsnew_70_sdk.asp

Not trying to add to the bashing going on here (really come on guys this IS a beta!) but can you uninstall IE7 after installing? IE7 broke MSN support in Trillian and I have to say I'd rather have Trillian than IE7.

Help?

Seems the background:fixed has been _half_ fixed... Look at the "CSS X-Ray" page ( http://www.biocandy.dk/test.php ) : it doesn't work propely - i didn't expected it - but on my PC (3gHz) it takes 70% of the CPU power ! A single animated gif can't do that...

Is it in BETA 1? Will it be forthcoming in BETA 2? It seems the answer to the former is no, so I'll emphatically assert that it must be in BETA 2.

I think the danger here that most see and some don't see is that early beta's have a habit of becoming final products when schedules slip. Since BETA 1 didn't pass ACID2 those of us prone to worry question the IE team's commitment to passing the test and fear the probability of failure that might ensue from a marginal commitment.

Crybabies!

Windows Vista beta 1 is lookig good to me (I'm a developer). I expect beta 2 to be more complete visually.

Due to te cash made by Microsoft, you are not credible, Dean. That's all.

I'm sure anyone stopping by here has already read that IE7 Beta 1 &amp; Windows Vista Beta 1 have been released to MSDN. Nifty for me, I have an MSDN subscription so I've downloaded both. Vista is a 2.4gig download (and obviously is an ISO for a bootable DV

Wow!

I love the user interface. I've been using IE7 for about 2-3 hours now and am beginning to wonder how I lived without it. I cannot understand why people dislike it. Everything appears to be in the right place (even the File.. Edit.. menus)

I must admit that the refresh button is awquad to get to, but I NEVER use the refresh button (F5).. so not a problem for me.

I'm somewhat dissapointed with the continuous lack of CSS support. Common guys.. you need to get this fixed! acid2 still looks like a traincrash. Only two of these: http://www.positioniseverything.net/explorer.html have been fixed.

Overall I adore IE7.. its sooo fricken speedy and the UI is great. But it's time for IE to catch up with technology and get standards SORTED!

well MS are just isolating themselves even more from the browser market, with firefox continuing to clean up it serves them right really.

Still stacks of CSS bugs and typical proprietary shite

"hasta la vista windows
gustavo

--

Microsoft will sorely miss Gustavo

*wah*

C"

you don't get it C, it's not about me, it's about miillions of people who don't speak english as their first language and have been waiting for the this release of IE for so long.


dig it?

Probably because the IE menu changes depending on what you're looking at... if you have a .doc loaded you get Word's menu bar, for example.

There&amp;#8217;s timing. Microsoft has released the first IE7 beta, and Opera has released a security update. (The latest Firefox update was last week.)
Reaction to the IE7 beta has been&amp;#8230; less than enthusiastic. I can&amp;#8217;t install it at work...

Come on people... Let's all wait for Beta 2. As with Windows, Microsoft always keeps new features at bay until the second beta. I believe the CSS rendering could be undergoing major improvements and might just not be ready for a Beta 1 release. We might still get a really nice surprise for that latter beta...

I really hope MS will follow up on this. You guys put up with a lot of bashing here, I really thank you to keep this blog going as-is.

But I do have one question for the MS IE team. My question is : why don't you communicate more on these features people are waiting for ? I believe you realize more than anyone here the importance of some of them, for developers notably (CSS2 is just an example). But your silence makes me think : is it you guys not willing to answer, or is it Microsoft policy that forbids you to be anything but vague ? I'm not asking you to answer anything (though there are questions that I'd love an answer to), I'm just questioning the origins of this (deliberate?) lack of communication.

And mine:

http://blog.hotpepper.ca/archives/2005/07/ie7-beta-1/

I hope that divs having style="height:100%;overflow:auto;" will continue to display scrollbars as they did before, whitout forcing scrollbars on the containing body.

Throw backwards compatibility away. Put the menu bar and toolbar and links bar outside each tab. They do not belong there. The concept is fundamentally flawed.

Al Billings [MSFT] wrote:
"I'm looking at the RSS feed in several different aggregators. Which one are you using and what problem are you seeing with it?"

Thunderbird

Is there plan to make XMLHTTPRequest a javascript object like what firefox, opera and safari are, so i don't need to create an ActiveX control? ActiveX control is not allowed in some corporate environment.

thanks

Well I figure I would try to give you guys some good feedback on the beta. What I mean by good feedback is hopefully feedback your looking for other than some argumentative complaints. This was on a windows XP sp2 in a Virtual PC. I figure I would do that to play with IE while Vista was downloading. You guys really need to do something also like VS and the lab to report bugs and log bugs to for IE. Other than here in the blogs. You say things in the documents linked above like send feedback and based one questions and feedback but no place do you tell us where to put the feedback.

First off the install went surprisingly well. Of course rebooting it comes up and initializes settings and stuff. For some reason though now every time that I start that VPC image like from shutting it down properly and starting like a normal computer I see that initializing settings for IE 7, setting up outlook express 6 etc. This is at least the last 3 times I have booted that VPC it also doesn’t seem to want to hold that proxy username and password even though I keep checking save the username and password, this could be from the going through setup again every time I reboot. So for some reason there appears to be a bug in there somewhere where it isn’t holding the settings. I am also behind a proxy server. I have automatically get proxy settings turned off and the use automatic configuration script set with the fully qualified url to my proxy server in there. i.e. http://proxy02.mydomain.com/ This proxy server is off on a different subnet and everything all together. Well after the upgrade the url in there changed to http://172.XXX.XXX.XXX (replace the X with an IP address.) The ip address that was in there was a local IP address to me in a private subnet. I think it was the IP address to a domain controller which is also DNS and WINS I do not remember for sure I changed it right away because I wanted to use it to surf.

Ok I was a little disappointed with the interface at first, it reminded me a lot of Firefox but well I had really hoped to have some MS usability guru in there designing something unique and different you know something revolutionary. However I gave it a test drive anyway. So first thing I didn’t like the interface some so I figured I would try to change it. The top bar is the url forward and back button and search. I would much prefer that to be the bottom bar. Also the main menu is the bottom bar I would really prefer that to be on the top like other windows apps. You can’t resize the url bar and get rid of the search bar and put your buttons up there anymore. I mean I really do not care for the search bar in there. I will never use it and it just frustrates me. I don’t like it in firefox either. I realize you think your making things easier for me to search but it is just taking up space I could use for something else. Now days there are 8 button mice and keyboards with tons of buttons you can set one of them to open a search engine at the click of a button. So really having it up there to me is just wasting valuable space, but some people may like it, so please