IEBlog

My company is having problems with IE7 and Authorware 6.5. We have online courseware that opens in a seperate window in IE6 but doesn't do anything in IE7.

Where would I inquire and pass on our tech info to get help?

thanks and good work!

Jeff

I'm getting nervous, my work life is about to get a lot more complicated.

Our organization will install it 6 months after it's released.

Unfortunately I cannot install IE7 on company computers,because Komercni banka (www.kb.cz and www.mojebanka.cz) still did not updated their on-lineaccess to account.

how can i backup my IE7 RSS list?

u know,i wanna ghost my OS back,and my ghosted OS only has IE6sp1 on it.

What is the reccommendation for people who will need a copy of IE6 around to test website compatibility, and will also need IE7?

They suggest using Virtual PC (Honestly).

IE6 and IE7 are not going to work reliably side by side. I think the best suggestion is Virtual PC or two computers. This is the same answer as has been given every time this has been asked for the last year... I seriously doubt you will get a different one.

Thanks, but will remain using IE6 on the company computers until my customers update their sites to compatible with IE7.

IE7 soon: Microsoft advises compatibility testing of existing websites now. There are links here for changelists, checklists, and debugging tips. There's an "Application Compatibility Toolkit" for web applications in WWW browsers... I'm not certain how

My only question and concern is will IE7 actually follow CSS3 or even CSS2.1

If Explorer will follow STANDARDS then we would not have to "test" so much.

This seems horribly backwards to me. "We need you to test and ensure your sites, extensions, and applications are ready for IE7."

I may have an idealist view of the web, but shouldn't a new browser accomodate existing sites, rather than sites accomodating a new browser? I understand that there's a give and take regarding new browser features allowing people to design their sites in ways that were previously impossible but don't we have standards and whatnot so that when a new browser is released existing sites just work?

I know all of this is something that has been said before. What really puzzles me is that a company (any company) can be this close to launching a browser without discarding the idea that the web should ready itself to accomodate their browser. It seems very concieted, sloppy and contrary to the principles that make this whole system work.

Regardless of all that, six months from now the browser will be launched, sites will be updated and this whole discussion will be forgotten with few lessons learned.

Hopefully the final version will be able to actually display pictures instead of timing out after 2 seconds into loading with a red x.

Also, you can't click on links from Outlook Express emails. It just pops up an empty browser window.

I'm also getting a lot of IE7 crashes lately with RC1.

CAREFUL!  If you don't have genuine Windows, IE7 will either not install or worse.

Al Billings, I'm glad to see you back posting here in the IEBLOG.

There is no way that IE7 is ready did you get css to work if not return to sender no digg!

This seems horribly backwards to me. "We need you to test and ensure your sites, extensions, and applications are ready for IE7."

Correct there is no way you make a page for the browser stop the madness for Microsoft.

it should say:

Is IE7 ready for the internet?

To the people who are worried about testing on IE6 and IE7, I have been using the unofficial IE6 standalone alogside IE7 with few problems. It doesn't really work as a browser, but it's fine in 99% of cases for checking layout. Don't shell out of VirtualPC - get the standalone from http://browsers.evolt.org/?ie/32bit/standalone, and keep IE6 installed on a old PC so you can do a final check with the real thing.

In my experience the IE6 standalone has two drawbacks - transparency doesn't work properly and random dialog boxes sometimes appear when you load a page. CSS layout is fine.

"Oh, no! We thought you were kidding. For real? There's actually going to be a new browser and it could break my website?"

That's the reaction I've been getting. Lots of folks are nowhere near being ready. And often the problems relate to Microsoft stuff.

The latest I've noticed is how PowerPoint presentations saved as HTML don't work at all.  Lots of companies do this.

Hope you've got your PR key messages all figured out.

http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2006/10/06/IE7-Is-Coming-This-Month_2E002E002E00_Are-you-Ready_3F00_.aspx

Ben Hollis,

As others have said, Microsoft has previously recommended a Virtual PC (or a second machine) to run IE6 side-by-side with IE7. VMWare is obviously another option. If you can't afford yet another copy of Windows just for IE6, then you might like to read Position is Everything's guide to running multiple copies of IE on the same Windows installation:

http://www.positioniseverything.net/articles/multiIE.html

I don't know what the IE team's view of that technique is, however.

Neil,

"I may have an idealist view of the web, but shouldn't a new browser accomodate existing sites, rather than sites accomodating a new browser? I understand that there's a give and

take regarding new browser features allowing people to design their sites in ways that were

previously impossible but don't we have standards and whatnot so that when a new browser is released existing sites just work?"

I'm afraid not. That would of course be true if browser developers and web designers had followed standards earlier, rather than building a castle in the sky with proprietory features, quirks, and hacks. It is in large measure its greater respect for web standards that leads IE7 into incompatibility with many existing sites. Sites designed simply according to the standards, ignoring Internet Explorer's support or lack of support, should work better in IE7 than in IE6.

This process will be an uphill struggle, of course. This page you're reading now is "invalid XHTML" (a phrase that deceives in implying that invalid XHTML is still XHTML, rather than tag soup) in no less than 77 different ways:

http://validator.w3.org/check?verbose=1&uri=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.msdn.com%2Fie%2Farchive%2F2006%2F10%2F06%2FIE7-Is-Coming-This-Month_2E002E002E00_Are-you-Ready_3F00_.aspx

If you want to know how to code sites that will work in most user agents for most users:

1. Read and follow the HTML 4.01 specification, the CSS1 specification, and the DOM Level 1 and 2 specifications at the W3C site. Do NOT trust the highly inaccurate renditions of these specifications at MSDN and W3Schools (and if you find errors, report them to the maintainers of those sites). Validate your HTML and CSS with the W3C validators.

2. Separate structural/semantic markup (e.g. HTML elements and microformat classes) from presentation (external CSS files imported with LINK) and behavior (external JS files imported with SCRIPT in HEAD). Ensure that these can work independently of one another.

3. Make sure ALL images have alternative text specified with an ALT attribute. If the image is purely decorative, use ALT="". If you have lengthy navigation, provide a "Skip navigation" link so people with disabilities can jump directly to your all-important content. Never rely on color alone (e.g. colorblind users often can't tell red links from black text). For more accessibility guidance, see the W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).

These strictures may be difficult to implement with "web applications", as opposed to ordinary information- or commerce-oriented websites. However, standards and accessibility techniques for web applications are in active development by browser makers, cutting edge web designers, and spec writers. So the more use you can make of existing standards in web applications now, the easier and cheaper it will be to adapt them to the standards of the future.

If you need help on how to make standards-based sites, the #css, #html, #web, and #xhtml channels on Freenode IRC are full of people keen to offer advice.

while it may be hard at times, anything that moves us towards a more standards-based web should make web development more efficient and effective in the long run. Be idealistic! Be brave!

After the release, will you continue to develop IE7 ?

Instead of worrying about the trivialities that are going to affect some American sites and trust me they are far and few between, having used IE 7 all day every day for months now, you should be more concerned of the ongoing damage that is being caused to Developing World economies due to lack of support for URLs that actually mean anything. It is introspective naval gazing like this that make it wholly inappropriate for the US to continue in its role of Internet Governance.

I am waiting for this final release.

However, at least the two following incompatibilities prevented me from upgrading from Bet2 to Beta3 or RC1:

- Norton Internet Security

- HP Director

Do you know if they will be solved at the time final release is available

Microsoft is the best!!! IE7 will make the web safer from all the spyware I got in Firefox and Opera and Safari. Everyone knows Microsoft makes the standards, not standards bodies like W3C. Make sure your site works with it or face financial and ego RUIN!!!!!

Microsoft can buy you and your governments, so listen to them and have some respect for the best browser on EARTH!!!! A lot of work went into it! Nothing comes close! Pay your respects. RC1 is fine. Amazing. Great. Anti-phishing ahoy.

Just discovered a bug, and I'm tired of http://connect.microsoft.com:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/author/dhtml/reference/properties/msinterpolationmode.asp

You're finally using the -ms- prefix, fine! But the scripting representation of this property should be MsInterpolationMode (-ms-interpolation-mode), not msInterpolationMode (ms-interpolation-mode).

Microsoft anuncia el lanzamiento del Internet Explorer 7 para fines de mes. En su sitio han agregado una lista de consejos para que tus sitios, extensiones y aplicaciones sean compatibles con el IE7. Como dicen en el IE 7 blog , Are you ready?

i hope they will have added tabbing which is something i miss very much in explorer

I'll be waiting for IE 7 to be publicly released. I've been using it since IE 7 Beta 1, and see the improvement at every development stage. No reason why I should give this a miss.

I'm waiting for IE7, to give it a try..

i don't user IE6 at all, because it's much easier and better to user Firefox or similar browsers..

I don't agree when you ask us to check our sites, to see if they are compatible with IE7. if they are not compatible that's IE6's fault, every sites have something to fix "this or that" to work on IE6.. so if they will make them look like a mess on IE7 that's not our fault.

Internet Explorer 7 will be released this month, acording to Microsoft, and will be installed via automatic updates. Story includes links for webmasters compatibility tools and checklists.

I have a couple of websites which have .swf flash files in them for navigation. With IE 6, you have to click on the part of the page which has the file or hit the space bar or enter to activate the file and its contents. I tryed downloading and installing IE 7 and it does the same thing. Mozilla Firefox does not require this. I have put notes on my pages advising my friends and customers that is they don't want to contend with this, to go download Firefox. I personally think it works better anyhow. It also appears that with IE 7, Microsoft is trying to get a more Firefox look (tab browsing)

> I have a couple of websites which have .swf flash files in them for navigation.

Sounds like an annoyance to the user, rather than a feature.

> I don't understand... What the hell am I supposed to do when IE7 is released? My sites are W3C compliant. Why should I make sure, my sites work with IE7?

If your site is W3C compliant, chances are good that it works better with IE7 than with IE6.

Benjamin,

"That would of course be true if browser developers and web designers had followed standards earlier, rather than building a castle in the sky with proprietory features, quirks, and hacks. It is in large measure its greater respect for web standards that leads IE7 into incompatibility with many existing sites."

What you're saying has a grain of truth, but I don't think it applies to the big picture. I've been around long enough to remember how IBM Web Explorer used the 'frame' tag to change the loading animation in the page. There's one of your proprietary features. The other side of the coin is how IE3 reacted to that use of the 'frame' tag. Errors in the text of your site. Not error dialogs. Not quietly ignoring it. That old version actually changed the content of your page when it came across markup it didn't like.

Sure it's an old and obscure example, but that's the kind of thing that designers have been forced to work around since the earliest days of the web. Now IE7 is asking us to do the same, but this time in the name of 'compatibility'.

If all this is really in the name of compatibility and standards compliance, I will happily eat my words.

Where is the Polish language? 40 ml people countery!

IE7 Is Coming This Month...Are your parents ready?

IE7 broke my site that works in IE6 and Firefox.  

Simply use the IE "comment" tag to ignore IE-specific problems.  

I cannot believe we will be forced to download IE7 through automatic updates. IE7 should be provided by default (as is already) on future MS operating system's while given "savy" users on older operating system's the choice of downloading and installing. I wonder if IE6 will continue to receive updates after IE7 is released?

Good work,keep updating IE!!,make it the best (still not)

Ironically, the sites with the fewest problems are probably those that don't declare a DOCTYPE, since Quirks Mode rendering is largely untouched. The sites that have the most problems are those which declare a DOCTYPE (invoking 'Standards' Mode on both IE6 and IE7) but which then use 'Hacks' to work around bugs in IE6's rendering. Many of these hacks no longer work on IE7. In some other cases, a different stylesheet has been supplied to IE6 which works around bugs in IE6's rendering; if the browser detection still detects IE7 as IE6, the workarounds then cause problems for IE7's corrected rendering.

The problem is that many sites were developed within the last five years and work around problems in IE6, but are no longer maintained. These sites may not work well in IE7.

Michael: to back up your RSS feeds, click the 'Add to Favorites' button (yellow star with green +) and choose Import and Export from the menu. Click Next, then select Export Feeds and Next, select the location to export the feeds to, click Next, then Finish.

It should be possible to import the resulting OPML file into any RSS reader - it's a standard format.

Skidmark: this behaviour is a result of the patent decision by a US court, known as 'the Eolas patent'. Microsoft would have to pay a huge royalty to Eolas if they were to support automatic activation of ActiveX controls or other plugin code. Mozilla Foundation and Opera have not yet been sued. Microsoft are appealing the case.

In my view, the court is wrong, and I hope this will eventually be killed off.

To work around the issue, see http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/workshop/author/dhtml/overview/activating_activex.asp

Ready for what?

'Nuff said.

Scott Graff writes at the IE7 Blog that the final release of Internet Explorer 7 is almost upon us -- as in, this month. He also reveals a little more about how its distribution through Windows Update will be handled:...

JS in November: Mozilla Firefox 2 is now in Release Candidate 2 stage, joining Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 in final public compatibility testing. I can't remember the last time we've seen two major browsers arrive so closely together. I'm guessing new

Fix the CSS support properly.

The funny thing is, you know this is what we developers want... we want BETTER CSS support, but no you're deciding to release it anyway.

Oh well.

I am excited about the final IE7 release this month... But as a microsoft fan i am concerned with the decision to install IE7 thro automatic updates in just few weeks after the final release.

I would like MS to wait atleast 3-6 months after the final release for automatic mass distribution. You may never know what kind of issues will come up with IE7 in a real user environment and this 3-6 months time delay will help to stabilize the software with necessary updates.

According to Microsoft's IEBlog, IE7 is coming this month -- Are you Ready? Most of the expected compatibility issues are in CSS filter hacks that will no longer work in IE7. However, in working with the IE 7 Release Candidate...

W3C is ready, for a long long time. The question is, is IE7 ready?

Yes, didn't think so either.

Hey Team,

although the changes made in IE7 are a step in the right direction (andit's great you made that step), the way you're actually going is the wrong.

I know it's been said many times. IE need a rewrite ot it's rendering engine.

- Please listen -, since the end of the Browser War, every great rendering engine had a rewrite from scratch. And guess what? "IE optimized" sites still work in them. They've got a Quirks Mode and all that chit chat as well. The only sites that don't work in those browsers are pages written in the worst possible style.

Working on the Trindent Engine seems like an act of desperation. This engine IS buggy. We all know. Sure, you're fixing some of them but you're loosing sight of the real problem: hasLayout and all that things stand in the way of joining the right way.

For all User's and Webdesigner's sake. Going on with the Trident engine is the way Netscape 4 went.

Rewriting the Engine WILL take a lot of time, no one can hide that fact. But from another point of view: that time can be uses for your customers (especially writers of WebApps) are to be informed of good webdesigning style.

As said, there are only few sites which really don't work in alternative browsers (some even do but are just stating otherwise). Taking this into account, your argument about breaking some pages are not that important as you might want to believe.

I'm sorry for writing that much. I hope I wrote something objective (and that someone is reading this ^.-).

And I truly hope you will come to mind and leave the way before History repeats itself.

By the Way: I salute to Mister Wilson.

What's interesting here is the team will be forcing IE7 installs out through normal Automatic Updates

I'm now seeing in RC1 security alerts for plug-in detection scripts for the QuickTime ActiveX conrtrol. Such scripts are commonly used for detection/degradation strategies and by stats packages for reporting on the various plug-ins/controls available in an audience.

Is there something Apple needs to do in order to make the QT Control pass the security inspection?

RC 1 is not running on my windows xp machine. When I open a tab the explorer shuts down!!!

"Microsoft is the best!!! IE7 will make the web safer from all the spyware I got in Firefox and Opera and Safari. Everyone knows Microsoft makes the standards, not standards bodies like W3C. Make sure your site works with it or face financial and ego RUIN!!!!!

Microsoft can buy you and your governments, so listen to them and have some respect for the best browser on EARTH!!!! A lot of work went into it! Nothing comes close! Pay your respects. RC1 is fine. Amazing. Great. Anti-phishing ahoy.

"

You obviously have no clue what you are talking about.  You do not understand the CSS box model nor do you seem to care.

Further, everytime I post a comment on this blog that doesn't cheer on IE, my comments are removed.  Nice work MS.  Thanks for the freedom and speech.

Bottom line is, IE 7 in not compliant either and will make a lot of problems for a lot of people.  Even though MS must realize this, they are forcing it upon all of the world through an automatic system update.  Nice, thanks, we really appreciate that MS (not).

So I'll need to create a Virtual PC install of WinXP (which requires a separate XP license?) and then prevent that from getting the IE7 update (be careful now) and then I can test in IE6 and IE7? Hm.

@J. Rivera: "I cannot believe we will be forced to download IE7 through automatic updates."

Automatic Updates alerts users to the availability of IE7.  Users can then choose 1) install it now, 2) don't install it and don't ask me again, 3) ask me later

"IE7 should be provided by default (as is already) on future MS operating system's while given "savy" users on older operating system's the choice of downloading and installing."

The goal is to spread IE7 to less savvy users as well.  There are a lot of security and rendering improvements, thus MS, and the general web dev community, wants to see as quick adoption of IE7 as possible.

"I wonder if IE6 will continue to receive updates after IE7 is released?"

Yes, MS has stated that IE6 will continue to be supported (i.e. get security updates) as part of XP as long as XP itself is supported.  And IE6 SP1 on Windows 2000 will be supported as long as 2000 is supported.

There has been much said about CSS support - or lack of, here. I have been trying to address a problem related to CSS that I can't seem to find an answer to and it seems no one wants to acknowledge. Visual Studio's (both 2003 and 2005) style builder has been broken by the installation of IE7 since beta 2. There was a fix for the original variation of the problem by adding devenv.exe to the feature control section of IE's registry hive in HKLM. Beta 3 and RC1 reintroduced the bug and the reg entry does not help.

The style builder comes up with none of the fields populated when trying to edit an existing stylen - both from a CSS file and the property sheet in the visual designer. From what little I've been able to deduce it is caused by the preview pane which requires IE to render, getting an access denied error that we can't see. I've tried to report this on both the VS and IE forums and no one has bothered to answer the posts. I know it's not an issolated problem with my dev PC as it is repeatable on clean builds as well as on Vista. Uninstalling IE7 restores the style builder functionality. I also tried to install the beta SP1 for VS2005 and that not only didn't fix the problem it introduced a plethera of new ones.

I'll be watching this blog to see if anyone answers my issue. I really like IE7 and do not want to return to IE6. This is the only issue I'm having with it that I can't work around or live with. Please help!

Just a comment here that it is really a bad idea to not make IE7 work on ALL the versions of Windows that currently support IE6. I can understand why the IE team wants to get IE7 out ASAP as it will no doubt help with the overall issues relating to IE but there is still a very large base of users out there that can't/won't update to WinXP/2K3/Vista. I for one have several Win2K servers that I need to keep and can't be updated to Win2K3. I would really like to have IE7 on them instead of IE6. I guess I'm just SOL as this seems to be a top down directive and not a (valid) technical one. Too bad for me.

I'm also getting a lot of IE7 crashes lately with RC1...

Me Too. It's lie the browser has been working for the last 5 minutes to just dissapear on me. Happens at least once a day and I always send Error Reports.

I also hope IE 7 Final fixes the issues it has with Flash 9, since IE 7 shutdowns at least once a day for me when I have a site up that uses flash due to a Flash 9 error. Never had this problem until Flash 9 came out, but there's no issues whatsoever in Firefox.

Other than that, it looks good. The speed in opening pages and loading tabs from favorites is slower than Firefox, but Firefox's 2 right now, is pretty crappy.

no we are not (web developers and designers), and we won't be unless IE7 gets ready for W3C standards!

> http://msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/author/dhtml/reference/properties/msinterpolationmode.asp

>

> You're finally using the -ms- prefix, fine! But the scripting representation of this property should be

> MsInterpolationMode (-ms-interpolation-mode), not msInterpolationMode (ms-interpolation-mode).

Furthermore, your newly introduced keywords 'bicubic' and 'nearest-neighbor' should have the -ms- prefix, too.

You Are NOT Releasing IE7 With This Reduced "FULL SCREEN" Functionality, Are You???

Please GOD, NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

Does that mean IE will finally render standard-conform pages by the rules? I mean, really? Not just marketing blabla, like the lsat 5 or so versions?

In any case, I rather wait for Service Pack 1 before I download. Bad experiences, you know.. .-)

W.D.

W3C and CSS is not supported because they are obsolete garbage.

Once again, a reminder that developers are forced to fork over unnecessary money for a whole new computer or a useless piece of software just so we can do PROPER testing like running IEs side by side.

By the way, the CSS support in IE7 is still causing more headaches than its worth and the interface is just plain confusing. Fix it, then release it.

I am a student heading towards Web Development. Because as a student I cannot afford a second computer for testing on different versions of IE, I would like to know if there is any free, trustworthy, and simple software available to have both IE6 and IE7 installed on XP without them interfering with each other. I have a feeling that most developers would like this, and some of the more skeptical regular users would as well so that they can try it out without affecting their current settings.

When is IE7 coming this month?  I'm ready as I've been testing IE7 RC1 on several systems.

@ IE Team - A lot of Microsoft's programs that do not open in the default browser but in IE (wonder why? ;-)) do not open in a new tab but a new window. Has that been fixed? Has the opens in IE and not default browser issue been fixed or is this handed down as a final decision?

@ IE Team - I like being able to use the IE6 GUI with 7's rendering engine. Is there any chance we could see IE7's feature's get added to the IE6 GUI? I don't imagine this would be too difficult?

@ IE Team - Any chance we could get :focus enabled? Only Gecko supports it properly (and Opera has exceptionally buggy support for it).

@ IE Team - Releasing IE7 through Windows Update is probably one of the best moves though honestly there are some questionable reasons why some people in the company have forced you to do this (though I'm sure your team's reasons are legit).

@ Neil "I may have an idealist view of the web, but shouldn't a new browser accommodate existing sites, rather than sites accommodating a new browser?"

That would be true if websites were correctly written. IE handles incorrectly written websites very well, it's people who code correctly like me that Microsoft needs to be working with and they have.

@ Chris Ovenden - That "IE 6 Standalone" does not work at all. Evolt needs to take that "standalone" down.

@ Francis - Uninstall the useless Norton weedware from your computer.

@ Skidmark - Stop using flash for your menus unless you've disabled Flash and have thoroughly tested your object's alternative content.

@ soc - Just serve your pages as application/xhtml+xml if you want to block IE users access. IE does not support XHTML though it has supported XML since 5.0.

@ Mike Dimmick - The reason non-doctype sites work well in IE is because of the huge non-standards support that is in IE. My site meets all of the highest levels of standards and required very minimal IECCSS to get it to work correctly for IE7. It dropped from code red to code orange (lack of application/xhtml+xml support) though would otherwise meet code yellow.

@ figgy - Posts are pre-moderated and I think whoever is moderating it is allowing much of the not-on-topic anti-Microsoft sentiment through to be given much credit. Save your posts and email them to me if they don't get approved and I'll be glad to let you know why they didn't get posted!

@ Not IE6 standaloners - At least IE7 can be uninstalled. If you don't like not having standalones then test your sites out correctly by using IE6 with IECCSS and then install IE7 and use a different IECCSS.

Honestly if people code their sites correctly a new version of any browser will not effect a site negatively and adding support for continued bugs for those newer browsers will diminish over time and should not effect older versions of those browsers.

I have found an incompatibility, and it is not dissimilar to the one that I discovered on Netscape 6 and its successors (including Firefox), though the relevant posts at this blog are closed. Hope you guys can help: I have Adobe Type Manager installed and generally use PS1 fonts. However, my TrueType fonts do not display properly: whenever there is a ligature (HTML fi and fl for fi and fl), IE7 changes fonts on me, just for those characters. This never used to happen—it has been something IE has always managed to do since version 5, properly (and something that Netscape could do up to version 4.7). My own blog could be a place where you can see this happening, and I can send screen shots if necessary.

Now, this isn't a IE thing, it's about the Microsoft.com site in general.

Alot of the freakin' site has stopped working, the 'contact us' link down the bottom is broken, the 'support.microsoft.com' site is broken, all i get is a 'Runtime error' page, and when i tried to email 'service@microsoft.com' i got a bounceback saying the mail server is broken.

Can this please be looked into ?

I've got aquestion about IE7's handling of the case of Suckerfish Dropdowns. I've simplified the code to exclude the IE6-specific css rules applied by the suckerfish javescript, so they look shorter than the rules you'll find.

Why does this work:

.nav, .nav ul {padding: 0; margin: 0; }

.nav a {display: block; width: 10em; }

.nav li {float: left; width: 10em; }

.nav li ul {position: absolute; left: -999em; }

.nav li:hover ul {left: auto; width: 10em; }

While this does not:

.nav, .nav ul {padding: 0; margin: 0; }

.nav a {display: block; width: 10em; }

.nav li {float: left; width: 10em; }

.nav li ul {position: absolute; width: 10em; left: -999em; }

.nav li:hover ul {left: auto; }

As a pseudo-element, shouldn't the li width trickle down to the li:hover rule?

@John A. Bilicki III: "A lot of Microsoft's programs that do not open in the default browser but in IE (wonder why? ;-)) do not open in a new tab but a new window. Has that been fixed? Has the opens in IE and not default browser issue been fixed or is this handed down as a final decision?"

Properly coded programs will always use the default browser (e.g. those that call ShellExecute("http://...")).  If clicking a link in some MS program ignores your default browser, then that program is at fault and needs to be changed; there's nothing IE can do about that.

Ignoring the default browser could happen in one of several ways.

1) The app specifically executes "C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe" passing it the web address.  I think that this will always create a new window, and i think it always should; if I as a user were to start > run > iexplore, I would expect a fresh IE window.

2) The app uses DDE to ask an existing IE process to open a given URL.  I believe that this will always obey the "new tab" setting.  Usually, though, a program won't use DDE; usually just the shell itself uses it (via the aforementioned ShellExecute).

3) The app uses COM to instantiate an InternetExplorer COM object.  By definition, this object is a new top-level IE window.

Thus in cases 1 and 3, there is nothing that can be done about the new window vs. new tab, because the calling program is requesting a new window.  The calling programs will have to be changed.

*prepared to be flamed*

I for one am very eager for IE7 to be released. The team has made significant (though not total) improvement on its rendering engine, and it will only get better as time progresses. They've caught up many years this release, next release they will catch up all the way. Maybe even by SP1.

In saying 'Prepare your site for IE7', I believe they are referring to sites that browser-sniff for IE and render with hacks. Most of those hacks can now be safely removed as they will now render incorrectly with IE7's improved CSS support.

@Kalle: Kalle, crashing on tab creation is a symptom of a buggy older version of Google Desktop search.  Upgrade to the latest version to avoid this problem.

@figgy: He's being sarcastic.  

@Michael: There are many technical reasons that IE7 is not available on Win2k.  IE7 relies on quite a few APIs that are only available in XP and above.

@John A. Bilicki III:

1> I'm not aware of any current MS applications that don't use the system default browser for hyperlinks.  With regard to the new tab: If you've configured IE this way, it should reuse existing windows for virtually all applications.  The one common exception is Outlook Express, which doesn't work correctly because they CoCreate IE (if it's the default) rather than launching via ShellExec.  Windows Live Mail does not suffer from this problem.

2> No, there's no way to plug the IE7 rendering engine into the IE6 UI.  This would actually be quite an undertaking even if it had been a design goal.

3> No one "forced us" to offer IE7 via AutoUpdate.  IE7 contains significantly improved security over IE6, and hence IE7 is entirely suitable for AutoUpdate.  As noted, it's entirely up to the user to decide if they want to install it.

I want to know why we have to wait till IE8 to get a download manager? the Mac version has had this for years and is now discontinued. We are still very behind in the IE Field.

Time to play catchup guys!!!

you will find a lot of chinese domain names at www.guge.tv

After a while, Microsoft IE is back in the spotlight. According to the Microsoft Internet Explorer Blog, the final versio...

My company it's ready for IE7.

Keep up the good work team.

IE and all versions of it sucks, yeah I'm ready...I'm ready to decline the update when it prompts me for it.  And I'll just stick with my RELIABLE Firefox thank you very much.

can't install it. even when i do all the tipps and hints from m$. poor. very poor.

I've enjoyed the beta very much, thanks for all the good work. And I've read that Microsoft cooperates with Mozilla (a team of Firefox-coders was invited to Redmond).

@Luke Angel: There are lots of good add-ons for IE download managers.  See http://enhanceie.com for some suggestions for this and other addons.

IE7 vil komme i løbet af denne måned. Er du klar til den kommer? Har du testet dine web sider, plug-ins

[This was part of a longer comment that got eaten by the moderation monster for some reason I can't work out. Maybe it was too long? Too many links? Used curly quotes? Other comments on this thread have been much more critical of Microsoft where as I repeatedly defended them on certain crucial points, so I don't think it was censored.]

David William Wrixon:

I haven't really followed this issue, but…

(1) I thought IE7 *did* support internationalized URIs:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/ietechcol/cols/dnexpie/ie7_idn_support.asp

Is this support broken in some fundamental way?

(2) You're of course right that web development has been radically distorted by its English-speaking focus. But presumably international web users have for some time been able to make use of browsers like Safari, Netscape, and Firefox that (if I understand correctly) already support internationalized URIs? Roughly speaking, are not Apple, AOL, and Mozilla Foundation as American (or not) as Microsoft? In any case, note that IE6 was introduced in 2001, before IDNA became a standard (2003):

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

http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc3490.html

(3) The "trivialities" affect international web development too (indeed perhaps more so, as developing countries are poorer and can less afford to deal with them).

[Hurrah! Let's try another one.]

Francis:

I have used Norton Internet Security 2005 with IE7 Release Candidate on Windows XP Professional with no apparent problems. Your mileage may vary.

You just should implement the w3 standards instead of saying that we have to adapt our sites to your browser.

Thanks God there is no IE on GNU/Linux

Je viens de lire sur " The Microsoft Internet Explorer Weblog " que IE 7 pourrait être proposé ce mois

i have a little bug with the newest IE7. is this fixed in Final?

i have some folders in my favorites and if i have the IE opened a while i cannot reopen some of the folders! i have to restart the ie that it work again :(

and i locked the favorites but its resizing ever time! its growing and growing! i have to resize it every time..

[Okay, now I'm leaning towards the theory that their moderation monster assumes comments with lots of links are spam and gobbles them. I'd like to back up more of what I say here, but oh well.]

soc,

"my sites are always w3c-compliant. i don't give a [expletive deleted] about your fancy ie7. ... i'm blocking access to my private sites for people which use ie. if they don't care how my page really looks, they can go elsewhere."

If the service your site provides *requires* (or even benefits from) a standard feature unsupported by IE, that is one thing. But going out of your way to block access to IE users punitively or automatically, including (inevitably) those visually disabled users who have to use IE because it is the only browser supported by their screen reader of choice, is *not* in the spirit of W3C compliance. WCAG especially asks you to take into account that your visitors "may have an early version of a browser, a different browser entirely, a voice browser, or a different operating system".

John A. Bilicki III suggests: "Just serve your pages as application/xhtml+xml if you want to block IE users access. IE does not support XHTML though it has supported XML since 5.0." If the aim is to target IE users then this is a bad idea, since it will also lock out Lynx and produce buggy renderings in ELinks. Conversely, it won't block IE users with MathPlayer 2.0 installed.

If you really want to encourage people to use browsers with a given feature set, you could provide fallback content which provides the *same* service to browsers that do not support those features but which advertizes that a better experience of that service is only a download away.

Sadly, there is no fully-featured, free, general purpose screen reader that does not require IE. Perhaps rather than devising new ways to punish IE users, we should be working on that?

My company uses Microsoft Groove 3.1.  IE7 does not work Groove, unless you use the 2007 Beta.  Will either IE7 or Groove 3.1 be changed to work together?  Or are there changes you can make to the configuration to make them work together?

Why using IE7 ? When you have standard compliant browser more stable, more secure, more extensible and free software (free as in freedom)... The better question is ready for Firefox 2.0 ;-)

Well the only webhosting websites are those that are hosted by world now. If you go to a website using this host some of the link's will not work. But other then that Ie7 will be a good program when all the bugs are fixed .

mike.

Ps. I'm using IE7 rc1 Now and it work very will . Besides the small bugs .  

Very nice, RC3 is working perfectly, I'm looking forward very much to learning what else is new.

Oh, and off-topic: the CSS specification is bloated, inconsistent, illogical (the width of a box should specify the actual width of a box. When I set the width of a box, I shouldn't have to calculate with margins to determine the -actual- width. Sorry, but MS's interpretation of the box model makes more sense.), and fails at its goal of actually separating layout from content in a normal fashion. Also, anybody can say that he has created a standard. What matters is which of these standards -becomes- the de facto standard in the world.

Looking forward to it, guys. Any chance of a post about the changes since RC3?

Ok, everyone should just shut up, and wait. If then it does not work for you when released just downgrade. Simple as that.

Can you actuelly downgrade, to ie6 if you get the ie7 as part of the automatic security update? I mean none of the other security updates have an uninstall option, so have there been made a special case for ie7? (I had to disable automatic update because I don't want ie7(Need to test websites on ie6), but if I can just install it again that would not be a problem))

Martin

Thanks for giving us money to make things work in IE 6 as intended and give us money again to make things work as they used to work in IE 7 but well, not really  ;p

We ll just add new TagSoup and Quirks cause you cant do a good browser but just TagSoup Parsers.

I love IE 7 RC 1 but I do wish they would consider (and Im doubting it highly) making the menu more configurable:

i.e.  (no pun in tended)  

being able to not show the Google toolbar

being able to move things around on the menu

as it is now things are all over the place and cannot be moved as they can with IE 6 or any other browser out here.

I repeat.. I love it.  It has been stable for me,  runs very fast.  Its just this new menu that drives me NUTS

Is IE 7.0 compatible with OmniPass software? This software is use for APC Biopod Biometric Password Manager(Fingerprint reader).

I had a machine with XP Home with IE7, when I upgraded to XP Pro I had tons of issues that all had to do with authenticating my XP key after XP Pro was installed.

I'M a big IE-fan - and have been using it for the last 12 years. It's a bit hard these days to be a fan with your very slow formatting-engine.

I have been testing your beta for a long time - it's very very slow to format the page.

Hope this will be resolved.

Best regards

Michael Christensen

I think IE7 is fantastic. Microsoft has done a good job, even if it has been a long time coming. Its fixed and improved upon many things that were wrong with IE6. My Intranet works just the way it did in IE6 with the exception that it loads a lot quicker. I look foward to the final release.

Well done Microsoft!

oh i forget, IE makes webpages goes wrong because doesn't accept W3C, so if u want