IEBlog

Interesting, but 3 million out of what? What's the install base of Windows XP these days? 250 or 300 million?

"If you haven’t tested your website with IE7 yet, please use the tools Scott posted about a few weeks ago to help you prepare."

I consider this attitude very arrogant. Why should we have to test *our* websites to see if they work with *your* new browser? If they work with IE6, shouldn't they work with IE7?

I assume that you have no quarms if I send you a bill for the extra time I have to spend modifying my already working websites that I finished for my clients years ago?

IE 7 works like it was left in the street. And run over repeatedly.

If I were you all, I'd be embarassed by putting my name on this piece of work. Any chance you all will fix the myriad bugs before IE 8?

Or will you just thumb your noses at all that and go about like nothing is wrong?

I agree with Dave, I find it arrogant. In fact, it's even funny when you realize that this release is almost coincident with the release of Firefox 2.0 and that they seem able to make new releases that don't break compatibility. Oh wait, maybe it is that they do respect the standards...

Anyways, I ask the same question that Dave, can I send you the bill for the extra time to make work again all the webapps of my client, that worked nice with IE5, IE6 and Firefox 1.5 and that work nice with Firefox 2.0 but NOT with IE7 ?

"I consider this attitude very arrogant. Why should we have to test *our* websites to see if they work with *your* new browser? If they work with IE6, shouldn't they work with IE7? "

@Dave:

*You* have to put in the work because the websites that *you* wrote are not standards-compliant.

Not sure if this has been mentioned on previous posts or not - will there be a Windows 2000 release?

Yes I was one of the three million who downloaded it. Twice in fact neither time did the installation work, the browser just hangs and changing the url makes no difference. Still I have not seen a response to comment I posted previously.

@Dave

"If they work with IE6, shouldn't they work with IE7?"

The short answer is no, not necessarily. Many websites were developed using "hacks" that relied on bugs in IE6's support for specified web standards to achieve certain effects in IE6. IE7 fixes many of those bugs, and so breaks many of those hacks.

"I assume that you have no quarms if I send you a bill for the extra time I have to spend modifying my already working websites that I finished for my clients years ago?"

The only hope of future-proofing web content is to design to web specifications, rather than the quirks of particular user agents. Browsers come and go, and as they do so their support for those specifications gradually improves.

The one exception to this general rule is that you should try and ensure that actual meaningful content is still accessible as possible, and that does mean paying some attention to the capabilities of existing user agents. Even then, you should code with an eye to the future.

For example, user agents should render Q with default surrounding quotation marks. Unfortunately, IE6, IE7, and the biggest screen reader, JAWS, all bungle this simple task entirely. Until Microsoft and Freedom Scientific come to grips with this awesome programming challenge, if we need to ensure accessibility we should follow the advice of WCAG and avoid Q for the time being. I somewhat hesitantly suggest replacing it with:

The computer said, "<span class="quotation">Hello world!</span>"

That way, at some future date the information is preserved and the code can easily be reworked to use Q. And at least it shouldn't actually break incomprehensibly in future user agents.

I would guess the installation base of windows XP is probably closer to a billion than 200 million.

Even if the autopmatic upgrade will update 10 million copies every night (about 20 terabytes of data ??) it would then take up to three months to upgrade all XP clients.  

@Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis

Your Q problem is just a bad choice of implementation on your part.

The use of q element is not advised

See for instance:

http://www.webdevout.net/tidings/2006/09/26/there-is-no-solution-for-the-q-element/

Of course not fully implementing the q element in IE is also not a good choice by MS but it isn't exclusive to MS that this element isn't supported properly.

Also it isn't really a much needed element.

Oh, no. Did somebody link to this post on Slashdot again?

I second Dave and LostInBrittany. Work should go on as fast as possible to make IE more standards compliant. Microsoft forced us to use hacks on our pages for years because IE6 was such as mess. Now, we need two sets of hacks to accommodate IE6 and IE7. We are not amused.

Yes, -obviously- they intentionally decided that they wouldn't release internationalized versions ASAP, but that they would unnecessarily delay the release for months, just because they wanted to. Because they hate foreigners.

End of sarcasm.

@Tom

"*You* have to put in the work because the websites that *you* wrote are not standards-compliant."

Rubbish. Although you are correct that some of the websites I developed do not validate. Others, though, completely follow standards and the pages still display differently in IE7 than in IE6. Standards compliance is not the point in this case:

Microsoft took this arrogant stance with XP Service Pack 2 too, which had no improvements to web-standards support.

http://www.microsoft.com/uk/windows/sp2/what-it-means.mspx

The point is that my customers are not going to be willing to pay for an update to their website that has been effectively made compulsory by Microsoft. As soon as IE7 goes into Windows Update, lots of angry website owners are going to be ringing up their developers and demanding that their website be fixed.

Like LostInBrittany says, Firefox seems to manage it with no problems - with websites that are both valid and invalid.

I applaud the IE team for supporting more CSS and Webstandards, but the hacks we all know and love should have been left in until IE7 has the same level of standards support as Firefox/Safari/Opera do.

At the moment we are left to develop for IE7 with no means of targeting it other than conditional comments which, we all know deep down, aren't *really* valid (even if they just look like comments to the validator).

Dave

Personally I think IE7 is nothing more then a bugfix to the bugs that piled up in 5 years for IE6. It manages to do that fairly good, but in the process it created new bugs (and not necesserily because of the rendering fixes, I'm talking about images being loaded in half, etc). Also a lot of very annoying things were left unfixed, ex. PNG Gamma and Table loading, both which can be highly irritating when designing webpages.

And it's still highly unconfigurable, other then hacking registry. Where can I edit the time it takes for a page to time out, or the amount of connections that can be made by the browser at once? It can only be done in the Registry, and thats rather annoying.

IE7 is nothing more then a service pack for a highly broken browser. Spend effort on actually improving the browser instead of marketing please.

And I'm saying this even though I use only IE, since its still the fastest and most effective browser, but the rendering bugs, or rather, the fact that they were left unfixed, are getting on my nerves too.

"I applaud the IE team for supporting more CSS and Webstandards, but the hacks we all know and love should have been left in until IE7 has the same level of standards support as Firefox/Safari/Opera do."

Can you -imagine- the size of the outrage if the IE team decided that they wouldn't fix any of the layout bugs?

Anyway, while I can feel your pain about customers not wanting to pay for a compulsory update to their site: the world changes. Technologies changes. Software changes. If your customers didn't take into account that the world changes and that updates are occasionally necessary, maybe they didn't completely think their website purchase through.

It's not a perfect analogy, but: If I create a movie that distributors release on VHS, should they rightfully be angry if their users start using DVD players and I charge them for transferring it to DVD?

Tony Chor reports that IE7 was downloaded over 3 million times in just 4 days . That&#39;s pretty amazing

@Henk Tiggelaar

A major update like IE7 takes months to spread anyways due to limitations in upgrade capacity. Also the translations of IE7 will probably occur in simular order to those of Vista.

It is really of little consequense release to some language areas later. It probably even makes it easier to plan ahead upgrade capacity per region.

Too bad this pretty site doesn't yet work with IE7 :(

http://iecrash.com/

Nothing happens with your so-called "crash". What a waste of domain names :p.

@hAI

Not sure quite what you mean by "Your Q problem is just a bad choice of implementation on your part." It's not only my problem. I didn't even contribute to HTML 4 specification, so I didn't choose the implementation of Q. I have been actively pushing for a more workable treatment of Q in CSS and XHTML 2. See this thread:

lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2006Sep/0141.html

With regards to:

www.webdevout.net/tidings/2006/09/26/there-is-no-solution-for-the-q-element/

Thanks, but I've already read it. As I explained to the author at the time, his claim that ELinks doesn't handle Q either needs qualification. In 16 color mode ELinks displays Q content in cyan to distinguish it (an unfortunate bug means that some of the coloring of elements doesn't happen correctly in 256 color mode). More to the point, it has been fixed so that the current development version generates quotation punctuation just like Lynx.

In fact, the only really persuasive reason not to rely on Q is JAWS, because asking people to change screen reader is an infinitely more disruptive (and usually highly expensive) proposition than asking them to switch browser. If you'd like to use Q and support IE and JAWS, I'd suggest using Q but surrounding it with quotation punctuation hidden in conditional comments aimed at IE7/Win and earlier. (The IE Team have suggested that they will fix Q in the next version. Here's hoping.) I didn't suggest this in the previous comment (although I have suggested it elsewhere) because it won't work *absolutely* everywhere, but it will work in most user agents and is probably the most future proof solution. (For example, users of Orca plus current ELinks will still have problems with Q, but these should be resolved with the next version of ELinks.)

For what it's worth, Freedom Scientific have claimed to me that JAWS already does support Q, but I haven't managed to get it working; I'm waiting to see what their technical support comes up with next.

"it isn't really a much needed element". Well, you're entitled to your opinion; I just wish you'd attempted to justify it. As it happens, I strongly disagree. Quotation is fundamental technology of human discourse compromised by the ambiguities of traditional typography that Q neatly resolves.

For yet more discussion of Q see:

alistapart.com/articles/qtag

(The article itself proposes a deeply counter-productive technique that breaks browsers that do support Q, but the comments are interesting.)

@ADAXL

"I second Dave and LostInBrittany. Work should go on as fast as possible to make IE more standards compliant."

This is confused: it is precisely because IE is now "more standards compliant" that the IE Team are calling on developers to check their pages.

"Microsoft forced us to use hacks on our pages for years because IE6 was such as mess."

They may have encouraged this, but in fact developers who used such hacks in order to achieve certain mostly cosmetic effects were ignoring other developers who kept telling them they should follow standards to avoid such problems.

@Dave

"Others, though, completely follow standards and the pages still display differently in IE7 than in IE6."

When you say they display differently, do they display more or less in accordance with standards in IE7 than IE6?

"I applaud the IE team for supporting more CSS and Webstandards, but the hacks we all know and love should have been left in until IE7 has the same level of standards support as Firefox/Safari/Opera do."

Allow me to disagree. From what I've seen, most of the hacks now broken depended on bugs in IE's standards support, and their use involved a rejection of standards-based development.

"At the moment we are left to develop for IE7 with no means of targeting it other than conditional comments which, we all know deep down, aren't *really* valid (even if they just look like comments to the validator)."

They don't "just look like comments", they actually *are* just comments. That IE happens to think they aren't is IE's problem, not a flaw in your markup. And they are certainly preferable to CSS hacks or quirks mode, which depend on bugs in IE's standards support which may get fixed in future versions.

@Arieta:

"And I'm saying this even though I use only IE, since its still the fastest and most effective browser".

It's interesting isn't it. I tend to find Firefox works better than anything else (and, with the correct extensions, offers more functionality to boot), but I'd have thought Opera probably wins out in the straight speed stakes (among the graphical browsers). Maybe it depends a lot on the particular sites you habitually visit. I wonder if you use a lot of MSDN or Hotmail or DHTML-heavy sites optimized for JScript's idiosyncracies?

@Jeff:

"If your customers didn't take into account that the world changes and that updates are occasionally necessary, maybe they didn't completely think their website purchase through."

Indeed. The great thing about developing to specifications rather than buggy browsers is that in 100 years time people will still be able to use your content by referring to the original specification. And if you think people won't be looking at your ephemera a century from now, perhaps you need to pay more attention to www.archive.org/web/web.php ;)

Regarding Q, someone always fails to read such linked materials and pops up to claim it's a pointless element because you can just insert the relevant punctuation directly into your markup. Leaving aside that the idea that quotation punctuation is a sacred preserve of the author is rather novel, and that such punctuation is inherently ambiguous and so is not really suitable for use in online scholarship or by speaking browsers, the fact is that *not all punctuation can be inserted into markup*. (I give an example of such punctuation in the www-style thread.) Furthermore, real print style traditions tend to force quotations that exceed a given number of words like 50 or 60 (depending on the guide) into a block display. In theory, CSS is the tool for this job. (Currently CSS is as inadequate as HTML, not least because it can't count words.)

"Indeed. The great thing about developing to specifications rather than buggy browsers is that in 100 years time people will still be able to use your content by referring to the original specification."

Yes, if those companies were interested in having their content available to users in 2106, that would be a good reason. If companies, however, want their content available now and in the near future to a userbase as large as possible, they're just going to have to deal with the behavior of the userbase's applications and technology of choice.

Seriously, standards are great and all, but if a company wants to push their website to a large userbase and didn't think about unavoidable but unforeseen updates in their budgets/contracts, then they're not very good at business.

Not sure where all these user stats come from. If you go to internetworldstats. com, you will see that the total online population is now 1 Billion. What is being suggested is that only one in five of these have an XP licence. Shucks, I though Windows was suppose to be a markt leader! Anyway using a simpletons maths, 200Million divided by 10 Million per night is 20. How do you equated that with 3 Months. The only reason that is will take 3 Months is that Microsoft have not got their finger out and got all the necessary language packs ready for Automatic Download.

Good job! Well done!

I have been using IE7 since the release and I like it!

Doug.

If you are after a global market, then you have a lot of catching up to do by the looks of thing!!!

Firefox 36

IE7     1

@Dave

Yes, YOU are to make your sites compatible with the most popular browser. If you don't, you lose. Complains, laments amd curses don't help.

Why should my posting be confusing? Until now, there were browsers that observed web standards (w3.org) and there was IE6. Now, we have an extra worry: IE7, with is neither fully compliant, nor does it have the same bugs as IE6. Microsoft stopped halfway instead of delivering a truly standars-compliant browser.

And, yes, Microsoft forced their IE6 on us. You can't ignore 80-90% of the visitors. Since MS insisted on keeping old IE6 without improvements until now, we could only work with tweaks and hacks.

Do my tests confirm, that in order for the CSS max-height property to work, you have to have a strict doctype of xhtml set?

If so, I realy don't understand why.  This was a CSS property that you didn't support before, why on earth does your fix, require me to make a code change?

Tim

@rc, don't get on Dave's case about his site(s).

As developers, we all strive to make the best content for our clients, and work magic arround the bugs.

For IE6, we spent lots of time, jumping through hoops to make our stuff work.

Then, IE7 final is dumped on us, before it is ready and before the RC2 was issued (correction, the RC2 was disapointingly never issued)  Now we have less than a month to run around updating all of our code, for all of our sites and applications.  Best of all, we still have to deal with IE6's issues, because IE7 isn't available for Win2k etc. and IE7 will not be rolled out in lots of offices, because IT departements are holding it back.

Side-rant: Is there an Admin tool, to rollback IE7 across the network? I can see a lot of companies, thinking they are ok, then finding a critical issue blocking their use (e.g. critical app incompatibility) then needing to rollback any/all instalations of IE7.

You need to ensure that a link to this tool is promenantly posted on this blog.

That all said, I too hartily agree that the Arogance of this post telling me I need to go and fix my code.

Development is a nightmare now, because not only do we have to test on multiple browsers, but we also have to test on multiple machines because we can't run IE6/IE7 in paralell, even though 100% of the Web Standards based applications and web sites use 0% of the IE-Platform technology.  All we care about is the rendering... the DOM, the JavaScript, the HTML, and the CSS.

Yet another frustrated developer.

The Internet Explorer 7 Team posted an amazing list of must-have Add-Ins for IE7 . I'm using almost all

For Googler's help in finding this post, and hopefully the answer:

PNG Favicon support

PNG Favicon support

PNG Favicon support

PNG Favicon support

We were told that IE7 would support PNG Favicons, our tests thus far indicate the opposite.  Has this been fixed? What is the correct syntax? Any special needs? If my link tag includes an xmlns:foo attribute, will this affect the rendering? Does the doctype make a difference?

@Jeff

"If companies, however, want their content available now and in the near future to a userbase as large as possible, they're just going to have to deal with the behavior of the userbase's applications and technology of choice."

That's precisely why I am willing to compromise (a little) in favour of current accessibility. But from what I've seen many "hacks" (as opposed to cautious use of technology in line with current support) are not included to make content demonstably more accessible but in order to prop up some inessential bit of JavaScript or CSS whose alleged usability benefit has not been empirically proven.

It's relatively easy to make "Ajax"-style applications comply with standards (though few frameworks put any effort into compliance). It's actually rather more difficult to make them accessible to as large a userbase as possible; see especially:

www.sitepoint.com/article/ajax-screenreaders-work

juicystudio.com/article/making-ajax-work-with-screen-readers.php

@ADAXL:

"Why should my posting be confusing?"

I didn't say your posting was confusing; I judged it "confused". I'm assuming that when you seconded Dave, you were agreeing with him that developers should not have to check old sites in IE7. But you also said that "Work should go on as fast as possible to make IE more standards compliant". This seems contradictory (to me, anyhow) because improving IE's standards support breaks some old sites.

"Until now, there were browsers that observed web standards (w3.org) and there was IE6. Now, we have an extra worry: IE7, with is neither fully compliant, nor does it have the same bugs as IE6. Microsoft stopped halfway instead of delivering a truly standars-compliant browser"

Well, there are no *fully* compliant web browsers. There are only more and less compliant browsers, with IE mired firmly in the "less" camp. I have seen people worry that IE7 will make some current designs (as opposed to code) impossible because of hacks that are no longer available; I haven't yet seen this demonstrated. But even if that were demonstrated, I'm not persuaded that a more standards compliant IE is ever to be seriously regretted, as I think relying on "hacks" continuing to work was a bad idea from the start.

Please, make it:

- an Update of full priority (from ie6 is a great improbement),

- that pirate copies of Windows can use (there is a lot of piracy, but all the users are users),

- and for Windows 2000 too (in a lot of places win2k is trusted more than XP)

please

please

please

you marketshare will apreciate that

LostInBrittany: "that this release is almost coincident with the release of Firefox 2.0"

FireFox 2.0 is being released because of IE7. You tell me what major version update is in there and I'll take my words back.

ADAXL: "Microsoft forced us to use hacks"

Hacks are for newbies that refuse to work with the tools they have.

Dave: "but the hacks we all know and love"

Speak for yourself. I don't take shortcuts. I actually do the work to design a website.

"I consider this attitude very arrogant. "

I consider your attitude very arrogant too. There is nothing wrong about asking people to test their website themself. What, you want Microsoft to test all websites? You must be in LaLa land, the internet is more than just your webpages.

At least IE makes an effort not to break the hundreds of programs they are used in, or all the extensions/addons developed for it. You can't say the same for FireFox. FireFox is behind in maturity so they appear quick and youthful. -If- it should pickup, it'll grow and grow. And soon a new browser will be released and everyone will be posting junk like this on some FireFox blog.

Congratulations guys! It's out!

http://ieblog.members.winisp.net/images/Dallas.jpg

Love how "confidence" is incredibly understated. I am reminded of "The Apprentice". ;)

Seriously though, I know damn well you guys have all your fingers crossed, and I'm right there with you.

Please restore the feedback mechanism. I have noticed a few things broken in the release I wish to report ... in addition to the things I reported that didn't make the release. Newsgroups don't cut it.

@Aedrin

"Speak for yourself. I don't take shortcuts. I actually do the work to design a website."

I detect a slight case of little man syndrome here.

I do do the work to design a website. Please do not assume that I don't. Not all the people on this list are idiots. If you had read my 2nd post you would have noticed that I have also designed websites which are totally compliant (without any css hacks) which still look different in IE7 than IE6.

Again, Firefox has been upgraded and sites look completely the same. Valid and invalid. Mozilla do not issue a "please modify all your websites so they work with our browser" notice when they upgrade their browser - the sites just stay working, and the case should be the same with IE7.

If IE wasn't the main browser on the majority of desktop PCs, I wouldn't mind. This browser will get installed on millions of PCs everywhere and is going to cause thousands and thousands of extra working hours for developers who will probably have clients who don't want to pay because their websites suddenly broke for "no reason".

It is alright saying that sites shouldn't be expected to last forever but even some 100% compliant sites developed within 2005/2006 will display differently in IE7 because it still has poor(ish) standards support compared to other browsers.

Congrats to the whole of the IE team. This is one fine browser (Y) Well done.

Oh and nice pics. Next time see if you can get some mobile billboards in the UK.

"Again, Firefox has been upgraded and sites look completely the same."

FireFox hasn't released any major update either. They make a plugin a standard feature and call it a major upgrade. This was done in the browser wars (IE vs NS), but today this is cliche.

All this complaining isn't going to help anyone.

They're working on improving IE, but unlike FireFox, there is more to it than just fixing the bug. It has to be tested with a lot of things before it can be considered for release.

And as I've told others, the standards aren't perfect themself either. They should (and are, I hope) only a recommendation. So 'standard' is a big word.

Funny, Aedrin, all of the work in the world couldn't get around IE6's lack of standards support. I suppose you just used poor HTML markup to design your sites. Your client is probably not getting what they payed for.

@ The Developemnt Team

I truly appreciate the development team trying to make this process more transparent with IE7, but you have to understand that a ton of web designers have a deep mistrust of Microsoft and IE6 because of the years we have gone without web standards support. Microsoft turned a deaf ear on us and let IE6 pretty much force hacked web design on us for the past five years. Also understand that the more standards compliant you become, the less you'll hear us grouse about it. If you haven't already, you should get one of the more prominent web standards gurus to work closely with your team.

ie7 what? who?

the real headline should of course be

FIREFOX 2 HITS THE STREET TODAY!

WHOO HOO!! YEAH!! GO FOXY!!

"They're working on improving IE, but unlike FireFox, there is more to it than just fixing the bug. It has to be tested with a lot of things before it can be considered for release."

Maybe Microsoft shouldn't have built their operating system around a web browser, perhaps?

"And as I've told others, the standards aren't perfect themself either. They should (and are, I hope) only a recommendation. So 'standard' is a big word."

This is completely incorrect. If you truly are a web designer you would know that back in the day, they went from 'recommendations' to 'standards', simply because Microsoft and Netscape weren't about to listen to "the little people". Today, major browser makers take those standards very seriously because they allow content to be seen across a wide variety of devices, not just computers. I can absolutely say now that you're not a web designer, or, if you are, one that supports the proprietary nonsense that existed during the browser wars of the '90s.

Lots of strong opinions and active discussion as usual I see.

I know that testing your sites is a pain, but I don't see how we avoid it (obviously, Microsoft had to test tons of our sites too). As some of you pointed out, Microsoft has consistently tried to preserve app compat in all of our product releases, but no one can guarantee your sites continue to work as expected except you. In most cases you won't need to *fix* anything; notice, I said "test".

We did fix a lot of bugs in IE7 and improved our support for standards; in some of those cases, there was no way to preserve 100% compatibility without introducing crazy amounts of complexity (i.e. versioned strict mode implementations). There were other changes aside from layout including security improvements, improvements in networking, and, of course, our user agent string. All of these changes are things we heard from you, many through this blog and your comments.

We tried to ease this transition by holding what was perhaps the longest beta in IE (maybe Microsoft) history (releasing six public builds during that process) and by trying to communicate our changes and plans throughout that time. I'd love more ideas on how we can be even more transparent so we don't surprise anyone.

To answer a few other questions:

* No, we won't have a Win2K version. There were too many things we depend on in newer OS' to make Win2K a pragmatic release.

* We need the additional time to test our localized versions, and it's true that our loc timeline is related to Vista timing (same resources doing the work.) We thought it was more important to get versions out as they were completed vs. waiting for them all to e done.

* I don't know what our UK marketing plans are.

-Tony

@Tony Chor

"I'd love more ideas on how we can be even more transparent so we don't surprise anyone."

Sure thing:

1. Bring back the bug tracker *now*. Never take it down again. Make it possible to browse bugs and suggestions without signing in with a Windows Live ID. (I was flabbergasted that you folks took down the public record of IE7's bugs just as people were trying to cope with its deployment.)

2. Make it possible to subscribe to updates on particular bugs/suggestions with an ordinary email address (as with Bugzilla).

3. Publish a rough gameplan for standards support in IE8 and IE9. It's okay to revise the exact details as you go: the important thing is to provide a clear sense of direction about what standards you will back.

4. Microsoft as a whole needs to stop speaking out of two sides of their mouth about web standards, and start leading by example. Want developers to believe you're serious about web standards? Want developers to remove their hacks now that IE is more standards compliant? Fix your broken homepage already. It's embarrassing that one of the biggest software companies in the world (apparently) can't code valid, never mind conformant, (X)HTML. IBM seem to manage it, why can't Microsoft?

5. You should work on making it possible to install IE8 alongside IE7 without spending $200 for a second copy of Windows. That would encourage people to test new versions. Ideally, you should come up with a similar solution for IE6. Perhaps something like WinPE could be adapted for this purpose?

When is the runonce page going to be fixed so that those of us with EN-GB settings aren't accidentally forced to change to EN-US?

IE7 is a great browser - it's a great replacement for Deepnet Explorer and hopefully has good security.

Les développeurs d'IE7 sont maintenant en vacance. Mais les commerciaux prennent le relai. Et on peut

How come the feedback page is closed?

Are the devs fed up by "happy customer" feedback.

Want some earplugs and blindfolds?

Hey, instead of complaining about how awful IE7 is with standards, you should just do what I did: block it. It's just easier that way, and you'll save yourself lots of CSS hacks and standards breaking code.

Plus, it'll make Microsoft realise how important standards actually are, and speed up their work on IE.

The day Microsoft will make a proper browser which respects the W3C standards, that'll be the day I take into consideration of unblocking Internet Explorer.

@EliasAlucard:

"It's just easier that way, and you'll save yourself lots of CSS hacks and standards breaking code."

Deliberately locking out IE is obviously not easier than writing code to the standards, and ignoring IE's lack of support. Indeed, blocking IE reliably is quite difficult.

"Plus, it'll make Microsoft realise how important standards actually are, and speed up their work on IE."

You wish! With the partial exception of email services and banks, there are few websites so unique and essential that there would not be a rival willing to support users' choice of Internet Explorer.

Moreover, such lock-outs verge on hypocrisy. One reason for having web standards in the first place is to maximize accessibility and interoperability. If Internet Explorer can't handle those standards, fine. But (in my opinion) to deliberately punish users simply for their (or their corporation's) choice of browser goes directly against the open spirit of the web. Worse, such punitive measures disproportionately affect the most vulnerable of computer users. Freedom Scientific's JAWS is the most common screen reader, and until the latest version (7.10) it only officially supported IE. Whereas for most sighted users, switching browsers is easy and free, for JAWS users it is difficult and expensive - potentially very expensive. To upgrade to Jaws 7.10 Standard for XP Home costs at least $895; to switch to, GW Micro Window-Eyes 5.5, a rival that also supports Firefox, can cost at least $795. (While you can purchase these products along with a software maintenance agreement that includes upgrades, such agreements themselves cost around $300.) But perhaps you intend to fund such upgrades personally?

"The day Microsoft will make a proper browser which respects the W3C standards"

No browser fully complies with existing specifications; no browser endeavours to support all the specifications published by W3C. What *precisely* are the criteria for admission to the magic circle of browsers allowed to view your web content? Are *those* criteria specified anywhere?

Here's a better idea. Write your code to the standards, while trying to ensure as far as possible that content is accessible with current user agents, especially those required by assistive technologies. If you want to encourage people to adopt better browsers, use the more sophisticated technologies they support to offer switchers a superior experience. Don't just lock them out arbitrarily, because that risks associating better browsers with that obnoxious tactic. (Did "This page requires Internet Explorer" make you like IE? I'm guessing not.)

Why not try channelling your understandable bitterness at IE into helping improve and spread FOSS assistive technology and making it a superior solution? Here's two links to get you started:

www.oatsoft.org/

wiki.ubuntu.com/Accessibility

Congrats on IE7. I've seen the shows on Channel 9 and you guys worked your a** of to make it. Good work and a fine browser. Still some miles to go, but you've come a long way. Keep it up for future releases.

Elias,

Good luck with 80% of your potential visitors not caring about your websites and going elsewhere.

Is IE7 being released through MSN Update/Windows Update on November 1 or sometime just before? I know I can download it off the website but I prefer to go through Windows Update since I always do and was just curious.

Er I mean I always go through MSN Update my bad. Sorry for the double post not sure if I can edit my posts in this blog or not.

@Tony,

Uhm 6 public betas? thats funny, I count 3, and 1 RC.

The first 2 were not public, which is quite sad, because if you had been open to suggestions and a public bug tracking site back then, maybe we wouldn't be in this mess now!

Still waiting for a public bug tracking system, and developers actually addressing the bugs!

"maybe we wouldn't be in this mess now!"

I fail to see how there is a mess...

If you call blatant anti-Microsoft hypocrisy a mess, then I agree.

I use FF and I am embarrassed by its users.  They have destroyed more comment weblogs and discussion communitys than any other browser fanatics I know.   I may just stop using it since I.E. 7 works so well but I like the FF extensions.  If somebody acted like people do here on an airplane they would get silenced fast.  I think you should look at comment moderation or maybe start signups with user names and passwords.  I have to siff through to much junk and help forums are worse.  Free speech is nice in theory but nincompoops always want to ruin it for everyone.

Where can you report bugs.

I've been trying to find somewhere to post a bug report, but the links to microsoft connect announced on this blog back in March don't work anymore.

If select boxes have the width set to a percentage and you swap the order of the options using .swapNode the select box width slowly shrinks away to nothing.

try this small example:

<pre>

<html>

<script language="javascript">

function doClick()

{

s.options[4].swapNode(s.options[3]);

}

</script>

<body>

<select id="s" size=10 style="min-width:100%">

<option>Option1</option>

<option>Option2</option>

<option>Option3</option>

<option>Option4</option>

<option>Option5</option>

<option>Option6</option>

<option>Option7</option>

<option>Option8</option>

<option>Option9</option>

<option>Option10</option>

<option>Option11</option>

<option>Option12</option>

</select><br/>

<button onClick="doClick()">Click Me</button>

</body>

</pre>

Sorry, that example should be...

<html>

<script language="javascript">

function doClick()

{

s.options[4].swapNode(s.options[3]);

}

</script>

<body>

<select id="s" size=10 style="width:100%">

<option>Option1</option>

<option>Option2</option>

<option>Option3</option>

<option>Option4</option>

<option>Option5</option>

<option>Option6</option>

<option>Option7</option>

<option>Option8</option>

<option>Option9</option>

<option>Option10</option>

<option>Option11</option>

<option>Option12</option>

</select><br/>

<button onClick="doClick()">Click Me</button>

</body>

</html>

PLEASE, PLEASE PLEASE, fix window.prompt(). This is going to cause a ridiculous amount of work for web developers everywhere.

Hey IE Team... I liked the cake you guys sent to the Firefox Team.

Did they send you guys a cake?

The cake:

http://img48.imageshack.us/img48/327/fromredmondwithlovehz0.jpg

Tried it for about 6 hours under XP pro, and browsing slowed down by 40% from site to site, and constantly hung up.  As soon as I removed it performance came back to normal with IE 6.

Another poorly tested buggy Microsoft effort it seems.  IE 6 is superior so far, till the bugs are out of seven.

All I can say is it was a good uninstall program that worked, but left one item on the tool bar.

If this is a sign of how well Vista will work it's scary.

@Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis:

"Moreover, such lock-outs verge on hypocrisy. One reason for having web standards in the first place is to maximize accessibility and interoperability."

And that's exactly what IE isn't doing. IE is slowing down progress on interoperability and accessibility. Thus, I block it in protest.

"Here's a better idea. Write your code to the standards, while trying to ensure as far as possible that content is accessible with current user agents, especially those required by assistive technologies."

LOL!

My site is fully compliant XHTML 1.1 and that's beside the point. It's not that my code isn't working with IE, it works fine with IE (although better with Firefox).

Seriously, if everyone blocked Internet Explorer, the world would be a better place. At least cyberspace would.

I started using IE7 a few days ago. Then I noticed things missing from webpages. On many webpages some button links that seem to use Java do not work and some do. I had some trouble with many links not responding. The windows update link takes me to a blank page and just says "done" then nothing. Flash does not seem to function properly if at all on most web pages. Google video gives me a google header, then a blank page that says done(after i click on a video to watch). I am sure I have reinstalled adobe flash once just in case, but now it won't let me download it again to reinstall yet some pages say I need to install it to view the page. Did you people work with any other developers prior to release of this to work out the bugs? MY AOL openride stopped functioning so I had to completely remove it from my system, a reinstall does nothing to resolve that problem. Many webpages where I would go to look for a fix do not come up properly, to report a bug do not respond properly, And as I said, I would hope to find something on windows update to fix this problem software, yet windows update is a blank page... I suppose I will need to get firefox or something on here to go get an update, but I can't seem to get good reponse from that webpage either as the download link is probably java or something that no longer works with IE7. Its to bad really, I was excited about IE7 and now I am just likely to get something else and stay with it out of the frustration I have had over the last few days. I hope it can be uninstalled, but I doubt my system will ever work as good as it did before... it is sad, really sad.

cont. from above post...

I just noticed that my backup of AOL, the old reliable 8.0 that I used sometimes because 9.0 had its own problems, the browser no longer works properly in that either. I found an ftp of the firefox 2.0... I hope that my computer is not garbage now that I installed IE7... wish me luck with firefox... I never needed it untill now. I suppose it won't work with windows update though so I probably have to do a full wipe and reinstall, where am I going to back up 130gigs of files? God I am so upset with this... I thought you all beta tested this extensively... after all it took you forever to do an updated browser since IE6 came out!

Hi,

I encounter a certain problem since I upgraded from IE7 RC to RTM on WXP Professional x64 Edition. The RC version which was perfectly OK, and now I'm experiencing this annerving new behavior. Since I upgraded the 32-bit version has no Open in New Tab in the context menu! Tabbed browsing is enabled, of course. I can open a new tab manually and just C&P URLs, but this is too tiresome. The 64-bit version works OK. Again, before the upgrade everything was OK too.

Can anyone advise?

Thanks in advance,

Nadav

Nadav: The missing "open in new tab" is usually caused by an older version of a third-party toolbar.  If you start IE in no-addons mode ( START > RUN > iexplore.exe -extoff ) is the menu item still missing.

@EliasAlucard

"And that's exactly what IE isn't doing. IE is slowing down progress on interoperability and accessibility. Thus, I block it in protest. ... Seriously, if everyone blocked Internet Explorer, the world would be a better place. At least cyberspace would."

If everyone did the same, it would affect Microsoft. But almost nobody is going to do it, because enormous commercial incentives, accessibility practice, and concern for the poor end-user all stand in the way. Given this, your "protest" will do nothing but make the web less interoperable and accessible and tar alternative browsers with antisocial tactics.

But let me repeat the crucial question: "What *precisely* are the criteria for admission to the magic circle of browsers allowed to view your web content? Are *those* criteria specified anywhere?"

For instance, Opera supports aural CSS but Firefox does not; does that not mean Firefox is "slowing down progress on interoperability and accessibility"? Oh, but wait, Firefox supports MathML but Opera doesn't. So maybe it's Opera that is "slowing down progress on interoperability and accessibility"?

Sure, Internet Explorer lags behind either browser. But it doesn't make much sense to me to penalize IE users if you cannot articulate the principle of exclusion in terms of the standards themselves. On the contrary, excluding IE does go against accessibility standards. WCAG explicitly includes a concern for an "early version of a browser, a different browser entirely, a voice browser, or a different operating system":

www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT/#Introduction

The relevance of this is obvious, when (as I pointed out before) IE is used by so many disabled users.

"My site is fully compliant XHTML 1.1 and that's beside the point. It's not that my code isn't working with IE, it works fine with IE (although better with Firefox)."

If your site is coded as "XHTML 1.1" and yet it works with IE, then it is (probably) *not* compliant XHTML 1.1, since XHTML 1.1 should be served as application/xhtml+xml and *never* as text/html:

www.w3.org/TR/xhtml-media-types/

www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2854.txt

Although this behaviour can be modified by registry hacking or plugins, by default IE refuses to render that MIME type and offers it as a file for download.

You can check what MIME type you're serving by going to your page in Firefox, selecting Tools, then Page Info. The MIME type is listed as "Type:".

You might consider implementing content negotiation to support the various browsers which don't handle XHTML that well (including Lynx and ELinks). Serve application/xhtml only to browsers whose HTTP Accept header *explicitly* requests application/xhtml+xml with a higher q value than that *implied* for text/html.

@EricLaw

>The missing "open in new tab" is usually caused by an older version of a third-party toolbar

What is the recommended way to enable the "open in new tab" menu entry from an add-on when loading the menu resource directly from the SHDOCLC.dll? Certainly, the availability of this entry also depends whether tabbed browsing is enabled or not.

Thank you for showing us that you've SAVED THE INTERNET!!!! IE7 is a major overhaul of the world's most popular browser. It shows people are SMART and they specifically *choose* the best things, and the best things rise to the top. There's no other logical explanation for its popularity. That's why I choose it. Because most people use it, and that's all that matters!

Long live Internet Explorer!!!!

@Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis:

Unbelievable. Like I didn't know that IE doesn't support application/xhtml+xml

I mean, why did you think I blocked IE? It's because it won't work with my site either way.

Only the index.html is served as text/html

Anyway, nice talking to you.

IMHO IE 7 starts revolution in internet browsers. I have uninstalled my old browser (FF) and installed IE7

@EliasAlucard

"Like I didn't know that IE doesn't support application/xhtml+xml"

You're recommending a certain (in my view, counter-productive) practice to a general audience. I can't assume that casual readers frequenting this blog know what MIME types IE does and does not support. So please don't take things so personally.

"I mean, why did you think I blocked IE? It's because it won't work with my site either way."

Look, this is in direct contradiction to what you said earlier: "My site is fully compliant XHTML 1.1 and that's beside the point. It's not that my code isn't working with IE, it works fine with IE (although better with Firefox)." So now I'm confused: does your code work in IE or not?

As for why I *thought* you blocked IE, I thought it was partly a political act because that's the reason you gave: "I block it in protest". And it's with the political act that I particularly took issue (though the accessibility concerns remain).

"Only the index.html is served as text/html"

Which document type does index.html use?

I hoped IE 7 was a "real" browser, standard compliant (even if it does not support all the features that other browser have already) and thought for users and web developers. But now I understand that if IE 6 is the worst browser Microsoft had developed, IE 7 is pretty similar. You resolved a lot of bugs, but IE 7 is always a bad software, like Windows XP (I hate Windows XP, because of its inconceivable security bugs). Opera and Firefox are two browsers that are really standard compliant and are useful to web developers. IE 7 does not change the font size if in the CSS I declare the font size in pixels, but pixels are a RELATIVE unit, not an absolute unit! IE 7 simply zooms the page, but does not change the font size! And this is unacceptable for a browser standard compliant! The antiphishing filter is bad and it sometimes loops analizing a page. Microsoft has to understand that software like Windows XP SP2 and IE 6/7 are dangerous both to standard compliance and to user's PC security. In the last week, I worked very hard to format and clean 4 PC infected by trojans only because they are connected to the internet (and they had antivirus, firewall and the latest security patches installed!). I hope Windows Vista will be better, but I probably am wrong. I agree with Dave...Microsoft's attitude is always arrogant. I and all other webmasters/webdevelopers write our code following the standard...is YOUR browser that must be standard compliant, not our websites! I often spend a lot of time to write a standard code that works fine in any browser...and I have ALWAYS troubles with IE! Can I join to other users that want to send you their bill for the time spent with IE? I use IE only to test purpose, but I surf the web using Firefox and I install Firefox in any PC I clean from worms and trojans.

I cant find a way to close a tab, it there is only a single tab. The close button is no there.

Aside from myself and maybe two or three other uh, standards compliant enthusiasts (or well standards compliance Nazi extremists) IE7 is generally great release and should be advertised to the world.

I do hope though Internet Explorer will become an XHTML browser with version 8. Could someone point me to an IE Blog post (or other Microsoft source) that stated when IE8 is intended to be released (in any general sense)?

- John

@Aedrin: "FireFox 2.0 is being released because of IE7. You tell me what major version update is in there and I'll take my words back."

There's a large amount of improvements and fixes in Firefox 2.0 to warrant a "0.5 upgrade" over Firefox 1.5. Anti-phishing, tab undo, session saving, form spell checking, search suggestions, microsummaries, UI refresh, and much more, not to mention the hundreds of bug and stability fixes checked in.

I love IE7 guys... a perfect 10

I have already notices a decline in FireFox users on my web sites!

The cake thingy with the guys from FF is funny.

http://fredericiana.com/2006/10/24/from-redmond-with-love/

EricLaw: Thanks for your prompt answer. I'll try it out and report back further.

Thanks again,

Nadav

@Alex

"Opera and Firefox are two browsers that are really standard compliant"

No browser fully complies with W3C standards. Opera and Firefox support more W3C standards, and are more compliant with the standards that they do support, than IE.

"I and all other webmasters/webdevelopers write our code following the standard"

I wish! The majority of text/html web content is tag soup that doesn't even validate, let alone conform:

code.google.com/webstats/2005-12/element-body.html

Only 25% of the more than 5000 web professionals who took part in SitePoint's The State of Web Development 2006/2007 survey even *claimed* to ensure that all their markup validates (see the free Results Preview, page 6):

www.sitepoint.com/reports/reportwebsurvey2006/

Out of 738 sites standards-friendly enough to take part in CSS Reboot Spring 2006, 53% failed markup validation and most failed CSS validation:

www.elementary-group-standards.com/web-standards/css-reboot-as-web-standards-validation-indicator.html

None of this excuses Internet Explorer's poor level of conformance of course; browser non-compliance is one of main reasons web content is so out of phase with web standards. Microsoft could go a long way towards fixing this situation by complying with W3C's recommendation that agents should not silently correct errors, and inserting an icon in the status bar to indicate whether a page validates or not.

Instead of "IE7 Hits the Street", name this blog "Throw IE7 to the Street" :D

Microsoft? Internet Explorer? CONFIDENCE?!?! Is that a joke?! LOOL

FIREFOX ALL THE WAY!! FOREVER!!

There's a large amount of improvements and fixes in Firefox 2.0 to warrant a "0.5 upgrade" over Firefox 1.5. Anti-phishing, tab undo, session saving, form spell checking, search suggestions, microsummaries, UI refresh, and much more, not to mention the hundreds of bug and stability fixes checked in.

Like I said, they make a plugin or two standard (which I thought they were trying to avoid?) and call it a new version.

All those "features" are small addons that most people don't need and should've been provided in an official plugin pack of some sort.

The bug and stability fixes are part of the minor upgrade cycle.

And it's not a 0.5 upgrade. Version system don't (or shouldn't) work that way. It's a 1.0 to 2.0 upgrade. This indicates a large change in either functionality or code. I haven't seen either. When I start up FireFox 2.0 I see FireFox 1.5 with close buttons on tabs (which most people dislike, but IE and Opera has them).

I think that is one of the problems with the FireFox development team. Decisions on whether to add/change something are based on personal opinion. Ask them about making the vertical scrollbar always visible (I've lost track of the amount of people who complain about visual jolts from that), and they'll tell you that it looks ugly and IE has it so they won't make it.

Professional? Not really.

Harry wrote: When is the runonce page going to be fixed so that those of us with EN-GB settings aren't accidentally forced to change to EN-US?

Ditto for those of us with EN-AU settings. I reported this several times during the beta, and it looks like those of us outside the US are just getting a big EN-FU.

LOL, too many Firefox fanboys flaming around here.

Firefox is worst browser ever, period. All those FF zealots... What can I say?

Is missing the spell checker this one of the reasons I am using Firefox 2

On my work machine I have IE7, Firefox 2.0 and Opera 9.01 installed for testing purposes and just in case certain sites don't work properly on one of the browsers. IE7 definetely looks like an improvement in some regards over IE6 but it sounds like from the previous posts they have neglected a lot of the requests from web developers. Interesting.

>Hey IE Team... I liked the cake you guys sent to the Firefox Team.

>

>Did they send you guys a cake?

>

>The cake:

>

>http://img48.imageshack.us/img48/327/fromredmondwithlovehz0.jpg

Is that how all americans cakes looks like? No wonder why you are all sick

I updated "with confidence" to take MS's own strapline.

IE7 smashed all my IE icons (URL has generic "no icon") and caused Student Encarta 2006 to give "Navigation to the webpage was canceled" (I didn''t) and a script error.

I also cannot uninstall IE7.  Most unimpressed.

If only Microsoft would concentrate on getting rid of bugs rather than creating new ones all the time.

I hate the non-informative "The webpage cannot be displayed.".

That's ridiculous. How are programmers such as myself supposed to diagnose errors when the error messages are masked?