IEBlog

I hope these statistics don't provide any sense of satisfaction.  IE has a lot of work ahead of it to keep up or even comply with existing standards.  Not to mention a lack of true dialogue with web developers.  There should be a sense of urgency to collaborate more extensively (and less adversarily) with other browser vendors.  It would be sad for IE to fade away in its own delusions of grandeur and support its own misguided standards of how the web should be.  Good luck and hope to hear about IE's future developments so I can properly hack my sites to work with its arcane developments.

While IE7 is (was) a big step ahead, we really need to move on, especially towards full CSS 2.1 (and even 3.0) compliance. Please update us on IE8.

From the horrifically god-awful (IE6) to the merely depressingly buggy, nonstandard, and incomplete (IE7)... congratulations!

As I have reverted to XP and Firefox rather than talk to INDIA and waste all my time trying to get the problems fixed that were "supposidly" ironed out before release, I am quite happy!

With the shoddiness of these products it will be a cold day before I ever upgrade with a Microsoft product before it has been out for a couple of years.  This has also been a grand excuse for others: HP, Cannon and so on to further infuriate customers with lack of drivers, where they just blow you off and state, "just go buy a new piece of equipment, we don't want to support our products"!

Well, I could care less, about security...scrolling performance needs fixed!

I know you guys must love the kind of comments you get on this blog.

I don't want to sound like a fan boy, but I think it's appropriate to congratulate the IE team!

If there is any update on the progress of IE8, that would be brilliant! If I remember correctly, I watched an interview with Bill Gates and he said there would be annual updates to IE). As much as I am a loyal user, I note that more and more websites are no longer using IE hacks, and the experience is degrading to the IE-user.. Security is important, but not everything!

Hmm, lets see.

Big brag post about IE7...

IE7 adoption good? well, yes, but consider how many people chose not too, that were "forced" into the upgrade? kind of staggering isn't it!

Employees in the Enterprise that are told what browser to use, account for many of these stats.  They are forced to IE7, whether or not they would prefer Firefox, Opera, or Safari4win.

The stats on security are *HIGHLY* questionable in the comparisons... Firefox 1.5x hasn't even been supported by Mozilla now for 5 months! and as always, the level of "severeness" is never taken into consideration in most of these tests.

Good to see yet another post on the IE Blog attempt to sweep the real issue of bug tracking under the rug again... Less support calls? yeah, might be because all the support avenues have been closed! Hard to report an issue when there is no where to report it!

I don't even know where I would find a 1-800 #.   Oddly enough, I've never needed one with any other browser.

1 year, still no bug tracking

1 year, still no updates on IE8 features

1 year, still no updates on IE8 bug fixes

1 year, still no ETA on IE8 release

1 year, still no ETA on IE8 Beta release(s)

1 year, still no ETA on IE8 Alpha release(s)

I'm not clear on the interest in a celebration?

Good job.  You all deserve a big pat on the back.  Now get back to work.

well the comments here just show, once again, how insecure the Firefox fanboys feel - and rightly so, if that vulnerability report is any indication...

Congrats to the IE team. As far as I'm concerned my wishes when it comes to IE are not security related (been using Internet Explorer since version 2.0 under various MS OSes, never EVER been hit by any kind of malware) nor do I care much about any sort of self-proclaimed web standards (Some people should check the definition of the word "standard" - IE's implementation is it, de facto. It's all about numbers) but a few quirks mostly related to the UI (I want to move and customize my toolbars the way I see fit) and speed (it shouldn't take that long to open a new blank tab)

Hello Mr Chor,

Internet Explorer 6 was vulnerable, unsafe for 284 days in 2006 according to Washington Post's Brian Krebs. Even Microsoft officials concurred with his findings. Compare with Firefox: Firefox was vulnerable for 9 days in 2006. So, for how many days was IE 7 vulnerable in 2007 (first 11 months)?

You mention support call volume decrease for IE and that Microsoft continue to listen to its customers.

Mr Chor, how exactly, concretely do you want/expect people to report on the phone crash bugs and hang bugs occuring in MSIE 7 to Microsoft? ... with call centers located in Philipines?

I've tried to do just that, trying to reach Chris Wilson, and, from what I have seen and heard, it's not realistically feasible.

Visit my webpage and then examine bugs  #41 and #92. These rather serious, quite severe and incapacitating bugs were both reported before and, still today, they have not been fixed. They would have all been fixed by now if such bugs had been happening in Mozilla (Firefox), WebKit (Safari, Konqueror) or Opera.

Like everyone else has been saying and are still saying, the IE development team still has to fix at the very least 700 bugs, incorrect implementations (all testcase-ed, all demontrable, reproducible) happening in HTML 4, CSS 2.1, DOM 2 interfaces and then implement more or less 500 properties, attributes, methods specified in official W3C Technical Recommendations, W3C web standards (HTML 4, CSS 2.1, DOM 2 interfaces, DOM 2 Core, DOM 3 Core).

Every single day, web authors of all experience, from amateurs to experts/gurus, experience difficulties (from minor to major) with bugs of all kinds in IE 7. When is Microsoft going to finally fix all these proven and testcase-ed bugs?

When is Microsoft going to implement valid markup code and valid CSS code in its microsoft.com webpages? In particular, in new or updated microsoft.com webpages? Microsoft just can not, on one hand, implement W3C web standards in IE 7 and then, on the other hand, refuse to adopt and refuse to implement these very same standards in Microsoft's own website. Microsoft has to become consequent and coherent regarding all this, in particular - but not exclusively - with MSDN webpages on web authoring.

Regards,

Gérard Talbot

Direct quote from the end of the "A vulnerability report"

"ABOUT THE AUTHOR Jeff Jones is a Security Strategy Director in Microsoft’s Trustworthy Computing group."

Once again, thanks for the un-biased reports!

As always, the best source of information, is the un-biased source.

ATM Report on IE7:

http://secunia.com/product/12366/

Affected By: 19 Secunia advisories

Unpatched: 37% (7 of 19 Secunia advisories)

vs. Report on Firefox 2:

http://secunia.com/product/12434/

Affected By: 18 Secunia advisories

Unpatched: 22% (4 of 18 Secunia advisories)

And Firefox has no issues in the yellow (medium) level.

By anyones math, that puts Firefox out in front in terms of security.

And if you want to compare to other browsers, it isn't worth it:

Safari:

http://secunia.com/product/5289/

Affected By: 6 Secunia advisories

Unpatched: 50% (3 of 6 Secunia advisories)

Opera:

http://secunia.com/product/10615/

Affected By: 10 Secunia advisories

Unpatched: 0% (0 of 10 Secunia advisories)

Konqueror:

http://secunia.com/product/3166/

Affected By: 14 Secunia advisories

Unpatched: 14% (2 of 14 Secunia advisories)

Sorry, I can't get past the all-too-frequent IE 7 crashing or hanging  at seemingly random times to appreciate anything you just posted.

So... what about IE8?

I agree with the others calling for more information. The stats and pats on the back for IE7 are nice and all, but we need to know what to expect with IE8.

The ASP.NET team is VERY good about providing tons of information, roadmaps, previews, etc.  about future releases. The community has direct access, and can offer input to the ASP.NET team.

What is keeping the IE team from doing the same?

What is keeping the IE team from it? Hmm... a desire to openly communicate with people since everyone who was interested in such has left.

Over 300 Million users are now surfing the web using Internet Explorer 7 and Microsoft anticipates that

IE7 needs an upgrade badly even though it's just a year old.

Every time I fire it up I remember how bad it is in comparison to current release of FF.

Whine, whine, whine. All I have to do to remember that most web-devs are still in preschool is to visit this blog and read the negative comments.

Good job, IE team! Keep it up.

IE Team called out for biased numbers:

http://www.numenity.org/blog/2007/11/30/lies-damned-lies-and-microsoft-security-marketing/

How do EV certificates protect users? Either CAs verify subject identity before issuing certificates, in which case EV certificates are not any more secure than regular certificates, or CAs do not verify subject identities in which case EV certificates are not secure either. Would anyone please explain how are EV certificates protecting users better than regular certificates?

What feels most missing from IE7 (hell most Microsoft products) is that the community feels like they're being left out. You know some of us do understand how software works and we want you to have a better product. Provide something along the lines of bugzilla but make it wide open to anyone. If you want, have a way to make some posts internal so you can discuss code changes.

Just let us have more of a say and you'll be rewarded in the long run. That's sorta like, gasp, open-source!

Now that we've hit this plateau, and trust me it's a welcome one that's well overdue, I'd be very interested in what's planned for the future now. Where is IE going? What features are being considered as something to be built in? What types of code will the next version be able to handle? Or will IE stale off again for a while until there's a percieved threat again? I'd really like to see e4x built into IE.

@Sam, Adam

"1 year, still no ETA on IE8 release"

"So... what about IE8?"

As I mentioned before, there will be no news about future versions of IE at least until the end of 2009.

Give it up, rc.

Wait, let me do it for you:

"There is no IE team anymore."

Thanks, rc. You don't need to say it now like you do in every post. :-)

On the one-year anniversary of the launch Internet Explorer (IE) 7, the IE team posted yet another “stay

Any news about IE 7.1, 7.5 or 8?

My last comment was up for a while and then deleted.  Let me put it in a less pithy manner and see if it gets through this time.

Like many others I would love to hear an update on the status of IE8.  I fear that the IE team may really want to share this information because it is in their best interests to do so, but Steven Sinofsky's "translucency not transparency" memo may be behind the lack of information.  I feel that calling attention to this change in philosophy may help to reverse the information lockdown before it hurts Microsoft too badly.  Imitating the cultures of Google and Apple isn't always the answer, and it makes me sad to see that kind of short-sighted thinking gaining more traction at Microsoft.

Give us an unbiased vulnerbility report and i come back reading.

IE7 is a nice step forward, but a bigger step is needed, even it would take sidesteps to IE 7.1, 7.5 and then IE8. Make IE pass through Acid test and the i will cheer :)

Why the hype on IE7?  Anyone with a choice uses a different browser!

Give us a bug tracking system, and you will get developers to come back to IE.

Get developers back to "Not hating" IE, and you might get "positive feedback" from the community, and your user base at large.

Seems pretty simple to me.. too bad only Firefix, Safari and Opera seem to get it!

Today I have been developing another new website using CSS layout. I only triggered one IE CSS bug and it was in IE6.

Developing for IE6 and IE7 still feels a bit like playing "Operation". But over the past year, I've built up a feel for the common ground between them. But I still get caught out at times. :)

What I dread is an IE8 release which changes any aspect of how it renders pages compared to IE7. Developing for two versions of IE, one version of Firefox and one version of Opera already stretches CSS development time to the edge of what is commercially viable, in my experience.

Please do continue your active participation at W3C's HTML and CSS working group. Please do continue working on your rendering engine, perhaps making this progress publicly available with tester versions. But don't put this in the public release until it's on the same page as the other mainstream web browsers (Firefox, Opera and Safari at the moment).

On the UI front, I'm glad to see the menu bar was made visible by default in the end. However, there are lots of other oddities with the UI. I'm no usability expert, but I'm trying to do something constructive by taking screenshots and writing notes about things I notice:

http://projectcerbera.com/ui/ie7/

An update which made IE7/XP fit in with the conventions of Windows XP would be a big help for my parents and non-technical friends. For example, make the tabs look and work like the tabs they see in Printer preference sheets or Windows Media Player's Options window.

Whatever you decide to do, continuing to keep this blog open and letting people have their say is really cool. Especially given the negativity of some comments. It would be nice to get a "we see what you're all saying and here's what we think" in return!

IE 7 refresh or IE 8 which one? just wondering

But IE updates so much less than Firefox, so is the response for security vulnerabilities really speedy?

Fair enough, but..

- Performance is .. not great

- Why are add-ons allowed to crash the browser?

--

honey@jklm.no

Dawson,

This post by the VP of Engineering at Mozilla might help you come to your own answer:

http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/schrep/archives/2007/11/use_the_metric_which_suits_you.html

Al

Can someone tell me what IE is?

PingBack from http://blogs.dotnethell.it/vincent/The-First-Year-of-IE7.__12340.aspx

Deployment speed: Large downloads and interface changes slow clientside adoption. IE Team: "It's been a little over a year since we released IE7 on Windows XP and for Windows Vista, so I thought it would be worthwhile to talk about where we are after

Tony,

I sympathize with your situation, but you desperately need to get your seniors and peers to understand what's happening, and to assign your team way more resources.  IE is a first-impression MSFT product for most web developers, and yet you all continue to underestimate the dramatic spillover effect this poor developer experience has had and will continue to have on your other products and services.

Let me drive this point home. I am a front-end programmer and a co-founder of a start-up. I can tell you categorically that my team:

- Won't download and play with Silverlight

- Won't build a Live widget

- Won't consider any MSFT search or ad products in the future

And the reason is because of IE - because MSFT disregards its most important relationship with us.  Until this relationship is repaired, nothing else stands a chance.

Please fight the good fight and drive this point home in your org.  Good luck.

Never trust a statistic you didn't faked yourself.

Maybe 300 million Windows users have been forced to download IE7, but all independent stats show Firefox clearly in front of IE7.

"Finally, we’ve seen a decrease of 10-20% in the support call volume for IE compared with a year ago"

So you are saying that Firefox is responsible for the increased unemployment on the Philipines?

@oran & dk

Absolutely right. And the MSFT web development platform (with Trident at its heart) is hugely important to a great many ISVs, too. At this time they/we undoubtedly feel *really* concerned about the 100% 'info blackout' being applied to IE's roadmap.

Simple answer: move ownership to the developer division (these days, IE's logical home) and set folks like Scott Guthrie to work repairing some of the damage caused by the "shut your mouth" policy which I'm sure is so horribly embarrassing to the people working on the team.

it is far slower than firefox, you should work on this !!

A very simple fix would sort out most problems - IE is (in effect) already two browsers, one for standards mode and one for quirks mode.

I would be satisfied if IE was upgraded so that in "standards" mode it ran the gecko engine (or failing that, adhered to W3C) and in quirks mode it ran the MS engine. That architectural change would solve the bulk of W3C and legacy problems since many "legacy" sites run in quirks mode. For web developers it would be easy to flip between which engine is needed to support their website.

I wonder when will you release IE without click to activate. I found a version for XP 64bit (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=37431bba-2d8e-48ab-8c9f-d5f5b2ea7be7&DisplayLang=en).

But I am in doubted why Microsoft keep poorly discribe the thing:

---

This update includes minor changes to how Internet Explorer handles some web pages that use Microsoft ActiveX controls. Certain webpages will require users to manually activate Active X controls by clicking on it or using the TAB key and ENTER key.

---

What's above description means? can anyone here understand what it talking about if they don't know the think beforehand. Why can not make it simple and understand able.

Btw, as we are using IE and continue to use Whaat the need of keeping your community and suporter in dark. Speakless on the think people want to know. It's one year already after IE7 is released and you have one year left to finish IE8 -- as your originally promise, Gates's word.

@Brian

If you think Gecko is perfect for standard, I give you some pictures:

http://n-blue.nblogz.net/firefox-extreamly-good/

Take close look on pictures (the article are in Thai, I don't think you can read it).

And the last picture on this page:

http://n-blue.nblogz.net/small-but-great-advantage-of-vista/

my ISP supports IE for making connections to the internet. So it is always open. But, that is the only use it has for me. I use Firfox for everything.

And the statistics are hallucinations.

Read this: http://shaver.off.net/diary/2007/11/30/counting-still-easy-critical-thinking-still-surprisingly-hard/

This has been a huge pain in the a** for me and my coworkers. With a nearly even 1/3 split between IE6, Ie7 and Firefox... all with drastically different rendering and javascript functionality, it's been a tough last few websites to produce. Debug time is going through the roof and I have the taste of 2000-2001 browser wars in my mouth again.

We're adhering to standards and using conditional CSS/Javscript lke crazy... it's painful!

The way it look now, it'll be 2010 before we even get browsers with CSS3 support. I've all but had it with HTML/CSS/Javascript.

thanks for IE7!

I used IE7 and IE6 for both development and normal usage.

But please note followings about ie problems:

1. IE hangs more than firefox2 (firefox1 hangs more than all other browsers!), I thought you must solve this problem

2. IE does have "Save" or "CTRL+S" that is very important!

3. IE takes long time (in near all cases) for save web pages (firefox takes very short time) and during that, not only active can not be accessed, all other tabs is also inaccessible

4. IE does not save objects like "swf" when saving pages

5. I can not change IE7 default page! (it goes to "http://runonce.msn.com/runonce2.aspx" every time!)

6. (development) IE tries to verify cache each time a page request is made (and get "No Change" answer in many times)

7. (development) I did not found any good document for creating addins (i said just my experience about that)

if you plan to do something right top, you may attract developers from using firefox.

thanks

And what a year it has been. I believe that IE7 is catching IE6 in the ammount of CSS bugs it has.

<a href="http://css-class.com/articles/explorer/guillotine/index.htm">IE7 Guillotine Bug</a>

<a href="http://css-class.com/articles/explorer/floats/floatandcleartest1.htm">IE7 Guillotine Bug</a>

There are plenty more. What is happening with IE8? Maybe it's back to the drawing board since IE8 had the IE7 Guillotine Bug.

Why can't this blog work like other blogs and have markup and preview. Here we go again.

A variant of the original IE5 and IE6 bug which also effects IE7.

http://css-class.com/articles/explorer/guillotine/index.htm

A test involving the clear property on floats in which IE only supports 50 precent of the property.

http://css-class.com/articles/explorer/floats/floatandcleartest1.htm

A question.

1. Does a float behave stangely in IE because it has hasLayout or because it's a float?

Congratulations, IE team. Here's looking forward to an even better IE8.

I realize you can never please everyone all of the time, but...  

Concerning the overwhelming negativity on this site about IE7, two things come to mind: either the negative responses are from very depressed, whiny, negative people with nothing better to do than criticize, OR there's more than a grain of truth here...  Are you listening Microsoft?  

Me, I don't have all day to coddle a finicky and quirky browser, so I avoid IE as much as possible.

Congratulations.

In the same timeframe, Firefox went 2.0, and launched 3.0 Beta, Safari has gone to 3.0, including a version for Windows, Opera's still on 9, but they've made good progress in their minor rev's.

Hell, Firefox has done two minor rev's /this week/!

Let's see... six years for IE7, so you guys are on track to have IE8 by what, 2012?

Your problem is you think in terms of years. Your problem is that your company sees the web as a competing platform. Do us all a favor and stop making IE altogether.

It wasn't until I read dk's post, that it really hit home as to the real reason why MS needs to jump in to action on fixing IE.

Microsoft doesn't make any money if:

1.) They adhere to web standards

2.) Open public bug tracking

3.) Talk transparently with the dev community

4.) Allow 2-way communication

Thus they have no incentive to fix IE... until you analyze dk's remarks:

5.) By ticking off every developer that uses IE in any way shape or form, you are LOSING money on your other development tools, technologies across the Web spectrum, AND EVEN IN THE WINDOWS PROGRAMMING WORLD! as a result.

Yes indeed! Tony, please go run this up the Microsoft flag pole! I don't care what the reason is that is used to get MS to fix IE, as long as it happens! But finally we have a reason that MS will listen too... MONEY!

Best of Luck Tony, and please take Chris Wilson along with you, he's got the smarts to realize that this is a huge issue, and can translate what is needed in the fixes for the browser, to get IE back into shape.

Kudos dk!

FIRST THING, YOU GUYS ARE STILL GETTING YOUR PACE WRONG, AT THIS RATE, FIREFOX WILL EVENTUALLY EAT OUT IE IN 3-5 YEARS. A 6 MONTHLY RELEASE CYCLE IN PERFECT.

Looks like MS doesn't care about hurt pissed off fans of IE.

Are you still instructed by MS higher authorities to keep mum and make IE releases in sync with Windows releases?

I can't seem to decide IE's release pace is worse or Windows Ultimate Extras team's pace is.

Why are you so, really so, backward? Your friends in the Developer Devision have released two versions of Visual Studio, have made free express versions available, care for the academia and the hobbyist developer, even announced F# for academia, have contributed thousands of lines of code to open source projects on Codeplex, have even donated their Power Toys to the Open Source Community, are showing off their roadmaps publically, have hundreds of active blogs on blogs.msdn.com, regularly ask for feedback and discuss with customers, have a fully functional, responsive and continuously open public bug-tracking system and have found the time to deliver some amaizing products such as Silverlight and LINQ all in the last 3 years. Whilst you! What can I say. You: Keep the Web stuck to the past, have not seriously updated your products in the last 10 at least 10 years, have nothing new and really impressive to show off, do not care for your developers, do not release or participate in any open source or at least toy-like projects to help the community on Codeplex or anywhere else, have the same developer tools as ever, do not allow an open bug-tracking system, continuously ask the same stupid questions on what we wish you to prioritize in fixing, do not participate enthusiastically in standard bodies or at least talk about it (Javascript 4 fiasco remember?), do not care about hobbyists and the academia and do not assist them with any free web tools, do not offer anything innovative, are sucked completely in the dark Windows Division and not only all that, what, you post about one year of IE7. Well, enjoy. If you want to behave like two companies, the good and the bad. Enjoy.

I think it's really bad to celebrate because of the 300 million users which are "using" IE7.

Every noob which buys a computer gets Windows. Every Windows gets Internet Explorer. So every noob gets, even if he does not like it, Internet Explorer.

This noob does not even know that there are other, better, faster, more user friendly, safer, nicer, shinyer, and so i can go on for a minute or two, browsers.

So the noob uses IE. Well, in that case i'm far from surprised that IE7 is being used by 300 million people.

Don't forget that IE7 keyboard navigation is broken or at least a step backwards. You can't use the tab key for example to navigate between all on-screen options and at times you need to use the cursors keys as well. Handling split-buttons is also problematic as you don't know how to activate a split button from the keyborad or how to activate its associate pop-up menu. Vista has the same problems in many places where keyborad navigation is not predictable. For example, on the switch user screen, you can't use tab to cycle through all the options but you need to use a combination of tab and cursor keys, an unpredictable thing to do, especially if you don't know before-hand what options are available. Also, Office 2007 handles things a bit differently, where split-buttons' pop-up menus are activated by using spacebar I think, etc. The bottom line is that you need to formulate a consistent and well-documented keyboard accessibility stradegy and have it in all of your programs to be the same and did I say document it? Finally, keyboard accessibility should be complete and not oonly nearly complete, allowing users with disabilities to do everything that a user using the mouse can do, including resizing grid columns, etc.

Remember these things please when you are designing the next version of IE or the next version of Windows or a service pack to fix all these, or the next version of Office. Formulate a company-wide consistent keyborad stradegy please and make it complete and binding. And publish it. Completely.

How long is it going to take you guys to adhere to at least the CSS2.1 standard? Why do I have to create separate CSS files for IE6 AND 7. Why do I have to resort to CSS hacks to get your browser to behave? Why are you wasting everyone's time?

When will we see a decent JS debugger? Or can you make the JS error messages a bit less vague? I spend more time DEBUGGING for IE, then I do CREATING for other standards compliant browsers.

I wish IE would just go away.

The File Transfer Protocol is a great little protocol if you just want to, well, transfer a file.

Sadly IE7 has screwed it up by introducing a staggeringly dangerous flaw, whereby the user (regardless of login) is plonked right at the server's true root directory.  I can't believe this is still not fixed.  Obviously the developers at MS don't have the same high opinion as myself of FTP, and to hell with the millions of functional FTP servers around the world.

@Al Billings

"Wait, let me do it for you: 'There is no IE team anymore.'"

It's you who says about "anymore", not I.

"Formulate a company-wide consistent keyborad stradegy please and make it complete and binding. And publish it. Completely." -- Nektar

Microsoft already has extensive guidelines backed up by over a decade of products and usability testing. The keyboard guidelines are here, part of a whole section on accessibility:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms971323.aspx

And there's a "User Interface Design and Usability" section here:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa152962.aspx

Why deviate so radically from the UI which has been so successful in Windows XP? It's not just Microsoft doing this, btw. Firefox 2 doesn't use the OS theme by default, neither does Opera, neither does Adobe Reader. Even anti-virus software avoids the OS look!

This is a trend I'd like to see reversed. At least for the Windows XP builds of applications.

Regarding IE7 reliability - one wonders how many deployments of IE7Pro (www.ie7pro.com) have been performed to enable crash recovery.

I get annoyed that IE7 on Windows XP has a limit of about 60 open tabs, and that limit reduces to about 30 when using IE7 on Vista.

Not fun when you use tabbed browsing as a reading list.

Thankfully IE7Pro makes IE7 what it should have been.

Unfortunately FF is just as crap as IE when it comes to performance and reliability...

Wow! One more great Microsoft study.

Drop IE render engine, start using Gecko or Webkit

Not buying a word of the "study/report" based on:

a.) Not declaring that it was an internal study/report indicates you aren't comfortable with 3rd parties doing the same study.  If you were certain of the results, you'd sign your name to them.

b.) All sites/comments/blogs out there point to the exact opposite!  If I visit Secunia.com I always see IE with more issues, more unfixed issues, and more severe issues than any other browser.

c.) Not an independent study.  If you can point to an independent study, not commissioned, funded etc. by Microsoft, that claims that IE7 is more secure than Firefox 2, backed up with facts and references, then by all means post it. (but unless QA slips big time at Mozilla, I can tell you now, such a scenario is very unlikely!)

Final note:

So, once again, another post on this blog, and not a single word about being open with the community, IE8, bug fixes, new features, transparency, public bug tracking etc.  *except* by every developer / manager / tester / designer / user / security expert commenting on this blog.

Whats the issue here?  If MS is not going to commit any time, resources, material to any of this, ISSUE A POST indicating such (preferably with a reason)!

If you are planing to be part of the process, and be respectful of the community, POST something indicating that you've at least heard the several thousand readers on this blog that are SCREAMING for information!

Seriously, if 50-70% of the end users for my applications were not using IE(6/7), I would no longer develop for IE, thats how ticked off we all are!

Once 51% are not using IE, I will be pushing darn hard, to not support it, until the situation with the IE Team, and the developer community is FIXED!

Pleas MS make so more speed in IE8 more than firefox and safari .i think the best browser must hame this item:

Secure

more speed

nice interface

What about testing Linux and Firefox versus Michrosoft Windows and Microsoft Internet Explorer?

Why spending time on a new IE to support better css and html when MS wants us al to use Silverlight? Html & Css don't cause a technology lock-in, they only provide an open way to publish data on the internet everyone can use on any platform/os.

Why support that?

Why not crippling the webdeveloper community with an old crappy browser until Silverlight is ready for the big masses. They just bought themselves more time with IE7 ... I don't expect much from IE8. If we were to expect something big (and I mean really big with good standards support) they would have setup a public bugtracking db, better forums and better community interaction, ... look at what Mozilla did in the last five years with a limited group of developers and budget... if they can, why can't MS?

If MS can push Silverlight, most webdevelopers will end up using MS products to develop webapps (unless you want to be adventurous and use Moonlight on another OS) and most endusers will use IE to run the apps because the support will be better in IE (eventually)... Remember the downlevel browser flags in ASP.Net. Everything looked fine ... in IE. Mozilla lacked table borders and other stuff because it was downlevel... duh

I hope I am wrong. There are some really nice specs in the pipeline for Web Applications 1.0 and the extension of HTML as we know it today. Mozilla and Apple already implement parts of these specs (like offline data, dateinput control, ...). Why not IE?

Open the web, stop closing it ....

Tony-

You state that "we continue to listen to our customers and find ways to further improve Internet Explorer."  I use FF/IE7 50/50. I would convert to IE7 100%, but FF has some great features I cannot give up. Can you implement these into IE somewhere somehow???

* The integrated search bar in FF (ctrl-F) is much nicer then the find in IE7.

* The ability in FF to put an RSS feed in the bookmark toolbar is incredibly simple and useful.

* The drop-down search (next to the address bar) is better implemented in FF.

* QuickTabs is really useful, but I find that many people don't know about. Maybe it should be better exposed to the user.

Chris Knight-

Why would you want more than 60 open tabs? That would be a huge, cluttered, unmanageable mess.

"Year of silence from IE team" would have made a better article for this bliog

I wrote a blog entry about this on my website, in which I state I love IE, but the lack of news is frustrating. If you want to read (or reply to) it: http://blog.alex-media.nl/hello-ie-team-we-want-updates

"Sadly IE7 has screwed it up by introducing a staggeringly dangerous flaw, whereby the user (regardless of login) is plonked right at the server's true root directory"

If people are seeing files they should not, that is a problem at the server end (with permissions). If you do not know how to properly manage an FTP, that's not IEs problem (and your "security hole" already existed for other FTP clients).

"Remember the downlevel browser flags in ASP.Net. Everything looked fine ... in IE. Mozilla lacked table borders and other stuff because it was downlevel... duh"

Unless your project is trivial / layout does not matter, why are you using the built-in web controls that do not allow you to fully control the HTML sent to the client?

Talk to us soon about IE 8. Though IE 7 works nice for my dev puposes.

Please stay engaged with us like the .net team does.

Microsoft is a leader in Operating System, Programing Language, Technolgy & etc.

My programing platform is .net,

but Microsoft has no new idea for web browsing & web browsers software....

ie6 was not upgraded for 5 years

beacuase has not any serious  antagonist in web browsing software...

and now, after years upgraded to version 7!!!!!!!!!!!!

ie ie ie.....

i can see here so many fanboys...

can you see what browser i'm using to read

your blog? yes? can you read that easy word? Opera...

you know?

-the most compatible much more technologies support than ie or firefox.same for protocols

-the fastest

and the most secure or one of the most secure

Mozillas Chief Operating Officer John Lilly wrote in his blog that there are 125 Million Firefox users in the world. Two days after this anouncement Tony Chor, Group Program Manager wrote in his blog that there are 300 Million IE...

I downloaded IE7, installed it and gave it a shot.

A BIG MISS in IE7 is that the little searchcell can be set to Google but cant be disabled. So you end up with Google toolbar installed AND a little searchcell with Google (or another search engine). I like Google toolbar and want to keep it. I HATE a browser that misuses precious space in your toolbar area. Because i cant disable this little searchcell so it wont show up (which you CAN do in FF!) i DEINSTALLED IE7 and wont use this browser untill this BIG MINOR has been addressed. Till then i use IE6 or FireFox.

On Friday, 30th November, Internet Explorer 7 completed it&#8217;s first anniversary; the community of developers instantly started to stone the Microsoft&#8217;s browser, as you can see on IEBlog. I&#8217;ve decided to put my feelings here, out of the..

Make IE 8 like Firefox... Like a straight carbon copy. You won't be original but at least you'll have something that actually works. Hurry with version 8 so that version 6 will slowly become obsolete.

@Hans K.: You can turn off the search box if you'd like.  See #3 here: http://www.enhanceie.com/ie/tweaks.asp

Its sure been crazy on the web lately. All kinds of spook activity going on at my backdoor. No one's ever around to see my machine act up but me though. Guess that means it didn't happen. People are dim sometimes and it makes me mad.

Its sure been crazy on the web lately. All kinds of spook activity going on at my backdoor. No one's ever around to see my machine act up but me though. Guess that means it didn't happen. People are dim sometimes and it makes me mad.

I just want to say congratulations to your team. I really don't care what people think, IE7 is a very stable and feature-rich browser. I have really enjoyed using it and have had no reason to switch to Firefox or other competitors.

If i had any suggestion to make though it would be to add some sort of download manager into the product, at least something simple like Firefox does to their credit, otherwise keep up the great work!

I still like my IE6 and will use it as long as there are security updates available.

IE7 is a nice browser. BUT it crasches way too often. I always have FireFox as backup browser for when the constant crashing in IE7 get too tiering.

FireFox is alot more stable than IE7 currently. I hope you can fix that in the next release.

No technology conscious user will use IE if you don't get 95%+ standards compliance in the next 2 releases, at some point of time, sites must be broken so that eventually it'll be over...why not do it in the next version itself? If you keep on preserving compatibility so that sites are not broken, that's worse for standards, isn't it? Please take the hard but right decision, rather than the easy and incorrect decision.

Are you IE guys serious? There's no way to know what's going on behind your closed doors! I like my information accessible, so if you want to impress, show us the internal bug tracking. Then we'll compare it to the internal bug tracking of Mozilla, which is completely open for anyone to see.

Until then, pleas keep your rhetoric to yourself and show us some more of that sweet IE 8. (What do you mean, there's nothing to see?)

How about IE8???

and better support for webstandards...???

forward progress yes, and thanks for it. We all look forward to a complete standards ie8.

I don't get it... Why use IE, at least other versions than IE7. Few friends that developes web applications, have told me that they're planning not to support IE any more. I have also done some developing and every time the problem is the same: IE. If MS uses many years and lots of money, why don't they do it properly ? Just same old crap with shiny new looks. I use safari and camino on my mac laptop and firefox on windows box.

ie7 is just a typical product of microsoft... monopolistic thinking...

More pats on the backs of people, that actually don't do anything. Your work has more or less proven that either the IE team is non-existent, but is made of fictitious people, just for the sake of keeping up a giant masquerade, or are basically incompetent developers. Do answer these questions, since questions like:"when is IE8 coming out", or "when will you support {FOO} specification correctly" will never get a proper answer:

Why do you still have jobs?

Why aren't you fired yet, if you are actually developers?

first off, this comment is obviously spam:

http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2007/11/30/the-first-year-of-ie7.aspx#6650047

Now, on to business.

I fail to see how IE7 being released for a whole year is anything to be impressed about when IE8 is all but vaporware at the moment!

You've been hounded by the developer community, the press, the media, and every x-IETeam employee to get your act together and publish some info on IE8, to get off your high horse, and re-open public bug tracking, and be a team player!

It will take no less than 10 minutes out of your busy day to post something about IE8 on this blog, but in the last... 120,000+ workday minutes FOR EACH IE Team employee, you've come up with exactly *ZERO* posts.

C - O - N - G - R - A - T - U - L - A - T - I - O - N - S - !

Yeah, PLEASE fix CSS in IE8 (or IE 7.5).  You are making my job so much harder.  I'd be a much happier person if IE disappeared off the face of the earth.

Instead of wasting our time with crazy back patting uselessness, will Microsoft please just admit defeat and close up development of IE and hand over to people who care about the web and handle it properly?

I have wasted sooo many hours developing sites to work in this browser, that work without further modification in every other browser.

"This makes IE7 the second most popular browser after IE6". And IE6 is only six years old! I am expecting IE8 around 2012.

@Fredrik: A significant majority of IE crashes are caused by buggy add-ons.  See http://www.enhanceie.com/ie/troubleshoot.asp for information about running without add-ons and determining which add-on is causing your crash.

Everyone is in the process of implementing CSS 3 into their browsers and I can't even develop a site that fully utilizes CSS 2 because of IE--and that includes version 7.

Like Ryan G., I've wasted countless hours hacking my sites that work in every single other web browser to work on IE.

I'm hoping that when you release IE 8 in 2012 it will at least be 75% CSS 2 compliant. I think that's a bit of a stretch, however.

Apple went with an open source renderer, why can't MS do the same frikkin thing? MS web developers have to hack their sites to work with IE, too.

Oh, and good work. You still have majority marketshare. Isn't that what you care about at MS?

Is this the kind of blog where someone posts and then doesn't read the comments?

Because if you do read the comments I would have expected (from a serious and responsible blogger) two things:

1. Admitting that nobody has any insight into the actual amount of IE flaws and that the security statement in this post was therefore a mistake (anyone can make mistakes, it takes a real man/woman to admit them).

2. An actual statement about IE 8 (even if that statement is "no comment").

If these reactions are not forthcoming, than I can only conclude that this blog is the purest form of propaganda and that nobody should rely on any information posted to this blog, as it could in fact be harmful to them.

Looking forward to your reactions!

-Another developer who has been spending at least 8 hours of the last week fighting IE 6 bugs.

@Mike

I'm sure you've encountered/suffered through most of these, but this site here offers some of the best bug tracking for issues in IE.

http://webbugtrack.blogspot.com/search/label/IE

there is also bugs for other browsers but most are for IE, and lots of them target IE6.

Salut!

IE7? -- Too little, too late

IE8? -- Now irrelevant

----

Face it, you've messed up irretrievable with the broken CSS support in IE6 *and still in* IE7.

Not to mention: memory leaks, non-standard event handling, non-support of modern DOM technologies (i.e., CANVAS), etc.

The fact is: I've _moved on_ from DHTML and Ajax development work. I *won't* move back unless IE goes away (or becomes fully standards compliant). But don't count that position as a coup for Silverlight--I can no longer rely on MS to support my Web work, so I'm not inclined to adopt Silverlight either. Flex does everything on the Web that I need. Beautifully! And with Apollo, it will probably take away any need for me to mess with .NET WinForms again either.

MSFT, you're really going to have to do a lot of soul-searching to figure out to dig yourself out of the hole that you've put yourself in.

Sorry...

@Not impressed

"It will take no less than 10 minutes out of your busy day to post something about IE8 on this blog"

They know about IE8 no more than you and I. So they have nothing to post.

rc, I still can't figure out what you are trying to say? There are a couple of hundred people on the IE team. I was in their building about seven months ago for lunch, visiting old teammates. They aren't cardboard cut outs and they are working on the browser... I saw direct evidence of it.

So, chill with the trolling of "The IE team doesn't exist and there is no IE8" on every post. It is monotonous.