Hello from LA!

re: Hello from LA!

ie — Wed, 14 Sep 2005 06:34:45 GMT

Sounds good on the security front, not too excited about the rest. Hopefully they won't find a way to crack it.

Looking better

Chasen Le Hara — Wed, 14 Sep 2005 06:35:52 GMT

As a web developer, you can't believe how happy you're making me with some of this. Note that I'm not at all pleased with the IE team: you guys have managed to piss me off more times that Tom and Pam have broken up and gotten back together (and then some).

I know it's a lot to ask, but please, please, please add more things in the standards compliancy arena. Microsoft has to have the resources to bring IE into a decent level of compliancy, so please make IE7 at least comparable to today's shipping browsers.
-Chase

re: Hello from LA!

PixelSlave — Wed, 14 Sep 2005 07:14:26 GMT

Having XMLHttpRequest natively is great, but how about the XSLTTransformer?

PixelSlave

re: Hello from LA!

Pope-DOG — Wed, 14 Sep 2005 07:23:50 GMT

This sounds great. Keep up the good work. I am finally glad I will be able to put a z-index on the select control.

re: Hello from LA!

Kenneth Saborio — Wed, 14 Sep 2005 07:27:18 GMT

"Note that I'm not at all pleased with the IE team: you guys have managed to piss me off more times ..."

I really get pissed off by guys like Chase and their "standards" buddies.

If you are so happy with your Firefoxes, Operas, etc, then keep using them. But stop your terrorist-like tactics of deception.

Me and the 90 percent plus of Web users are quite happy with the different versions of Internet Explorer. We are also looking forward to have IE 7 in our machines.

re: Hello from LA!

Joe Clark — Wed, 14 Sep 2005 07:46:38 GMT

Yes, but, Kenneth, ol' pal, People Like You are the problem, since you effectively fork the Web into pages that are "compatible" with IE (that is, are nonstandard and custom-crafted to work only in IE) and standards-compliant pages. Saying you're happy with a noncompliant browser is a resounding support of the status quo, one that has been rejected by everyone else... including Microsoft.

Hope you enjoy your voluntary exile on Noncompliance Island. Send us some coconuts.

re: Hello from LA!

Gideon Barnett — Wed, 14 Sep 2005 07:49:58 GMT

I get annoyed by people who refuse to recognize/are oblivious to the fact that the web is a visual experience. Get over yourself and realize that the content of your blog is self-indulgent and pretty much worthless (as is the majority of the content on the web). When the content has no merit, what's left -- the delivery (delivery of content=design).

IE's inconsistent CSS handling makes implenting a clever design nearly impossible. Really, it limits the potential of the web, and I don't like that. So, I'm going to back up Chasen on this one. Please, more CSS support.

On an aside, I wouldn't argue that 90% of web users are happy with IE. It is more likely that they are simply unaware of better alternatives. Honestly, how can you say that you're happy with a browser that only now, in beta, has introduced tabbed browsing? Might I remind you, it's 2005 already.

re: Hello from LA!

krsaborio — Wed, 14 Sep 2005 08:06:57 GMT

Gideon seems to know a bit of Web browsing history ...

I remember Microsoft's Internet Explorer 5 Macintosh and its Tasman engine delivered long before a stable Mozilla version.

"Honestly, how can you say that you're happy with a browser that only now, in beta, has introduced tabbed browsing?"

You should try to install one of those old AOL browsers made by Microsoft with tabbed browsing. After you do so, then you'll learn who's really late with that feature. :)

re: Hello from LA!

krsaborio — Wed, 14 Sep 2005 08:24:00 GMT

Joe Clark, ol' pal, have you browsed Yahoo! Groups using the latest version of Opera?

If you haven't try this URL http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Costa-Rica-Real-Estate/

It seems Yahoo! doesn't care either about Chase and his "standards" buddies.

re: The changes outlined

Terence Mackie — Wed, 14 Sep 2005 08:52:00 GMT

Chris (and team),

As a web developer, the above news about IE7 is great. You've reported, previously and now, that the most annoying bugs/features of IE (from my pov) have been addressed.

Thanks for the ongoing updates in the IE blogs, there are very few companies/departments that are as frank about their product as you guys.

I don't know if it's in the project plan, but when IE7 is released, a list of the changes would be very helpful. eg CSS rules (added/deleted/changed), Javascript changes etc.

Terence Mackie

re: Hello from LA!

Kevin Daly — Wed, 14 Sep 2005 10:05:26 GMT

While there's lots of good news in that post, I find myself filled with childlike wonder and joy (OK I exaggerate slightly, but not much) by the prospect of a native XMLHTTPRequest object, *and* the "select" element (I didn't want to risk angle brackets) being rewritten as a windowless control.
Very welcome news indeed.

re: Hello from LA!

Marcello — Wed, 14 Sep 2005 10:33:30 GMT

Seems like you guys are on a role there Chris. Sure there is a lot more on our wishlist, but at least work is underway and you all sound enthousiastic about working on IE7. Can't wait for beta 2.

re: Hello from LA!

Mark Grayling — Wed, 14 Sep 2005 11:32:20 GMT

"Microsoft has to have the resources to bring IE into a decent level of compliancy."

Considering the short amount of time the team clearly have, what 'level of compliance' would you like to see?

And don't go on some open source rant. Yes, FireFox is a fantastic example of a Browser, and the brainchild of the open source community. But Microsoft is a business, with deadlines and targets. I personally think the progress they're making has been fantastic. Sure, it's not perfect - but it's a huge step.

re: Hello from LA!

Robert Nyman — Wed, 14 Sep 2005 11:54:08 GMT

Chris,

Thanks for the update! Things are starting to sound really good now, can't wait to test the next beta.

I raise one interesting question about fontsize and pixels in my reaction to this post, in <a href="http://www.robertnyman.com/2005/09/14/some-ie-7-news/">Some IE 7 news</a>.

I'd be happy if you have the time to reply to that.

re: Hello from LA!

krsaborio — Wed, 14 Sep 2005 12:00:33 GMT

"Yes, FireFox is a fantastic example of a Browser, and the brainchild of the open source community."

It surely took the open source community a long, long time to release its brainchild browser.

First, there was Mozilla.

Then, the name and design switched to Phoenix. Then to Firebird.

And lastly, to Firefox.

980223 Netscape Announces mozilla.org
981207 Netscape Delivers "Gecko" Browsing Engine.
990319 Mozilla Milestone 3
990401 Netscape Celebrates First Anniversary of Open Source Software.
990415 Mozilla Milestone 4
990505 Mozilla Milestone 5
990529 Mozilla Milestone 6
990622 Mozilla Milestone 7
990716 Mozilla Milestone 8
990726 Mozilla Milestone 8.5
Note: Last Pre-Necko Builds (aka 8.5)
990826 Mozilla Milestone 9
991008 Mozilla Milestone 10
991116   Mozilla Milestone 11
991221 Mozilla Milestone 12
000126 Mozilla Milestone 13
000301 Mozilla Milestone 14
000418 Mozilla Milestone 15
000613 Mozilla Milestone 16
000807 Mozilla Milestone 17
001012 Mozilla Milestone 18
001206 Mozilla 0.6
010109 Mozilla 0.7
010214 Mozilla 0.8
010326 Mozilla 0.8.1
010507 Mozilla 0.9
010607 Mozilla 0.9.1
010628 Mozilla 0.9.2
010802 Mozilla 0.9.3
010808 Mozilla 0.9.2.1
010914   Mozilla 0.9.4
011012 Mozilla 0.9.5
011031 Mozilla 0.9.4.1
011120 Mozilla 0.9.6
011221 Mozilla 0.9.7
020204 Mozilla 0.9.8
020311 Mozilla 0.9.9
020418   Mozilla 1.0 Release Candidate 1
020510 Mozilla 1.0 Release Candidate 2
020523 Mozilla 1.0 Release Candidate 3
020605 Mozilla 1.0
020924 Mozilla releases Phoenix 0.1
030414 Mozilla Phoenix Renamed Firebird
040209 Mozilla Firebird Renamed Firefox
041109 Firefox 1.0

Six years in the making ... [ and counting :) ]

re: Hello from LA!

Tuntematon — Wed, 14 Sep 2005 12:13:51 GMT

Kenneth, what is your problem? Stop being such a fanboy.

I welcome all improvements to the next IE, they are all necessary. Especially select obeying z-index makes some of my progress bars happier. Security improvements are of course important too.

100% CSS support should be the goal for the team, I mean if it hurts now, what about next time when you have to catch up again...

re: Hello from LA!

krsaborio — Wed, 14 Sep 2005 12:15:15 GMT

In July 2003, AOL got really pissed off of the waiting for a stable Mozilla-Phoenix-Firebird-Firefox browser:

http://news.com.com/2100-1032_3-1026078.html

In December 2003, AOL got even more pissed off at Mozilla-Phoenix-Firebird-Firefox:

http://news.com.com/2100-1038-5117897.html

The open source community should have licensed the Tasman engine from Microsoft in 2000 :)

IE: Die Welt wird besser

pd.blog — Wed, 14 Sep 2005 13:16:27 GMT

Ein Eintrag in dem IEBlog hat soben meinen Tag versüßt. Nein, nicht die neuen Sicherheitsfeatures, wie z.B. der zweifelhafte Test auf Pishing-Seiten.Selectboxen werden jetzt als &quot;windowless controls&quot; gerendert, können also nun endlich auch von E

re: Hello from LA!

Erik Arvidsson — Wed, 14 Sep 2005 13:34:26 GMT

Really good news regarding the select element.

I'm also very happy that you listened to feedback and realized that XMLHttpRequest without ActiveX is a requirement today.

However I think it is important to know that you also plan to implement document.implementation.createDocument or we will still require MSXML for a lot of things. I'm also wondering whether this is a wrapping on top of MSXML so that XPath still works and so on. The following objects go hand in hand and are usually implemented in IE6 using the MSXML ActiveX: XMLHttpRequest, DOMParser, XMLSerializer, XSLTProcessor, document.implementation.createDocument and document.evaluate (DOM level 3 XPath). If these are not available to scripting with ActiveX then the work with XMLHttpRequest has been mostly in vain.

Standards Compliance: A License To Kill Microsoft?

Alberto — Wed, 14 Sep 2005 13:57:44 GMT

[Hopefully they won't find a way to crack it.]

Of course they will find it. It is not a limitation of IE, it is just that, if you try long enough, at the end you may also crack Fort Knox.
It is the expectation that there should exist something un-crackable, and that such a thing is supposed to have to be IE, that has to be adandoned as bugged.

[I really get pissed off by guys like Chase and their "standards" buddies.]

I wrote an entire 120Kb files (click nickname) with all the assumptions these guys make. You are right to be annoyed. I also listed validation links over 200 web pages that do not validate in the least. Stuff from CNN to Wroxx, from Logitech to Newsweek, from Yahoo to LookSmart, from Google to the UN.
Microsoft and Mozilla validate.

Yet, not even the W3C always validates. I just found and published an official W3C contact website that does not validate and yields 53 errors.
Jackob Nielsen does not validate.
Political websites of all hues, from nologo org till the republican party until parties of other countries, none validates.

And if by sorcery they would all be made valid tomorrow, nothing would erase the historical fact that till this very same day scores of millions of surfers have been using daily and smoothly websites not valid -under the range of the hundreds of validation errors each- from Amazon till Netscape. And nothing happened as a consequence of missing validation.

It is not only that validation is a false goal. It is that it is being used, de facto, like a gridlock in order to fight a market share battle. Websites that validate and respect the standards can be counted on two hands and you won't use all your fingers even supposing you miss a couple. Yet the argument is used electively and selectively against Microsoft ONLY.

[IE's inconsistent CSS handling makes implenting a clever design nearly impossible. Really, it limits the potential of the web]

Strip off that "really" and the rest might go lol.

[progress they're making has been fantastic. Sure, it's not perfect - but it's a huge step.]

Neither the blogs of css fanatics are perfect. All they know is css, as it is not, but as they feel it should be, and yet as it is on no website that matters - again from the Vatican to Altavista, from McGraw-Hill to Tucows, from Epson to Greenpeace, from Ebay to Oracle, from Apache org to Napster.
True, also those sites are not perfect since they do not validate. And this is why they all prosper and we all go on using them day by day reserving this immaterial concern for Microsoft ONLY.

re: Hello from LA!

Espen Antonsen - 24SevenOffice — Wed, 14 Sep 2005 14:19:08 GMT

Excellent. The select element has been a problem for us when creating dynamic forms. Thanks for fixing it.

re: Hello from LA!

Lionel — Wed, 14 Sep 2005 14:39:42 GMT

*All* of this look really good!

re: Hello from LA!

Alberto — Wed, 14 Sep 2005 14:51:25 GMT

[Excellent. The select element has been a problem for us when creating dynamic forms. Thanks for fixing it. ]

I am with you but please allow me to specify one thing may I?

We should now hope that Firefox and Netscape "fix" it too, although requests for them are always less vocal lol.
It is not a fix, actually: selects have always behaved like that on _all_ browsers. It is a Microsoft IE7 cool ADDITION & feature, and a very useful one. And, maybe, even one out of the standards, if the standard givers are Firefox & co's implementations.

<form>
<select><option>foo</option></select>
</form>
<div style="position:absolute; top:0; left:0; border:#000000 1px solid; width:300px; height:300px;"></div>

Load that in Firefox and you will find the same problem, "unfixed". :-)

re: Hello from LA!

Dean Edwards — Wed, 14 Sep 2005 15:14:22 GMT

Fantastic news about removing the reliance on ActiveX for the XMLHTTPRequest object! I keep having to pinch myself every time I read this blog lately. ;-)

re: Hello from LA!

NickFitz — Wed, 14 Sep 2005 15:28:00 GMT

CSS improvements, windowless Select, non-ActiveX XmlHttpRequest: all wonderful news for web developers everywhere :-)

@Alberto: I see no "windowed control" problem in Firefox using markup which demonstrates the bug/issue in IE. Selects have _not_ always behaved like that on all browsers.

IE 7 и стандартите

Бележки на Огнян Кулев — Wed, 14 Sep 2005 15:33:57 GMT

&#8222;Лошите&#8220; Micro$oft все пак са решили да хвърлят нящолко трохи на уморените от проблеми уеб дизайнери. IE 7 ще съдържа и следните промени:

Е

re: Hello from LA!

Amit Arora — Wed, 14 Sep 2005 16:37:01 GMT

It would be cool to have the 'Web Developer Toolbar' for IE.

When can we expect to see it ... ?

re: Hello from LA!

masklinn — Wed, 14 Sep 2005 17:24:08 GMT

@Chris Wilson
Thanks again for a nice and thoughtful post. Could we get more precisions on the Web Dev toolbar? Or on the new Javascript console that will be integrated in IE7? (please, tell me there will be a useable Javascript console, IE6's just doesn't cut it)

@Chase
> I know it's a lot to ask, but please, please, please
> add more things in the standards compliancy arena.
> Microsoft has to have the resources to bring IE into
> a decent level of compliancy, so please make IE7 at
> least comparable to today's shipping browsers.
> -Chase
Uh, this is pretty stupid seeing the last 10 or so posts on ieblog, added to the WASP comments of meetings between MS teams and them. The IE Team IS implementing standards, big time, in a very nice way. This'll have to be tested, probably won't be bug-free "out of the box", but I for one am clearly looking forward to checking IE7b2. They have already fixed many thing, implemented many thing (at least in standard mode), and are still implementing and fixing on just about every front.

Give them some slack, and stop trying to piss them off when they're doing whatever they can to please us (because that's what I see, really: posts saying what they're doing on a regular basis as we asked for, better standards implementation as we asked for, bug fixings as we asked for, ...)

I've already said it, and I'll say it once more: kudos to the IE team for their work, I right now have much more hope for the future of the Web (and IE7's ,niceness towards web devs) than I had when the IE7 project first started. By far.

@Kenneth
> I remember Microsoft's Internet Explorer 5 Macintosh
> and its Tasman engine delivered long before a stable Mozilla version.
Ah yeah, Tasman. Those were the days, Tasman was praised, was the best engine available at the time, fast, lean, mean, standard-compliant. And then MS dropped the project, and Tantek left for bluer skys, and IE6 was released with less than half IE5/Mac's goodnesses (yet half the bugs and quirks).
Had the IE/Mac project kept running, kept being developped and improved at the pace it was at the time, it'd no doubt be the best browser to this day, with *nix and Windows users begging for a port to their platform. But alas it was not, and IE5/Mac is now a bug-ridden crash prone piece of junk that more and more people abandon as their fond memories of it are turning into hatred for it's specific quirks and bugs.

> Joe Clark, ol' pal, have you browsed Yahoo! Groups using the latest version of Opera?
> If you haven't try this URL http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Costa-Rica-Real-Estate/
Is it abnormal that I get strictly the same page in Firefox 1.5b, Opera 8.02 and IE6SP1?
From your post I guess it is, but yet... what was your point again?
(heck, with some courage this page is even readable in Lynx)

> It surely took the open source community a long, long time to release its brainchild browser.
6 years from "almost nothing" to full fledged stable and pretty standard compliant (albeit not perfect by far) browser.

And that's without considering that the Mozilla project went gold (1.0) in 2002, and that the Firefox project itself "only" started in 2002, 3 years ago.

IE 1.0 was released in August 1995 based on the existing NCSA Mosaic, IE 6.0 was released in 2001...

@Terence
> I don't know if it's in the project plan, but when IE7 is released,
> a list of the changes would be very helpful.
> eg CSS rules (added/deleted/changed), Javascript changes etc.
Ditto, full changelog would be great.

@Alberto
> We should now hope that Firefox and Netscape "fix" it too, although requests for them are always less vocal lol.
No we don't, for they don't have the specific problem that one cannot put anything on top of a select without the select getting back on top whatever you may do
> It is not a fix, actually: selects have always behaved like that on _all_ browsers.
You should seriously lay down the crack pipe
> <form>
> <select><option>foo</option></select>
> </form>
> <div style="position:absolute; top:0; left:0; border:#000000 1px solid; width:300px; height:300px;"></div>
> Load that in Firefox and you will find the same problem, "unfixed". :-)
Works as expected: background is transparent, you can see the select through the div as expected yet can't manipulated, once again as expected since the select is UNDER the DIV. You don't expect being able to manipulate a button that's behind a glass pane even though you can see the button through the glass now do you?
Put a white background on the div, select disappears once again as expected.

Now load the initial page in internet explorer, select can be seen through the transparent div as expected, but _select can be manipulated as unexpected_.
And adding a white background colour confirms that our select is actually sitting *on top* of the div when it's not supposed to, proving that you have no idea of what you're talking about.

re: Hello from LA!

Jeremy — Wed, 14 Sep 2005 17:24:28 GMT

Native XMLHttpRequest? Nice!

What about native XML DOM, getters/setters, Document, Node, etc class extensibility (especially for XML DOM)?

re: Hello from LA!

Dimitri Glazkov — Wed, 14 Sep 2005 18:11:08 GMT

Good news, guys. Good job on the features and on recapturing the spirit.

One thing to consider: there's currently quite a bit of informal research (a.k.a hacking) going on with trying to find a magic event that allows you to start working with DOM in JS _before_ the content is rendered.

This is quickly becoming a requirement as markup augmentation and transformation techinques are starting to gain more acceptance.

There is oncontentready, but you and I both know it doesn't fire early enough. There's DOMContentLoaded, but it's Mozilla-only.

Maybe an implementation of DOMContentLoaded or making oncontentready explicitly pre-rendering would help?