No wonder it is only for a few people. The browser is terrible. The menu bar is under tabs as mentioned on several blogs and only two renderings bugs are fixed and PNG support has been added as Tom-Eric reports. Ouch. I guess they might have fixed some more things, but nothing is telling me they have been working since Internet Explorer 6 on this piece of crap.
One thing is quite nice though, the user interface for opening a new tab. Actually opening a new tab seems like opening a new Internet Explorer with all that flickering and it is probably what IE7 does. Hacks can still be used. Official beta release is probably on the third of August.
Interesting. The MSDN doc says:
Internet Explorer 7 includes fixes for issues with the Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) feature. Both the peekaboo and guillotine bugs have been addressed, and work on other issues is under way to provide web developers with reliable and robust CSS functionality.
So the question is: which "other issues"?
Good, this saves me some time then. I'll be waiting for beta 2.
Does the "* html element {}" still work?
I'm curious about the secority issues. Does Quek still work?
As far as I could tell, * html element {} does in fact still work.
What about the box model? Any correction to that? I guess we can't hope much from the final version if they don't bother to correct something as crucial as the box model on the Beta 1... :/
João, IE6 already supported the W3C Box Model (in Standards mode). IE7 thus does the same.
Anne: They have already stated that the tabs in IE7 will be in different processes, hence all that flickering. Sounds annoying to me.
As I explain in my own post on IE7 beta 1, we shouldn't really be so surprised nor disappointed by this release. Give it all some time.
Personally I believe that this release will just piss off web developers. So far there is no improved CSS support. They still don't support (CSS1) background-attachment for other elements than the body. What we got is a new GUI and 2 CSS bug fixed + transparent PNG support.
I seen many posts saying that this is the first beta and that things will improve, but seriously, 2 CSS bug fixed? Is that it?
Seems to me that the guys at MS have just slapped this release together as a bit of a knee-jerk reaction to everyone saying that the tabbed browsing and PNG support in Firefox is what made them switch.
Probably the first of many knee-jerks, IMHO.
Whoa. And I thought my predictions were pessimistic.
I wonder what all the noise about talking to the WASP and the Acid2 stuff was about.
Of course, things will probably improve until the finished product… at least, one can only hope.
Everyone's saying "give them some time".. come on! They should have been doing things building towards a new browser since IE6 was shipped.
Plus also, forgetfoo reports that position:fixed doesn't work...
Faruk: yes, in standards mode, you're right.
I'll have to disagree with you on one thing, though: give them some time
. They are already years late for CSS1 and CSS2, they should've put their efforts already on this Beta, so that testing can mature their implementations of such. Otherwise, who are gonna be "IE7 CSS1/2 beta testers"? The "Aunt Tillie" kind of end-user?
By the way, highlighting two "still not done"'s on IE7:
João: yes, they're already years late, but they've also only just started to really care about properly implementing Standards in the first place.
See it as a runaway train: you don't stop it in one go, you go about it slowly, gradually, with great care and while being extremely careful. They can't change IE6 to be a Firefox-like browser "just like that" -- not without breaking all existing (bad) websites at the same time.
I kinda expected this; no true improvements except the ones they could fix easily by forcing hasLayout within Trident for some circumstances.
My opinion: Trident is too old; anything that is be done to this engine is just a hack; MS should built a whole new renderengine in order to comply to recent standards, don't expect one before 2010; the year that Moz/Ff has over 80% of marketshare... :P
See it as a runaway train: you don't stop it in one go, you go about it slowly, gradually, with great care and while being extremely careful. They can't change IE6 to be a Firefox-like browser "just like that" -- not without breaking all existing (bad) websites at the same time.
Correct. That's exactly why I think they should have brought those issues to the beta testing phase as soon as possible (or even sooner than possible), so that they can be thoroughly and carefully tested until the final public release.
Trident is too old; anything that is be done to this engine is just a hack; MS should built a whole new renderengine in order to comply to recent standards (...)
They can't; it's like Faruk said, that would break all existing (bad) websites at the same time
. They gave lazy webdevelopers that big candy called "I'm IE, the browser that intuitively renders anything that promotes itself as being a website", not they have to bear with the plague them set out, of malformed IE-only-tested webshites.
They could, although, like I said, put their hands in making major improvements to their rendering engine, both on the (X)HTML and CSS side.
I suspect IE7 to be somewhat of a pre-beta-release (is that possible?). Just so they had something to ship with the Vista-beta. The tabs are just too awfull and increased standards support? Well, let's just say it's still Microsoft...
Guess I got myself of the beta list for a next release with that last remark :-)
They can't; it's like Faruk said, that would
break all existing (bad) websites at the same time. They gave lazy webdevelopers that big candy called "I'm IE, the browser that intuitively renders anything that promotes itself as being a website", not they have to bear with the plague them set out, of malformed IE-only-tested webshites.They could, although, like I said, put their hands in making major improvements to their rendering engine, both on the (X)HTML and CSS side.
They can do it without breaking existing websites; just use the old renderengine for quirksmode and use the new one for standards-compliant mode.
Also remember that the websites you are speaking of are already broken for people that use anything other than IE.
They absolutely, positively can do that, I tell you.
Hi there!
Maybe breaking all those badly done websites wouldn't be such a bad idea. Finally, people would stop doing such sites. I still see people doing them and thinking, they are doing a great job. But wait! Then IE wouldn't be able to render pages done with Frontpage! What a shame! :lol:
Anyway, it _is_ in fact disappointing, that they just couldn't do a thing except tabs and a few bugfixes. Maybe there is more on the way, but releasing this was a really bad idea. Many people thought, they would be doing something proper this time. Even I did and was happy about it. But as allways - disappointment.
I guess, I'll continue writing my sites for FF and IE6 with all those CSS hacks. Anyway, does anyone have an idea, if IE7 will be ported to Win2k?
ProClub
Maybe breaking all those badly done websites wouldn't be such a bad idea.
What makes u think a website using hacks isn't considered a badly done website? Using hacks is a bad thing for ur forward compatibility. It's like browsersniffing, but than without actually testing if the browser supports the hack.
They absolutely, positively can do that, I tell you.
That would be the only way, yes. I'm still not sure why they're not considering this, though. Can't be too hard, technically...
That would be the only way, yes. I'm still not sure why they're not considering this, though. Can't be too hard, technically...
I, in contrast, am pretty sure about why they are not considering it: they have nothing to gain from a standards compliant browser. They have a lot to gain from a non-compliant browser that is functional enough for user laziness and organizational legacy to maintain inertia against switching browsers.
That’s exactly what’s going to happen: they will provide something to entice users to stick with IE, not something to relieve web workers of their headaches.
Anne: The IE team has now announced a longer set of CSS bugfixes for Beta 2. Would be interesting to hear your take on it.
Aristotle: I fear the same... but I still have hope. :-) I think the pressure from WaSP might actually lead to good things for us webdevelopers, really.
All I really care about is whether or not it will have full CSS2 support. Will it?
I'm dying to use the text-shadow property and, unfortunately, can't seem to pursuade everyone to get a Mac :)
text-shadow is no longer part of CSS 2 I believe. But yeah, it would be nice if Internet Explorer supported some cool stuff as well, like opacity et cetera, instead of trying to come a bit closer to what other browsers support.