Microsoft released it's much anticipated Internet Explorer 7 Beta 1 today, but only to MSDN subscribers and a pretty small set of pre-enrolled beta test participants. FlexBeta goes inside the new beta.
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2005-07-22
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Well, considering their 'grand scheme' is the adoption of remotely hosted applications, it makes sense getting people used to the idea of the menu being inside the actual page rather than it being at the top.
With that being said, its still a usability nightmare; although, it will be doubtful that Joe end user will download and install IE7 - most haven't even heard or bothered installing Firefox, why would they go to the effort of installing IE7?
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With that being said, its still a usability nightmare; although, it will be doubtful that Joe end user will download and install IE7 - most haven't even heard or bothered installing Firefox, why would they go to the effort of installing IE7?
Maybe it will be an automatic update one day...
Member since:2005-07-08
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IE7 Beta 1 is not feature complete. If you download the Microsoft technical overview document, there's a lot of information why that did that and what can be expected in beta 2. Apparently they released beta 1 only to subscribers to gather vital UI/compatbillity info and beta 2 (which will be released to public) will address these. For example, that document talks about PNG which will be fixed till beta 2, also a notewrothy is this line (page 14 under Platform Enhancements):
"Web developers have expressed some frustration with certain peculiarities in the behavior of Internet Explorer 6, especially in the areas of standards support. [...] In Internet Explorer 7 beta 1, the browser architecture has been reengineered to address compatibility and will offer additional support for popular standards."
It continues on page 15 with things like CSS and there's even some stuff mentioning their laugable <div> float support:
"Internet Explorer 7 is prioritizing compliance to CSS standards by first implementing the features that developers have said are most important to them. [...] The work Microsoft has done includes fixing some positioning and layout issues related to the way Internet Explorer 6 handles <div> tags.
The final release of Internet Explorer 7 will focus on improving the developer experience by reducing the time needed for developing and testing on different browsers."
Basically, beta 1 is nothing special for web developers. That's probably why it was released only to MSDN subscribers and not to public. As of yet, I am pretty happy with IE7 though I do miss some things and hopefully they'll add those in the next beta.
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Sorry, forgot the link: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=718E9B3A-6...
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"The final release of Internet Explorer 7 will focus on improving the developer experience by reducing the time needed for developing and testing on different browsers."
It seem strange to phrase it this way. I would thinnk that being standards complient would be priorty #1 for the user expirence as well...
Rather than forcing devs to use some obscure hack / comprimise design, or build mutiple pages (which most sites wont bother with) - unifying how web browsers render makes life better for everone.
I guess we will see what happens, but personally I think the priorties are out of wack.
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No it makes sense, look at Netscape.
I rember just staring out in HTML. It was when IE was taking over Netscape. I hated Netscape because any code I wrote that just worked in IE would require all sorts of strange workarounds in Netscape. Every devoloper I knew hated Netscape. And you started seeing things like, "If you want the full user experience download IE here."
Now, as a devoloper I hate IE because thinks that just work in gecko render strangly or just wrongly in IE.
I think that web devoloper mind share is more important than user mind share, each site that says "If you want the full user experience download Firefox here." Hurts the perception of IE, it becomes second rate. It's a momentum thing.
Devolopers define the user experience not the browser. There were alot of neeto DHTML things you could do with layers in netscape, but devolopers hated working with it, so they didn't.
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The phishing protection is a nice idea, but in the end I think it's going to fail. The underlying technology (especially HTTP) is simply not suited for *applications* (as opposed to static pages, thus the mere idea of "web applications" is bound to be full of security holes and other problems).
There needs to be spoof prevention, authentication, client and server state, cache control etc. etc. etc. all built into the underlying technology and protocols.
- Morin
Member since:2005-07-06
The phishing protection is a nice idea, but in the end I think it's going to fail. The underlying technology (especially HTTP) is simply not suited for *applications* (as opposed to static pages, thus the mere idea of "web applications" is bound to be full of security holes and other problems).
How true! I hope that new frameworks (ClickOnce, Flash, Java WebStart) will make this situation a lot better than you have now. Right now, "securing" a Web application is just an utopia.
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Okay the phishing filter is pretty cool.
but what exactly has MS been doing considering they havent made the rendering engine any better.
all the promised fixes for the brokenness of IE havent been done.
on a side note, whats with the extremely hideous fonts?
they are all blury and multicolored
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2005-07-06
I want all the annoying web-rendering bugs fixed!
We found one the other day, when viewing a page that does a multi-part submission (file upload) over http, all was well. The same exact page, viewed over https, resulted in IE displaying a DNS error page. We removed the "Friendly Errors" option, under the advanced options tab, and, the page started to work over https! Very wierd. (All other browsers worked fine over http and https)
Had another issue the other day where the name of the form element was causing the text field to be larger than the width of the browser. Setting the size attribute did not affect it. Changing the name fixed it. The only thing I can think of is that the browser confused the name with a CSS id of the same name, but, it should not have been comparing the two values to begin with. And, to top off my frustration, when I duplicated the same field on the form, the second copy renderered properly!
Oh well, too bad many corporations still require IE. But, it keeps developers in their jobs as they have to find work-arounds for the buggy browser :-D
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A few months back, when Firefox started to catch on, one of the Microsoft low-lives was asked about Mozilla/Firefox features missing from IE and replied with "People don't want features like tabbed browsing".
And look at them now... Tabbed browsing, Search Engine fields, Addons, etc... I look at that GUI and I see a lousy knockoff of Mozilla.
Yeah... I guess the world doesn't really want tabbed browsing.
That's just too typical. Microsoft has always TOLD the world what it wants. Now they're left with no other choice but to actually LISTEN to what the world wants...
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Anyone know hos the phishing detection works? The article seems to imply it just does a lookup on reported sites...Does it do this for every site u visit?
Does it do some kind of check for keywords...like check if "ebay" is somewhere in the address, and then makes sure the full address is www.ebay.com or any legit local variant? Is this enough to trigger a warning...or does it then have to make sure its a reported site...and then the warning appears.
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2005-07-06
It is inevitable to dodge the fact that IE 7 Beta does look somewhat similar to Mozilla Firefox; both contain the search plug-in in the same area.
Oh Please!! How many other places are there to put the search plug-in? In fact, its 'inevitable to dodge the fact' that IE 7 Beta does look somewhat similar to NCSA Mosaic; both contain a Forward and a Back button. More! They both have a throbber in the upper right hand corner! The horror!
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2005-07-28
I personally think the UI is horrible and extremely confusing. I guess if you get used to it, it won't be that bad but from the screenshots I saw, I don't like it one bit. And why isn't there a damn Stop button???
I don't know... I guess I'll have to wait for the final product but I think this is good news for Firefox because what I saw in that article is a complete pile of crap IMO.
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2005-07-06
For anyone who hasn't seen this: http://toolbar.netcraft.com/
Available for IE and FF.
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2005-07-13
Wasn't IE7 meant to work only for XP? On the
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=718E9B3A-6...
Info site about the beta it lists the following OS's:
Windows 2000;
Windows 95;
Windows 98;
Windows ME;
Windows XP
Anybody tried it on the older ones?
Member since:2005-07-07
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2005-07-07
They killed a perfectly good UI - the reason? Because of the way the container for IE 6 was written, they could not seporate the menu bar from the rendering window. That's the official reason from the blog - and it's lame. Using this thing is like using a (badly written) hack.
It's okay though, for MS, beta 1 is really the same as Alpha - and that's what this is, alpha quality material.
Member since:
2005-06-29
I think it's very understandable to see many mixed-feelings reactions for this IE7 Beta1 especially regarding the GUI. I bet even at the microsoft campus there are mixed-feelings reactions also. Indeed it's a bit funny seeing those 'interesting' things on the GUI (f.i. the lack of a 'stop' button, menubar&toolbar moved under, etc.). Makes you blush.
Wishful thinking: Perhaps the shocking change of the GUI design of both Win Vista and IE7 compared to XP and IE6 reflects a little hint about what Microsoft is actually trying to accomplish this time around with their upcoming flagship products.
Behind the scene however, I think in general microsoft is busy putting more focus on the software-engineering (or maybe wanted to be seen as if :-)) rather than the look&feel or the GUI. Ironically, in doing this i think now they're facing even more complications (remember Longhorn's 2004 roadmap?).
Regarding IE7 however,
I think the GUI team is trying to come up with something trendy or something more inline with today's design standards (much of it is set by Apple's products); so much that they neglect the essential things.
On the other hand, the Architecture team is also trying to come up with a far better platform to run things on. Better flexibility, better security, better filtering, better plugin/add-on/activeX/whatever management, better rendering, better presentation, better software logic, in short: a better product.
Even more, the Requirements team is also handling so many wishes from 3rd parties, user feedbacks, and intern backward&forward compatibility issues. Maybe a bit too many that they just pick some and 'hide' the rest.
IE7 is actually a huge project and a massive undertaking. And unconsciously, IE7 is becoming more and more of a platform rather than a true application. It's as if the behind-the-scene mission of most of microsoft's upcoming products is to provide a platform on top of another platform, on top of another platform and so on.
Funny thing is, i think the actual hint of all this: microsoft wants to be the center of attention (again). smack in the middle.
Member since:2005-07-07
Actually, there is a stop button - the button to the right of the location bar (the refresh button) changes into the stop button. They have taken their hint from Safari - though I think it was a mistake to combine the buttons on Safari too (I hate hitting it when it says it is a stop button, only then see the page refresh - how annoying).
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"Actually, there is a stop button - the button to the right of the location bar (the refresh button) changes into the stop button. They have taken their hint from Safari"
Actually...the venerable NetPositive on the BeOS had it too.
But I'm wondering if Netscape or Opera didn't have this in one of it's earlier versions, because I vaguely remember something like that. Anyone know?
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Tabs work just like Firefox; same shortcuts, middle-click to open in new tab. Memory footprint is considerably smaller than Firefox. It's faster than Firefox, just like IE6. I like the way the menubar and toolbar are combined. The combined go/refresh/stop button is fine if kind of small and out of the way. It took all of 30 seconds to get used to the changes.
It fails Acid2 in the same spectacular way IE6 does. I've turned the "phishing" protection off because it told me about itself too much. There's a bug in the toolbar that causes it to change size when you change some of the options. Oh, and the option to "open pop-ups in tabs" doesn't seem to do anything; windows set to open a new window still do as do external links (from email, IM, or whatever). I haven't used it enough to discover if it has the same issues as IE6 with stealing focus all the time. The only thing I miss from Firefox is the ability to turn annoying Javascript "features" off. I do not miss Firefox's God awful text entry bugs or the way it eats memory.
Overall, not particularly revolutionary, but on par with Firefox (unless you use a lot of extensions I guess).
Member since:2005-07-07
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Overall, not particularly revolutionary, but on par with Firefox (unless you use a lot of extensions I guess).
Not in my opinion. IE still renders pretty badly. I still have to workaround the horrible CSS rendering and the lack of PNG transparencies is annoying to no end. In fact I had to deal with both of those problems today and unfortunately it's a pain to workaound complicated CSS layouts and GIFs just look terrible.
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2005-06-29
using IE7, PNGs Alphas are begin rendered correctly almost all the time, I get errors in this site:
http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/pngs-strict.html
(PNG images inside white scroll able boxes)
Not unexpected, but still sad... Acid2 test page do not render correctly, and doesn't look closer to begin so.
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2005-07-06
Firefox, Opera and Konqueror will eat it alive.
It may be quite OK now compared to its competitors, but by the time it is released they will have moved on.
In most businesses, the most common OS is still win2k, and they are not likely to upgrade the OS just because of a new browser. To get maximum user experience from the web, users will use other alternatives.
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