Submitted by Microsoft has released the 2nd beta of Internet Explorer 7 to the general public. You can read the release notes, or watch a tour of the new features. Microsoft warns you not to use this beta a production environment: “Evaluation of Internet Explorer 7 should start now, but the software should not be used on production systems in mission-critical environments. Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 Preview will only run on Windows XP Service Pack 2 systems, but will ultimately be available for Windows Vista, Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, and Windows Server 2003.” Update: You might have been expecting this, but there’s already a DoS attack out there for this new beta.
…let you uninstall 7 on XP Home. Don’t bother trying.
PHOOEY!
Go to Add/Remove Programs, check the box for “Show Updates” and then scroll down to “Windows XP – Software Updates”. You can remove it from there. It works for XP Pro. Should work the same for XP Home.
Edited 2006-02-01 19:03
Updates? Silly me. It worked fine, cancel my previous comment
Yea… Updates seems like an odd place for it, but if you think about the fact that it will probably we distributed through WindowsUpdate once the final version is release, it makes a more sense.
I went through the tour and I don’t see much that’s unlike what Firefox and/or Opera currently offer. This just looks like Microsoft is playing catch-up with this one. I guess this is good if you’re an IE user, though.
Edited 2006-02-01 18:57
Not only does IE7 have some of the features that Firefox and Opera have, it has much better standards support than IE6. That is the most exciting thing about it. And yes, Microsoft is playing catchup, but because most internet users run IE, when IE7 comes out the internet will become a better place, almost over night. Web developers everywhere will leap for joy.
This is why I (and others) are hyped about IE7.
“Web developers everywhere will leap for joy.”
6 year web developer here. I’m pleased that they fixed egregious CSS bugs. What web developers wanted was the following:
o Correct implementation of CSS and CSS2
o PNG support
o Correct implementation of HTML4 (BUTTON, OBJECT and others)
o Correct implementation of DOM
For the most part we got the first two, which means fewer CSS hacks and more powerful layouts. PNG support means an end to transparent GIFs which have to be designed around a specific background color. Good.
The others, not so much. BUTTON is so badly broken no one dares use it, and it would have made creating web apps much, much easier four years ago. IMG is deprecated and should have been replaced with OBJECT 4 years ago, but IE renders OBJECT images with scrollboxes that cannot be removed and treats rescaled dimensions as if they were overflows instead of squeezes/stretches.
It isn’t trivial when web developers can’t use spec because one browser won’t support it. Unless IE7 substantially improves its support for standards when it goes final, we may very well see a return to badges on websites.
According to my (only very basic, I have to admit) understanding of game theory, it’s a conservative but recomendable tatic to copy your opponents behaviour as long you are far ahead of them (e.g. in terms of market share).
Of course, this strategy is likely to fail completly, if your opponent starts to have success with something you can’t copy (e.g. truly open source the products code, reach to other plattforms, provide a good documented standard/implementation for a cross plattform extension framework, …) and I suspect, that simply playing catching up will not suffice in the long run for IE.
I only ask myself the question IF Microsoft is able and willing to make more than simply play catching up. (If IE7 doesn’t significantly reduces the_Mozillas/Operas/Konquerors/… ability to grab market shares away from MS, I somehow belive they will pull something like “Browsers aren’t important anymore,the future is <enter buzzword>”)
Just wait till their marketing department starts spinning their catch-up as innovation.
Installing IE7 replaces IE6. To get back to IE6, you need to uninstall IE7.
Just something to keep in mind.
“but will ultimately be available for Windows Vista, Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, and Windows Server 2003.”
Does this mean that the final version will not be avalible for Windows XP 32bit ?
It seems strange not to mention normal XP since its tested on it.
It’s Beta 2 preview, not Beta 2.
ie7 isn’t even finalized and security researchers have already found a proof of concept DoS attack that could possibly allow remote code execution. You’re sad MS, you’re sad.
“ie7 isn’t even finalized”
Gee, maybe because it’s not done yet is the reason there is a “possible” problem.
In other words, shut up.
LOL! I just have a good laugh day after day after day, MS makes BILLIONS of dollars every month and still takes forever to put ot something as simple as a good web browser! And it takes a company that has almost no budget (Mozilla) to make MS see the light and actually do some work (Lame as the attempt may be)
And now they want us to bug test for their sorry rich buts!
It took Mozilla over 5 years to put something out.
The more people that have their hands on the betas, the better the final product will be.
The more people that have their hands on the betas? So I should help Microsoft make more money. Why don’t they hire more people to get their hands on the betas, they sure have the money.
And it did not take Mozilla over 5 years to put something out, when Netscape crated the Mozilla group in 1998 they were not supposed to be making software for end users, they were supposed to be collecting and tweaking software to be used in house on other projects.
On top of that it’s not like IE started from scratch, but look how long it’s been since IE6 came out and now IE7 creeps out and sucks. LOL! Come on.
How does MS make money off of IE? They don’t.
Also, it did take Mozilla 5 years to come out with a final version of anything, doesn’t matter what they were supposed to be working on or not.
Finally, IE development was completely halted, it’s not like they’ve been working on it all this time, and it really doesn’t suck (did you even use it?)
You come on.
First off I didn’t say MS made money directly from IE, but they WILL make money when they tie IE into Windows XP and above only and then say “Upgrade to this if you want all these features in IE7 ”
And PLEASE show me where you get that it took 5 years for Mozilla to come out with a final version of anything? What product you talking about? Firefox didn’t take that long!
And yes I know IE development was halted because MS created it as a way to send people to their content and kill compitition! Once that was done they didn’t need to upgrade it to help customers, they just let us suffer with crappy, buggy, with a thousand security holes!
And yes I downloaded and installed it (And then removed it) as soon as the beta came out. And with all the resources they have, to me they could have made a better effort! LOL!
Ok, so I mispoke on 5years, it was a little over 4 years (note, this is JUST from the point that Netscape opensourced it, not from the time that Netscape started actually developing Netscape 5). Development of the Gecko layout engine was actually started in 1997.
Let’s see, IE7 has tabs (better implemented tabs, actually from a memory managementy POV), RSS Reader, more support for CSS1 and CSS2, an anti-phishing filter, a fairly minimalistic design (save for some of the colors used) as compared to IE6 and earlier layout, it has a zooming function where you can actually zoom in up to 1000% percent, a new print system, the view all tabs function is very nice and sleek, I could go on.
The only thing I really don’t like about it is the forward and back buttons are really unpolished.
It’s a browser crash, and there is no proof of concept for any code execution either.
You do realize that all browsers have crash bugs, right?
ie7 isn’t even finalized and security researchers have already found a proof of concept DoS attack that could possibly allow remote code execution. You’re sad MS, you’re sad.
You might try researching this topic, instead of bloviating. New security provisions built into IE7 render most attacks harmless. Here’s why. When IE7 loads, it runs with reduced privileges (ACLs) by default. It doesn’t matter whether the user is Administrator or a plain user. So, what does that mean? Even if IE7 crashes and triggers a buffer overflow, any attack is limited in scope to whatever a plain user can do. In other words, code *can’t* install malware by modifying the registry, overwriting system DLLs, reading unauthorized data, etc.
The fact of the matter is that this goes *well beyond* the security model of Firefox under Windows. If Firefox crashes due to a malicious plug-in or bug, hackers *own* your machine. Not so with IE7. You will notice that no exploit code has been posted which contradicts my statements. IE7 is going to frustrate security researchers.
“New security provisions built into IE7 render most attacks harmless. Here’s why. When IE7 loads, it runs with reduced privileges (ACLs) by default. It doesn’t matter whether the user is Administrator or a plain user. So, what does that mean? Even if IE7 crashes and triggers a buffer overflow, any attack is limited in scope to whatever a plain user can do. In other words, code *can’t* install malware by modifying the registry, overwriting system DLLs, reading unauthorized data, etc. ”
True, but that only applies to the Vista version, not the one for XP.
Not true. XP has the same ACLs. Reduced privileges works on both XP and Vista.
Unless you have a *very* compelling reason to use ie7, please help make the web a better place and use cross-platform and standards-compliants browsers like firefox, opera, and konqueror/safari.
I fear that ie7 may attract people back from those, and the return of many “ONLY IE HERE” pages…
Safari isn’t cross-platform. It doesn’t even use the exact same rendering engine as Konqueror. What’s more, IE7 is supposed to be much more up to date as far as standards go (not up to Opera yet, but not nearly as bad at IE6 from what I used of it). What’s more, if we get a lot of people beta testing IE7, and reporting rendering bugs, then MS will be more likely to fix as many of those non-standard rendering issues as possible. Then all the average Joe users out there will be using a standards compliant browser, and there won’t be any “ONLY IE HERE” pages.
So, stop spreading FUD. Start working with MS for better compatability in the future. I say this to everyone who comes out with the “MS did badly before, so they will do badly again” argument against IE7. Until the final is out, we all have the power to make it more standards compliant and more secure, but using the beta and giving feedback to MS. To me, that is a “very” compelling reason.
Safari isn’t cross platform but their engine is, for example: http://gtk-webcore.sourceforge.net/, and the newer nokia handsets.
And yeah, microsoft has a very good track record of solving bugs and making their browser standards-compliant, and they always listen to their users and their problems.
And what happens when they add avalon and those pretty-marketing-name technologies to ie7 and other browsers are left out on the cold? A monoculture like this is _always_ bad, be it open-source or not.
As a web designer I need to keep up with IE’s changes, even though it pains me to have to.
I’ll be installing this soon, though quite grudgingly.
Why should I support cross-platform browsers if I’m only using one platform?
Keep in mind I use IE and Firefox, but I don’t agree with your logic.
“Why should I support cross-platform browsers if I’m only using one platform?”
Because you’re not the only person in the world. Perhaps expecting you to help out those on other platforms is a little far-fetched, but you could
Also, there’s no guarantee you will always be using that one platform. Something could conceivably prompt you to switch at some point, you can’t know. If OSX or something gains acceptance (and hardware and ISV support) and becomes a more pleasant experience than Windows, you just might switch (barring a fanatical loyalty at any cost). Supporting cross platform apps is future proofing your experience.
Besides, until now, cross platform browsers tend to do better at sticking to the standards (instead of adding stuff like activeX etc, though we’ll see if IE7 changes that), and better standards support fosters competition, impoving your browsing experience (those tabs and stuff IE7 added? They got the idea from other browsers, a benefit of having competition).
Edited 2006-02-01 20:27
Just using the product doesn’t change anything, unless you were to donate or submit bugs.
Just using the product doesn’t change anything, unless you were to donate or submit bugs.
Sure it does. The more people who use Firefox, the more people show up in website logs as having used Firefox to visit, increasing the pressure on webmasters to create standards compiant sites.
Using OOo, even without donating or submitting bugs means one more person potentially sending out documents in an Open Document instead of .doc.
Granted, bug submitting/donating would be more help, but simply using the software does still help.
Edited 2006-02-02 01:57
useless software …
I installed IE7 last night and didn’t see much that I didn’t already have in Firefox. After playing with it at work and at home last night I uninstalled it from both machines. I would much rather use FireFox or IE6.
Eh, how do you uninstall IE7 to go back to IE6? It isn’t in Add/Remove Programs, or Add/Remove Windows Components…
Woops, I see this comment now: http://osnews.com/permalink.php?news_id=13529&comment_id=91731
Edited 2006-02-01 20:02
did you read my previous post?
Go to Add/Remove Programs, check the box for “Show Updates” and then scroll down to “Windows XP – Software Updates”. You can remove it from there.
I installed this last night and I liked it. I thought the tabs implementation was pretty good, much better than the tabs from the MSN toolbar.
The other feature I liked was the expose-like view of opened tabs. I have this plugin for Firefox and it is great.
Their RSS was pretty good too. I wish RSS was a bit simpler to use like in Firefox where you just click on it and it asks to add it to your bookmarks. In IE 7 you click on the RSS button and it brings up another page, then click on the subsribe link. But the layout for the subscribed pages I found to be pretty well usable in that it head the headline and a short one-liner description of the article.
Overall I’d say Microsoft did a good job on this preview release, and I can see myself liking it a lot more than IE 6.
The other feature I liked was the expose-like view of opened tabs. I have this plugin for Firefox and it is great.
Are you referring to “Tab Preview” which only does a small hover image over each tab, or is there something more like IE where it is a single page with all the thumbnails? If the latter, could you share the name?
I have the “Tab Preview” extension installed so I know what you mean about the hover thingy. But this is another extension called Viamatic FoXpose. It will place a button in the lower left corner in firefox and let you see all the tabs that are open in a new tab.
Applicable link:
http://viamatic.com/index.php/firefox
Are you referring to “Tab Preview” which only does a small hover image over each tab, or is there something more like IE where it is a single page with all the thumbnails? If the latter, could you share the name?
Here is a WebKit-based browser which has had this feature for a long time:
http://hmdt-web.net/shiira/screenshot/en#tabExpose
edit: warning – page in “japanese english”
Edited 2006-02-02 03:41
So please don’t get me wrong, but how in hell can something as simple as 344 dashes crash a web browser and allow someone to execute arbitrary code?
I suppose Microsoft should really start again and rewrite everything from scratch.
Rewriting everything from scratch is almost never the answer. That’s the real reason Netscape lost the browser wars.
If you were a programmer, you’d realize how hard it is to get even relatively simple things, like correctly handling arbitrary strings from the outside world, to a bulletproof level. This is the kind of bug that would be caught by the testers before final release, but perhaps it should have been taken care of by the testcases for urlmon.
Wasn’t there a similar bug with Firefox and the dashes?
I googled and found this:
http://news.com.com/Unpatched+Firefox+flaw+may+expose+users/2100-10…
I find it odd that both browsers have suffered from what looks like a similar bug. I wonder if it’s a flaw with how International Domain Names were specified (what the original bug in FF was).
Rewriting everything from scratch is almost never the answer. That’s the real reason Netscape lost the browser wars.
That wasn’t the sole cause – if you used Netscape Communicator, you would know.
Netscape left it too late to correct the problems in it, they then turned around thinking that if they simply threw the code out into the wild, it would spontaneously correct itself throw the ‘power of opensource’, as if it were the panacea to all that is wrong in the world.
The code got out, there was a blood curdling scream by the opensource community and so a rewrite was started – with that being said, however, what will be interesting is not whether IE 7 brings back people, but whether those who use Firefox stick with it, regardless of what IE has to offer – that will be the big testament to the brand pulling power of Firefox.
I agree with your point of view. Parsing text is definitely not what a computer does best
Still, I find it a pretty low-profile bug, in the sense that the handling of HTML tags should really be the basics for a web browser. IE or Firefox or Opera or $browser, this is not about IE itself.
Most of the positioniseverything CSS bugs are fixed. This is good news.
Support for min-max- dimension properties does not appear to exist.
Attempting to render images using OBJECT instead of IMG still results in scroll boxes around the images.
Testing this in local mode rather than installation does not consistently work as it has in the past (even beta 1). In local mode, it accuses pages which use JavaScript of having popups when they do not. Select box menus do not work and some trigger popup blocker warnings. Overall its security features imply that the danger is the Internet itself, not the holes in the OS you’re running.
Eye candy is irritating; it looks like a media player. Some will love it, others will not.
Thumbs up for improving the CSS support. Thumbs down for continuing to ignore the broken HTML implementations which were mentioned repeatedly for close to six years now.
Final analysis: it won’t convert anyone back to IE who uses FF or Opera. N00bs with new PCs will still encounter issues which lead them to consider switching to other browsers.
Final analysis: it won’t convert anyone back to IE who uses FF or Opera. N00bs with new PCs will still encounter issues which lead them to consider switching to other browsers.
Or they’ll simply have family members who will de-adware their computer, install updates, disable IE and install Firefox; did that for one relative, and she was happy to see all the problems she was experiencig, evaporate.
I just installed it. In fact, I writing this post with it. No problems at all. I can surf all my favorite sites. It renders very fast!
Some comments about their security report/advisor or whatever they might call it. One is about this:
———-
Workaround:
Mozilla Firefox
———-
So the workaround is to use Firefox? (…) They should say that there is NO WORKAROUND ATM. This kind of comment (since this is NOT a technical fact and only a technical preference) WILL lead to useless discussions.
The second one:
This is by no way a “DoS”… I do not know what goes by the mind of the guys at Security Protocols (I never been at their website before) but this kind of behavior is not right. They have the right to test it, report the error to the manufacturer, spread the information.
He/they can, off course, express a personal/collective preference over software options but it should be done in the right place.
And now, on to the subject: the software is great from what I can tell. It is fast and is becoming more functional. Some ideas are already in use on Mozilla’s products. Let’s see what comes out of this release, that seems to be very different from the others before.
Those buttons are ugly! And the ie7 is still buggy – i know it’s still in beta. There are instances when my PHP pages can’t be rendered.
,,PHP pages can’t be rendered.”
You’re aware that everything that PHP is doing is passing a HTML to your browser? So, it’s HTML that can not be displayed. 🙂