Flexbeta.net reports that today at RSA, it was announced a new beta version for Internet Explorer 7.
Internet Explorer 7 Beta This Summer
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Though I expected this, no version for W2K makes me a sad panda
One of these days I’m going to have to upgrade, won’t I?
“work we did in Windows XP SP2 and (among other things) go further to defend users from phishing”
<Firefox comment goes here>
YEah I don’t like it either. Forcing me to use XP instead of making a stand alone version for Win2000. However my windows use ends at the end of this year.
I’m already on firefox and mozilla so I have the best for every OS out there.
I’m a firefox user (well I’ve been using Mozilla for *years* )and I’ve been waiting and waiting for a reason to trust IE on my machine… it’s been too long. A the moment the only I find it fit for is testing page layouts. I wouldn’t actually browse the web on it (I’m posting from firefox on linux as it is!). In my opinion this can only be a good thing. I know that people who think about their web use might possibly stay with Firefox because of the feature set / extensibility / speed, but for those who know no better (most of my relatives, for one), I’m happy they might get a piece of software they can use without attracting a legion of problems along the way).
MS saw no need to release a new version until Firefox started making waves. Open Source is doing to software what AMD did to processors.
It’s nice to see that MS is going to update IE. I’m not a big fan of MS or anything and I wouldn’t use it, but it’s never good to have a dead product that so many people rely on. The problem is that we don’t know what they are going to do. Security is probably top on the list. After that? Speed? Maybe they will try to make it much faster than Moz/Firefox to convince people not to switch. Standards compliance? That would be amazing for web developers such as myself.
MS has said that they are going to deliver an IE7, but not how much of a change (and in what areas it will change) it will be from IE6.
is the entire point of this upgrade to IE7 because Mozilla browsers will turn off support for Internationalized Domain Names (IDN)
Microsoft trying to keep up?
I hope they implement the max-width property
MSFT used to sing a different tune not so long ago.
Weren’t they only going to release new versions of IE on new versions of Windows?
The interest in Firefox has finally caused / forced them to release a new version of IE sooner and for other OS’s.
I think that is a bad attitude from MSFT.
So we’ll see how this affects Firefox’s momentum, now that MS is actually bothering to compete
People – get real. Win2k came out in 1999. That’s SIX YEARS AGO. Linux distros these days are out of cycle in 12-18 MONTHS. Even Red Hat stops supporting their Enterprise products five years out.
IE7 is going to use a lot of pieces that were only introduced in XP SP2. They are trying to phase OUT bad practices. Now, I use FF, and will likely never use IE7, because personally, I think MS as a business is pretty much deplorable. But not back-porting IE7 to Win2k is NOT necessarily a bad thing.
You have choices, you know – you can run something modern or you could always use Linux.
First we need to see if this is worthy of being called “competition” in the first place. It’ll be great if they manage to fix some of the major holes that bring spyware in and keep phishers active, but unless they can improve their standards support and offer a browser with comparable features, I’m sticking with Firefox.
Frankly I’d be happy if they: a) ditched ActiveX in favor of a more secure alternative, b) have a good implementation of CSS, c) support PNG. Just give me that and I’ll be a happy man.
Microsoft is rather pathetic. How can a web browser be dependant on the version of the OS you are running? FireFox runs on Mac, Solaris, Linux, BSD, and Windows. At the same time, it has far more features than Internet Explorer. Microsoft is so full of h$it. Microsoft was trying to use it’s monopoly muscle to try to force everyone to upgrade to a new OS, not due to any inherent limitations to the OS, but due to limitations of a browser that was bundled with the OS. That’s like being forced to buy a brand new car because your radio isn’t working right. This is so pathetic.
Here is my prediction. Somehow, the miracle workers (sarcasm) at Microsoft are going to get Internet Explorer 7 to work on Windows 2000.
I can’t believe how many ignorant people say stupid things like this is going to be the “Death of Firefox”. It may be the death of “Joe Blow # 23678 downloading Firefox” but if you actually think this will kill Firefox, well, I’d say you need to learn a little bit more than you do about Open Source. Mozilla has contributions from Red Hat, Novell, Sun Microsystems and numerous other companies. There are also tons of individual contributors, whether it be donations or code. They also receive financial backing from companies that don’t do much coding but still support them, one such company being IBM.
Remember how long Firefox chugged along in the early alpha days when no one knew about it and it wasn’t even a competitor to the Mozilla Suite, let alone Internet Explorer. Opera dying because of this is more likely (but still very unlikely) because they are a commercial company that needs market share.
<sarcasm>
Although, maybe you are right, maybe the Mozilla Foundation saw this announcement and began shutting down today
</sarcasm>
Oh, and don’t forget that one of their goals with Firefox was to get Microsoft to begin innovation with their web browser again. Numerous people from Mozilla have said that.
So please, I ask of you, quit making stupid comments, you make my head hurt.
…is M$’s IE 7 finally going to have CSS 2 and PNG-32 support?
‘Cause that’s all I care about, the advancement of web technology. And with IE being stuck in a pre-’99 era, it sure doesn’t help…
They won’t talk about any features other than security.
6.0->7.0 for better security practices? I tend to think of security as something to be expected from good software, not the entire “feature” of a major release milestone.
I think it’s great that firefox has created some real competition for browsers. Microsoft would have sat on internet explorer much longer had firefox not came along. This will than in turn make firefox not sit idle. So in the end we the users win. So you can thank firefox and microsoft to name a few for us getting better browsers.
Why does MS still feel a need to compete for the browser market? You’d really think that have monopolies on operating systems and office software would be enough? Because if they wanted to maybe generate some good will for a change they could just bundle Firefox or Mozilla suite in.
Why would you not want them to release a new version?
Didn’t I already answer that? Because it’s unnecessary. Because even if Firefox had 99% share of the browser market, it wouldn’t affect them. Because they ought to be putting their efforts into Longhorn instead of trying to dominate a market where the browsers are all free anyway. What’s the point? Why would you want them to come out with another browser? Do you think them not dominant enough in the IT industry?
> might possibly stay with Firefox because of the feature set / extensibility / speed
Firefox is not faster than IE. This is just not true. Faster browsers are Opera, Konqueror and Safari.
> Why does MS still feel a need to compete for the browser market?
Because they want to add proprietary implementations such as Jscript, Active-X, etc… so that web sites don’t work in other browsers, and so that people are tied to IE. If people don’t need IE/Win, then they will try alternatives such as OSX or FreeBSD. The web is a necessary component of computing and business in general. If you can’t pass the 1st page of a web site, you’re going to try on another computer that has WinXP + IE, and the site is going to work because it was optimized for this platform.
“Microsoft is rather pathetic. How can a web browser be dependant on the version of the OS you are running?”
Probably because it needs the new longhorn subsystems (avalon, winfx, indigo, etc.) and they are not availabe to windows 2000, only to windows xp.
“Microsoft is so full of h$it. Microsoft was trying to use it’s monopoly muscle to try to force everyone to upgrade to a new OS”
You’re right!!! And i just heard a strange sound here, perhaps it’s Bill Gates with a gun forcing me use longhorn… oh no… noooooo….
Oh wait, nope, it’s just the sound of me not caring about stupid trollish comments.
one word, XAML. control over the web client used by 90%+ of the market allows for any “extensions” they want to add. losing that market dominance would be a huge blow, just think, how well adopted would activex have been if netscape had won the browser wars?
also, im a web developer, and ill tell you right now there is no such thing as “optimizing” a site for a browser. if your site is “optimized” for ie, that just means you dont support anything but ie. its just a fancy way to say “use whatever you like, but dont complain when it doesnt work”
If they’re planning to have a beta out by summer then that’s not giving the developers much time. IE needs a complete overhaul to bring it up to modern standards and to fix the interface. I’ve heard from more than one person at MS that the IE codebase is a mess and that the company needs to “pull a Mozilla” (ie start over).
If they’re not doing this then we’re probably going to get a browser that would be more accurately called 6.1.
Wonder if they will get smart and finally implement tabbed-browsing into IE?
No, they said earlier, they know that users don’r need that function
Microsoft also said early that they won’t make any new version of IE without the OS. Did they break their promise?
🙂
Sure, users don’t need tabbed browsing… that’s why I switched to galeon aeons ago just for that feature…
(and Phoenix user since 0.2 times)
And btw, a lot of IE users use alternative shells like Maxthon and similar exactly to have tabbed browsing.
…no need, sure. 🙂
Also, IE7 BETA is coming out this summer. The definitive version possibly will come out for Longhorn only. Or at least XP only.
Microsoft is rather pathetic. How can a web browser be dependant on the version of the OS you are running?”
Probably because it needs the new longhorn subsystems (avalon, winfx, indigo, etc.) and they are not availabe to windows 2000, only to windows xp.
Same thing that happens with Apple. The new Safari will only run on Tiger, etc…
It’s not that a browser cannot be a standalone program, but when you leverage libraries and stuff that only exist for a specific version of your O.S, it can’t be also portable. In theory you could back-port those to previous versions too, but it’s too much work, and you want to invest in your future and current products anyway.
maybe they will fix things like this:
http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/hyatt/
Microsoft is rather pathetic. How can a web browser be dependant on the version of the OS you are running? FireFox runs on Mac, Solaris, Linux, BSD, and Windows.
It has nothing to do with technical things, other than that Microsoft probably had to put in some code that actually made it NOT run on win2k.
Its about markets, and to create incentives for their users to upgrade to their latest OS version. This is more and more important to Microsoft as the current verioin of windows doesn’t really have much that wasn’t there in win NT4, at least not if you count things that helps pay your bills.
Perhaps because IE is a good browser that I would like to see updates to.
Perhaps because it will make other browser vendors work harder on their own browsers.
Perhaps because being stuck with just one browser sucks.
Again, why not have another browser in the marketplace.
What does marketshare matter?
Why do YOU care how many people use your browser of choice?
Ha! I switched to firefox after finding a way
to end my attatchment from Maxthon…
No way will I ever use IE again.
I cannot believe all of the people that have firmly picked sides. What is wrong with many options? Some browser might be better for certain people. My workplace is *at this point* stuck with IE. I am happy to hear they are going to expand on the security updates they did in XPSP2 to IE. I use 3 browsers IE (@Work), Firefox (@home on XP), and Konqueror (@home on my Linux box). I would probably use Safari is I had a Mac. I hope the Browser wars continue and each company pushes the others to keep improving.
This is more and more important to Microsoft as the current verioin of windows doesn’t really have much that wasn’t there in win NT4, at least not if you count things that helps pay your bills.
Active Directory.
Stateful Firewalling.
Remote Desktop/Assistance.
Much better hardware support (USB, for example).
To name a few
Windows 2000 is well worth the upgrade over NT4. XP over 2000 less so, but if you’re buying new systems anyway there’s no reason to not get it.