IE7 Hits the Street

Just in case you missed it somehow, we released IE7 last Wednesday. In the first four days over three million of you have already downloaded the final release.  Thank you! (If you’re not one of those three million, you can get it here.)

We expect the numbers to continue to climb steadily until we start distributing via Automatic Updates in a few weeks. Clearly, we expect IE7 adoption to really take off then.  If you haven’t tested your website with IE7 yet, please use the tools Scott posted about a few weeks ago to help you prepare.

With the final release, we got a chance to do some fun tech community activities. For instance, on the night of the launch, we hosted a dinner in San Francisco for about twenty leaders in the local blogging community. Afterwards, Jeremiah Owyang posted his thoughts and Thomas Hawk put up a great set of photos. We also finally let our product managers do some real marketing. We have the first IE radio spot that I can remember us doing, and we created some mobile billboards that cruised through 10 major U.S. cities.  I’ve included a few photos below.

Of course, we’re not done with IE7 yet. Next up are the localized versions of IE7 for Windows XP and, of course, IE7 in Windows Vista. (Really!)

Tony Chor
Group Program Manager

Comments

• Anonymous
  January 01, 2003
  Definitively, I don't like IE :) Its CSS support it's not good. I think Microsoft MUST forget about the Intershit Explorer program

• Anonymous
  October 23, 2006
  Interesting, but 3 million out of what? What's the install base of Windows XP these days? 250 or 300 million?

• Anonymous
  October 23, 2006
  "If you haven’t tested your website with IE7 yet, please use the tools Scott posted about a few weeks ago to help you prepare." I consider this attitude very arrogant. Why should we have to test our websites to see if they work with your new browser? If they work with IE6, shouldn't they work with IE7? I assume that you have no quarms if I send you a bill for the extra time I have to spend modifying my already working websites that I finished for my clients years ago?

• Anonymous
  October 23, 2006
  IE 7 works like it was left in the street. And run over repeatedly. If I were you all, I'd be embarassed by putting my name on this piece of work. Any chance you all will fix the myriad bugs before IE 8? Or will you just thumb your noses at all that and go about like nothing is wrong?

• Anonymous
  October 23, 2006
  I agree with Dave, I find it arrogant. In fact, it's even funny when you realize that this release is almost coincident with the release of Firefox 2.0 and that they seem able to make new releases that don't break compatibility. Oh wait, maybe it is that they do respect the standards... Anyways, I ask the same question that Dave, can I send you the bill for the extra time to make work again all the webapps of my client, that worked nice with IE5, IE6 and Firefox 1.5 and that work nice with Firefox 2.0 but NOT with IE7 ?

• Anonymous
  October 23, 2006
  "I consider this attitude very arrogant. Why should we have to test our websites to see if they work with your new browser? If they work with IE6, shouldn't they work with IE7? " @Dave: You have to put in the work because the websites that you wrote are not standards-compliant.

• Anonymous
  October 23, 2006
  Not sure if this has been mentioned on previous posts or not - will there be a Windows 2000 release?

• Anonymous
  October 23, 2006
  Yes I was one of the three million who downloaded it. Twice in fact neither time did the installation work, the browser just hangs and changing the url makes no difference. Still I have not seen a response to comment I posted previously.

• Anonymous
  October 23, 2006
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• Anonymous
  October 23, 2006
  I would guess the installation base of windows XP is probably closer to a billion than 200 million. Even if the autopmatic upgrade will update 10 million copies every night (about 20 terabytes of data ??) it would then take up to three months to upgrade all XP clients.  

• Anonymous
  October 23, 2006
  @Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis Your Q problem is just a bad choice of implementation on your part. The use of q element is not advised See for instance: http://www.webdevout.net/tidings/2006/09/26/there-is-no-solution-for-the-q-element/

• Anonymous
  October 23, 2006
  Of course not fully implementing the q element in IE is also not a good choice by MS but it isn't exclusive to MS that this element isn't supported properly. Also it isn't really a much needed element.

• Anonymous
  October 23, 2006
  Oh, no. Did somebody link to this post on Slashdot again?

• Anonymous
  October 23, 2006
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• Anonymous
  October 23, 2006
  Yes, -obviously- they intentionally decided that they wouldn't release internationalized versions ASAP, but that they would unnecessarily delay the release for months, just because they wanted to. Because they hate foreigners. End of sarcasm.

• Anonymous
  October 23, 2006
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• Anonymous
  October 23, 2006
  Personally I think IE7 is nothing more then a bugfix to the bugs that piled up in 5 years for IE6. It manages to do that fairly good, but in the process it created new bugs (and not necesserily because of the rendering fixes, I'm talking about images being loaded in half, etc). Also a lot of very annoying things were left unfixed, ex. PNG Gamma and Table loading, both which can be highly irritating when designing webpages. And it's still highly unconfigurable, other then hacking registry. Where can I edit the time it takes for a page to time out, or the amount of connections that can be made by the browser at once? It can only be done in the Registry, and thats rather annoying. IE7 is nothing more then a service pack for a highly broken browser. Spend effort on actually improving the browser instead of marketing please. And I'm saying this even though I use only IE, since its still the fastest and most effective browser, but the rendering bugs, or rather, the fact that they were left unfixed, are getting on my nerves too.

• Anonymous
  October 23, 2006
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• Anonymous
  October 23, 2006
  Tony Chor reports that IE7 was downloaded over 3 million times in just 4 days . That's pretty amazing

• Anonymous
  October 23, 2006
  @Henk Tiggelaar A major update like IE7 takes months to spread anyways due to limitations in upgrade capacity. Also the translations of IE7 will probably occur in simular order to those of Vista. It is really of little consequense release to some language areas later. It probably even makes it easier to plan ahead upgrade capacity per region.

• Anonymous
  October 23, 2006
  Too bad this pretty site doesn't yet work with IE7 :( http://iecrash.com/

• Anonymous
  October 23, 2006
  Nothing happens with your so-called "crash". What a waste of domain names :p.

• Anonymous
  October 23, 2006
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• Anonymous
  October 24, 2006
  Regarding Q, someone always fails to read such linked materials and pops up to claim it's a pointless element because you can just insert the relevant punctuation directly into your markup. Leaving aside that the idea that quotation punctuation is a sacred preserve of the author is rather novel, and that such punctuation is inherently ambiguous and so is not really suitable for use in online scholarship or by speaking browsers, the fact is that not all punctuation can be inserted into markup. (I give an example of such punctuation in the www-style thread.) Furthermore, real print style traditions tend to force quotations that exceed a given number of words like 50 or 60 (depending on the guide) into a block display. In theory, CSS is the tool for this job. (Currently CSS is as inadequate as HTML, not least because it can't count words.)

• Anonymous
  October 24, 2006
  "Indeed. The great thing about developing to specifications rather than buggy browsers is that in 100 years time people will still be able to use your content by referring to the original specification." Yes, if those companies were interested in having their content available to users in 2106, that would be a good reason. If companies, however, want their content available now and in the near future to a userbase as large as possible, they're just going to have to deal with the behavior of the userbase's applications and technology of choice. Seriously, standards are great and all, but if a company wants to push their website to a large userbase and didn't think about unavoidable but unforeseen updates in their budgets/contracts, then they're not very good at business.

• Anonymous
  October 24, 2006
  Not sure where all these user stats come from. If you go to internetworldstats. com, you will see that the total online population is now 1 Billion. What is being suggested is that only one in five of these have an XP licence. Shucks, I though Windows was suppose to be a markt leader! Anyway using a simpletons maths, 200Million divided by 10 Million per night is 20. How do you equated that with 3 Months. The only reason that is will take 3 Months is that Microsoft have not got their finger out and got all the necessary language packs ready for Automatic Download.

• Anonymous
  October 24, 2006
  Good job! Well done! I have been using IE7 since the release and I like it! Doug.

• Anonymous
  October 24, 2006
  If you are after a global market, then you have a lot of catching up to do by the looks of thing!!! Firefox 36 IE7     1

• Anonymous
  October 24, 2006
  @Dave Yes, YOU are to make your sites compatible with the most popular browser. If you don't, you lose. Complains, laments amd curses don't help.

• Anonymous
  October 24, 2006
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• Anonymous
  October 24, 2006
  Do my tests confirm, that in order for the CSS max-height property to work, you have to have a strict doctype of xhtml set? If so, I realy don't understand why.  This was a CSS property that you didn't support before, why on earth does your fix, require me to make a code change? Tim

• Anonymous
  October 24, 2006
  @rc, don't get on Dave's case about his site(s). As developers, we all strive to make the best content for our clients, and work magic arround the bugs. For IE6, we spent lots of time, jumping through hoops to make our stuff work. Then, IE7 final is dumped on us, before it is ready and before the RC2 was issued (correction, the RC2 was disapointingly never issued)  Now we have less than a month to run around updating all of our code, for all of our sites and applications.  Best of all, we still have to deal with IE6's issues, because IE7 isn't available for Win2k etc. and IE7 will not be rolled out in lots of offices, because IT departements are holding it back. Side-rant: Is there an Admin tool, to rollback IE7 across the network? I can see a lot of companies, thinking they are ok, then finding a critical issue blocking their use (e.g. critical app incompatibility) then needing to rollback any/all instalations of IE7. You need to ensure that a link to this tool is promenantly posted on this blog. That all said, I too hartily agree that the Arogance of this post telling me I need to go and fix my code. Development is a nightmare now, because not only do we have to test on multiple browsers, but we also have to test on multiple machines because we can't run IE6/IE7 in paralell, even though 100% of the Web Standards based applications and web sites use 0% of the IE-Platform technology.  All we care about is the rendering... the DOM, the JavaScript, the HTML, and the CSS. Yet another frustrated developer.

• Anonymous
  October 24, 2006
  The Internet Explorer 7 Team posted an amazing list of must-have Add-Ins for IE7 . I'm using almost all

• Anonymous
  October 24, 2006
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• Anonymous
  October 24, 2006
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• Anonymous
  October 24, 2006
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• Anonymous
  October 24, 2006
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• Anonymous
  October 24, 2006
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• Anonymous
  October 24, 2006
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• Anonymous
  October 24, 2006
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• Anonymous
  October 24, 2006
  "Again, Firefox has been upgraded and sites look completely the same." FireFox hasn't released any major update either. They make a plugin a standard feature and call it a major upgrade. This was done in the browser wars (IE vs NS), but today this is cliche. All this complaining isn't going to help anyone. They're working on improving IE, but unlike FireFox, there is more to it than just fixing the bug. It has to be tested with a lot of things before it can be considered for release. And as I've told others, the standards aren't perfect themself either. They should (and are, I hope) only a recommendation. So 'standard' is a big word.

• Anonymous
  October 24, 2006
  Funny, Aedrin, all of the work in the world couldn't get around IE6's lack of standards support. I suppose you just used poor HTML markup to design your sites. Your client is probably not getting what they payed for. @ The Developemnt Team I truly appreciate the development team trying to make this process more transparent with IE7, but you have to understand that a ton of web designers have a deep mistrust of Microsoft and IE6 because of the years we have gone without web standards support. Microsoft turned a deaf ear on us and let IE6 pretty much force hacked web design on us for the past five years. Also understand that the more standards compliant you become, the less you'll hear us grouse about it. If you haven't already, you should get one of the more prominent web standards gurus to work closely with your team.

• Anonymous
  October 24, 2006
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• Anonymous
  October 24, 2006
  "They're working on improving IE, but unlike FireFox, there is more to it than just fixing the bug. It has to be tested with a lot of things before it can be considered for release." Maybe Microsoft shouldn't have built their operating system around a web browser, perhaps? "And as I've told others, the standards aren't perfect themself either. They should (and are, I hope) only a recommendation. So 'standard' is a big word." This is completely incorrect. If you truly are a web designer you would know that back in the day, they went from 'recommendations' to 'standards', simply because Microsoft and Netscape weren't about to listen to "the little people". Today, major browser makers take those standards very seriously because they allow content to be seen across a wide variety of devices, not just computers. I can absolutely say now that you're not a web designer, or, if you are, one that supports the proprietary nonsense that existed during the browser wars of the '90s.

• Anonymous
  October 24, 2006
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• Anonymous
  October 24, 2006
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• Anonymous
  October 24, 2006
  When is the runonce page going to be fixed so that those of us with EN-GB settings aren't accidentally forced to change to EN-US?

• Anonymous
  October 24, 2006
  IE7 is a great browser - it's a great replacement for Deepnet Explorer and hopefully has good security.

• Anonymous
  October 24, 2006
  Les développeurs d'IE7 sont maintenant en vacance. Mais les commerciaux prennent le relai. Et on peut

• Anonymous
  October 24, 2006
  How come the feedback page is closed? Are the devs fed up by "happy customer" feedback. Want some earplugs and blindfolds?

• Anonymous
  October 24, 2006
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• Anonymous
  October 24, 2006
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• Anonymous
  October 24, 2006
  Congrats on IE7. I've seen the shows on Channel 9 and you guys worked your a** of to make it. Good work and a fine browser. Still some miles to go, but you've come a long way. Keep it up for future releases.

• Anonymous
  October 24, 2006
  Elias, Good luck with 80% of your potential visitors not caring about your websites and going elsewhere.

• Anonymous
  October 24, 2006
  Is IE7 being released through MSN Update/Windows Update on November 1 or sometime just before? I know I can download it off the website but I prefer to go through Windows Update since I always do and was just curious.

• Anonymous
  October 24, 2006
  Er I mean I always go through MSN Update my bad. Sorry for the double post not sure if I can edit my posts in this blog or not.

• Anonymous
  October 24, 2006
  @Tony, Uhm 6 public betas? thats funny, I count 3, and 1 RC. The first 2 were not public, which is quite sad, because if you had been open to suggestions and a public bug tracking site back then, maybe we wouldn't be in this mess now! Still waiting for a public bug tracking system, and developers actually addressing the bugs!

• Anonymous
  October 24, 2006
  "maybe we wouldn't be in this mess now!" I fail to see how there is a mess... If you call blatant anti-Microsoft hypocrisy a mess, then I agree.

• Anonymous
  October 24, 2006
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• Anonymous
  October 24, 2006
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• Anonymous
  October 24, 2006
  Sorry, that example should be... <html> <script language="javascript"> function doClick() { s.options[4].swapNode(s.options[3]); } </script> <body> <select id="s" size=10 style="width:100%"> <option>Option1</option> <option>Option2</option> <option>Option3</option> <option>Option4</option> <option>Option5</option> <option>Option6</option> <option>Option7</option> <option>Option8</option> <option>Option9</option> <option>Option10</option> <option>Option11</option> <option>Option12</option> </select><br/> <button onClick="doClick()">Click Me</button> </body> </html>

• Anonymous
  October 24, 2006
  PLEASE, PLEASE PLEASE, fix window.prompt(). This is going to cause a ridiculous amount of work for web developers everywhere.

• Anonymous
  October 24, 2006
  Hey IE Team... I liked the cake you guys sent to the Firefox Team. Did they send you guys a cake? The cake: http://img48.imageshack.us/img48/327/fromredmondwithlovehz0.jpg

• Anonymous
  October 24, 2006
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• Anonymous
  October 24, 2006
  @Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis: "Moreover, such lock-outs verge on hypocrisy. One reason for having web standards in the first place is to maximize accessibility and interoperability." And that's exactly what IE isn't doing. IE is slowing down progress on interoperability and accessibility. Thus, I block it in protest. "Here's a better idea. Write your code to the standards, while trying to ensure as far as possible that content is accessible with current user agents, especially those required by assistive technologies." LOL! My site is fully compliant XHTML 1.1 and that's beside the point. It's not that my code isn't working with IE, it works fine with IE (although better with Firefox). Seriously, if everyone blocked Internet Explorer, the world would be a better place. At least cyberspace would.

• Anonymous
  October 24, 2006
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• Anonymous
  October 24, 2006
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• Anonymous
  October 24, 2006
  Hi, I encounter a certain problem since I upgraded from IE7 RC to RTM on WXP Professional x64 Edition. The RC version which was perfectly OK, and now I'm experiencing this annerving new behavior. Since I upgraded the 32-bit version has no Open in New Tab in the context menu! Tabbed browsing is enabled, of course. I can open a new tab manually and just C&P URLs, but this is too tiresome. The 64-bit version works OK. Again, before the upgrade everything was OK too. Can anyone advise? Thanks in advance, Nadav

• Anonymous
  October 24, 2006
  Nadav: The missing "open in new tab" is usually caused by an older version of a third-party toolbar.  If you start IE in no-addons mode ( START > RUN > iexplore.exe -extoff ) is the menu item still missing.

• Anonymous
  October 24, 2006
  @EliasAlucard "And that's exactly what IE isn't doing. IE is slowing down progress on interoperability and accessibility. Thus, I block it in protest. ... Seriously, if everyone blocked Internet Explorer, the world would be a better place. At least cyberspace would." If everyone did the same, it would affect Microsoft. But almost nobody is going to do it, because enormous commercial incentives, accessibility practice, and concern for the poor end-user all stand in the way. Given this, your "protest" will do nothing but make the web less interoperable and accessible and tar alternative browsers with antisocial tactics. But let me repeat the crucial question: "What precisely are the criteria for admission to the magic circle of browsers allowed to view your web content? Are those criteria specified anywhere?" For instance, Opera supports aural CSS but Firefox does not; does that not mean Firefox is "slowing down progress on interoperability and accessibility"? Oh, but wait, Firefox supports MathML but Opera doesn't. So maybe it's Opera that is "slowing down progress on interoperability and accessibility"? Sure, Internet Explorer lags behind either browser. But it doesn't make much sense to me to penalize IE users if you cannot articulate the principle of exclusion in terms of the standards themselves. On the contrary, excluding IE does go against accessibility standards. WCAG explicitly includes a concern for an "early version of a browser, a different browser entirely, a voice browser, or a different operating system": www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT/#Introduction The relevance of this is obvious, when (as I pointed out before) IE is used by so many disabled users. "My site is fully compliant XHTML 1.1 and that's beside the point. It's not that my code isn't working with IE, it works fine with IE (although better with Firefox)." If your site is coded as "XHTML 1.1" and yet it works with IE, then it is (probably) not compliant XHTML 1.1, since XHTML 1.1 should be served as application/xhtml+xml and never as text/html: www.w3.org/TR/xhtml-media-types/ www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2854.txt Although this behaviour can be modified by registry hacking or plugins, by default IE refuses to render that MIME type and offers it as a file for download. You can check what MIME type you're serving by going to your page in Firefox, selecting Tools, then Page Info. The MIME type is listed as "Type:". You might consider implementing content negotiation to support the various browsers which don't handle XHTML that well (including Lynx and ELinks). Serve application/xhtml only to browsers whose HTTP Accept header explicitly requests application/xhtml+xml with a higher q value than that implied for text/html.

• Anonymous
  October 24, 2006
  @EricLaw >The missing "open in new tab" is usually caused by an older version of a third-party toolbar What is the recommended way to enable the "open in new tab" menu entry from an add-on when loading the menu resource directly from the SHDOCLC.dll? Certainly, the availability of this entry also depends whether tabbed browsing is enabled or not.

• Anonymous
  October 24, 2006
  Thank you for showing us that you've SAVED THE INTERNET!!!! IE7 is a major overhaul of the world's most popular browser. It shows people are SMART and they specifically choose the best things, and the best things rise to the top. There's no other logical explanation for its popularity. That's why I choose it. Because most people use it, and that's all that matters! Long live Internet Explorer!!!!

• Anonymous
  October 24, 2006
  @Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis: Unbelievable. Like I didn't know that IE doesn't support application/xhtml+xml I mean, why did you think I blocked IE? It's because it won't work with my site either way. Only the index.html is served as text/html Anyway, nice talking to you.

• Anonymous
  October 24, 2006
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• Anonymous
  October 24, 2006
  @EliasAlucard "Like I didn't know that IE doesn't support application/xhtml+xml" You're recommending a certain (in my view, counter-productive) practice to a general audience. I can't assume that casual readers frequenting this blog know what MIME types IE does and does not support. So please don't take things so personally. "I mean, why did you think I blocked IE? It's because it won't work with my site either way." Look, this is in direct contradiction to what you said earlier: "My site is fully compliant XHTML 1.1 and that's beside the point. It's not that my code isn't working with IE, it works fine with IE (although better with Firefox)." So now I'm confused: does your code work in IE or not? As for why I thought you blocked IE, I thought it was partly a political act because that's the reason you gave: "I block it in protest". And it's with the political act that I particularly took issue (though the accessibility concerns remain). "Only the index.html is served as text/html" Which document type does index.html use?

• Anonymous
  October 24, 2006
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• Anonymous
  October 24, 2006
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• Anonymous
  October 24, 2006
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• Anonymous
  October 25, 2006
  @Aedrin: "FireFox 2.0 is being released because of IE7. You tell me what major version update is in there and I'll take my words back." There's a large amount of improvements and fixes in Firefox 2.0 to warrant a "0.5 upgrade" over Firefox 1.5. Anti-phishing, tab undo, session saving, form spell checking, search suggestions, microsummaries, UI refresh, and much more, not to mention the hundreds of bug and stability fixes checked in.

• Anonymous
  October 25, 2006
  I love IE7 guys... a perfect 10 I have already notices a decline in FireFox users on my web sites!

• Anonymous
  October 25, 2006
  The cake thingy with the guys from FF is funny. http://fredericiana.com/2006/10/24/from-redmond-with-love/

• Anonymous
  October 25, 2006
  EricLaw: Thanks for your prompt answer. I'll try it out and report back further. Thanks again, Nadav

• Anonymous
  October 25, 2006
  @Alex "Opera and Firefox are two browsers that are really standard compliant" No browser fully complies with W3C standards. Opera and Firefox support more W3C standards, and are more compliant with the standards that they do support, than IE. "I and all other webmasters/webdevelopers write our code following the standard" I wish! The majority of text/html web content is tag soup that doesn't even validate, let alone conform: code.google.com/webstats/2005-12/element-body.html Only 25% of the more than 5000 web professionals who took part in SitePoint's The State of Web Development 2006/2007 survey even claimed to ensure that all their markup validates (see the free Results Preview, page 6): www.sitepoint.com/reports/reportwebsurvey2006/ Out of 738 sites standards-friendly enough to take part in CSS Reboot Spring 2006, 53% failed markup validation and most failed CSS validation: www.elementary-group-standards.com/web-standards/css-reboot-as-web-standards-validation-indicator.html None of this excuses Internet Explorer's poor level of conformance of course; browser non-compliance is one of main reasons web content is so out of phase with web standards. Microsoft could go a long way towards fixing this situation by complying with W3C's recommendation that agents should not silently correct errors, and inserting an icon in the status bar to indicate whether a page validates or not.

• Anonymous
  October 25, 2006
  Instead of "IE7 Hits the Street", name this blog "Throw IE7 to the Street" :D

• Anonymous
  October 25, 2006
  Microsoft? Internet Explorer? CONFIDENCE?!?! Is that a joke?! LOOL FIREFOX ALL THE WAY!! FOREVER!!

• Anonymous
  October 25, 2006
  There's a large amount of improvements and fixes in Firefox 2.0 to warrant a "0.5 upgrade" over Firefox 1.5. Anti-phishing, tab undo, session saving, form spell checking, search suggestions, microsummaries, UI refresh, and much more, not to mention the hundreds of bug and stability fixes checked in. Like I said, they make a plugin or two standard (which I thought they were trying to avoid?) and call it a new version. All those "features" are small addons that most people don't need and should've been provided in an official plugin pack of some sort. The bug and stability fixes are part of the minor upgrade cycle. And it's not a 0.5 upgrade. Version system don't (or shouldn't) work that way. It's a 1.0 to 2.0 upgrade. This indicates a large change in either functionality or code. I haven't seen either. When I start up FireFox 2.0 I see FireFox 1.5 with close buttons on tabs (which most people dislike, but IE and Opera has them). I think that is one of the problems with the FireFox development team. Decisions on whether to add/change something are based on personal opinion. Ask them about making the vertical scrollbar always visible (I've lost track of the amount of people who complain about visual jolts from that), and they'll tell you that it looks ugly and IE has it so they won't make it. Professional? Not really.

• Anonymous
  October 25, 2006
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• Anonymous
  October 25, 2006
  LOL, too many Firefox fanboys flaming around here.

• Anonymous
  October 25, 2006
  Firefox is worst browser ever, period. All those FF zealots... What can I say?

• Anonymous
  October 25, 2006
  Is missing the spell checker this one of the reasons I am using Firefox 2

• Anonymous
  October 25, 2006
  On my work machine I have IE7, Firefox 2.0 and Opera 9.01 installed for testing purposes and just in case certain sites don't work properly on one of the browsers. IE7 definetely looks like an improvement in some regards over IE6 but it sounds like from the previous posts they have neglected a lot of the requests from web developers. Interesting.

• Anonymous
  October 25, 2006
  >Hey IE Team... I liked the cake you guys sent to the Firefox Team. > >Did they send you guys a cake? > >The cake: > >http://img48.imageshack.us/img48/327/fromredmondwithlovehz0.jpg Is that how all americans cakes looks like? No wonder why you are all sick

• Anonymous
  October 25, 2006
  I updated "with confidence" to take MS's own strapline. IE7 smashed all my IE icons (URL has generic "no icon") and caused Student Encarta 2006 to give "Navigation to the webpage was canceled" (I didn''t) and a script error. I also cannot uninstall IE7.  Most unimpressed. If only Microsoft would concentrate on getting rid of bugs rather than creating new ones all the time.

• Anonymous
  October 25, 2006
  I hate the non-informative "The webpage cannot be displayed.". That's ridiculous. How are programmers such as myself supposed to diagnose errors when the error messages are masked?

• Anonymous
  October 25, 2006
  I reviewed the early release of IE7 and I intend to do a similar follow-up on the final release once the pressure of our own release has let up some. In the mean time, congratulations to the IE7 team on their 2 million downloads in 4 days -- or is it

• Anonymous
  October 25, 2006
  Perhaps what is arrogant is thinking that Microsoft, who have the weight of several million angry users to deal with on their backs if they don't do it properly, are going to be able to cater to you, and that Microsoft don't agonise over every back-compatability rule they break. Of course they do. Half of the time spent developing these things is spent on making sure that sites still work to some degree. Can they help it if you code blindly? They can't. I'm really sorry, but you're going to have to do something about your sites. I'm not saying IE 7 doesn't break at least a few things unnecessarially, but this is the price you get for an update. It's either that or land with IE 6 for another four years. Would that be your preference? And besides which, there is Quirks Mode, kids. Don't pull each other's hair out over it. @Coder: Go into advanced settings. You can turn off the "friendly" (annoying) error pages. I don't like that either, but I guess it's more informative for 90% of all people who are not coders.

• Anonymous
  October 25, 2006
  Coder wrote: "I hate the non-informative "The webpage cannot be displayed.". Turn off friendly error messages you tool! What kind of coder are you!

• Anonymous
  October 25, 2006
  Happily I've disabled auto update so I won't get IE7. Who needs it? Does it have anything that FireFox does not have?

• Anonymous
  October 25, 2006
  EricLaw: once again, thanks for your help. I managed to locate the plugin to blame: it was the not-most-recent build of Google Toolbar. Installing the latest version from Google solved the problem. Best regards, Nadav

• Anonymous
  October 25, 2006
  Has anyone mentioned that IE7 breaks "HP Director" yet? Oh, I suppose that's HP's fault.

• Anonymous
  October 25, 2006
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  October 25, 2006
  Congratulation to the successful release of IE 7! It's been quite a while since I used IE the last time, but I think I'll give it a try next time I boot into Windows. And as I just read; you've actually sent the Firefox developers a cake? That's an awesome gesture! I'd love to see more of this new side of Microsoft.

• Anonymous
  October 25, 2006
  @Hooray: You think 10% of people are coders?

• Anonymous
  October 25, 2006
  @Talishte IE Spell is a free spell check add-on that can be found on ieaddons.com http://www.ieaddons.com/AddOn.aspx?cid=2&scid=68&aid=b70c20ef-1b9e-437d-84f8-e7bc9941c690

• Anonymous
  October 25, 2006
  Limited User account I am running Internet Explorer 7 on Limited Account. When using IE7 on Limited Account some website don't run without administrator priveleges. is this true or false. Also am I still protected by the phishing filter when using this limited account?

• Anonymous
  October 25, 2006
  @Simon,... nice bug!... yeah, that's certainly undesired... did you try a W3C method to swap them? does it have the same issues?

• Anonymous
  October 25, 2006
  Blame Microsoft's arrogance on your ignorance. We're all agreed on the obvious fact that IE7 was a long time coming? Seems to me people had plenty of time to ensure their websites are standards compliant. As for HP Director etc not working, Microsoft is the platform developer, they define the rules (because it's their OS), not the other way around people!!! I'm surprised you people aren't complaining about how MS windows 3.0 won't install on a new Core Duo. If IE7's pros out weigh the cons, making YOUR CUSTOMERS browse safer, without having their credit cards hacked by phishing sites, then IE7 may encourage more growth in eCommerce. (There is some real second rate IT firms out there from what I'm reading here!)

• Anonymous
  October 25, 2006
  @andre You happily turned off auto-updates? I guess you like your Windows like your Cheese - full of holes.

• Anonymous
  October 25, 2006
  http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/blogspotting/archives/2006/10/web_30.html?campaign_id=rss_blog_blogspotting This page dies horribly. (note I have Spybot set up to block tracking cookies if that makes any difference)

• Anonymous
  October 25, 2006
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  October 25, 2006
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  October 25, 2006
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  October 25, 2006
  Oops. "But Opera and KHTML do support inline-block and, unlike IE, their support isn't implemented to elements that are naturally inline" should have read "But Opera and KHTML do support inline-block and, unlike IE, their support isn't limited to elements that are naturally inline".

• Anonymous
  October 25, 2006
  do you think you could make it so that if you click on a tab, the previously viewed tab comes to the front?  it's a habit that i've gotten from the taskbar, since it works similarly.  clicking on the task that's already on top will minimize it.  i just think it would make browsing easier, allowing a user to make a quick check on a tab by clicking on its tab twice.

• Anonymous
  October 25, 2006
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• Anonymous
  October 25, 2006
  Oh and by the way, IE7 is great, It's like Firefox powered by Microsoft ;)

• Anonymous
  October 25, 2006
  Why hasn't the bug with loading a script in XHTML been fixed yet? (see http://weakmind.org/iebug.html). I wanted to report the bug through connect, but when I go, sign in, and look at the available programs IE isn't listed anywhere.

• Anonymous
  October 25, 2006
  Hello IE dev. team people, It would be improper and incorrect for me for not thanking you for your indisputable efforts spent into fixing known, reproducible and reported bugs. So, thank you! But now, I wish you could/would concentrate on fixing other known, reproducible and reported bugs. http://www.gtalbot.org/BrowserBugsSection/MSIE7Bugs/ lists possibly hundreds of bugs. In particular, the ones regarding CSS1 testsuite: Float bug in IE 7 (CSS 1 Test Suite: 4.1.4) http://www.gtalbot.org/BrowserBugsSection/MSIE7Bugs/FloatBugIE7.html Another float bug in IE 7 (CSS 1 Test Suite: 5.5.25b) http://www.gtalbot.org/BrowserBugsSection/MSIE7Bugs/AnotherFloatBugIE7.html Background-color inherit (CSS 1 Test Suite: 7.1) http://www.gtalbot.org/BrowserBugsSection/MSIE7Bugs/BackgroundColorInherit.html Some other worst bugs are: http://www.gtalbot.org/BrowserBugsSection/MSIE7Bugs/TableCellWidth100pc.html NS 6.2, NS 7.0, NS 7.2, Seamonkey 1.x, K-meleon 1.0.2, Firefox 1.x, Firefox 2.0, Safari 2.0, Opera 9.01, Konqueror 3.5.4, Galeon 2.0.1 all pass this test. http://www.gtalbot.org/BrowserBugsSection/MSIE7Bugs/LeftAutoMarginCollapsingBugInIE7.html Also passed by almost all other browsers. Gérard Talbot

• Anonymous
  October 25, 2006
  @Matt: "I wanted to report the bug through connect, but when I go, sign in, and look at the available programs IE isn't listed anywhere." In a utterly bizarre and unhelpful move, Microsoft have temporarily closed the connect.microsoft.com/ie site. As for how we're supposed to report bugs now, well there's a phone number and a newsgroup: www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/support/default.mspx#ie7Support

• Anonymous
  October 25, 2006
  salut J’ai une simple question, y' aura t il un portable IE7 (sur usb) comme portable FIREFOX 2.0 . merci, et a+

• Anonymous
  October 25, 2006
  oups !!! J’ai une simple question...portable FIREFOX 2.0 ?

• Anonymous
  October 25, 2006
  Can we get a more detailed release timeline please? So far all we have is in the next few weeks, and IT folks should get their blockers in place by Nov. 1. For those who would like to welcome IE7 users to their sites, it would be nice to know when the flood will start. Thanks.

• Anonymous
  October 25, 2006
  Interesting, I updated to this version three days ago, but never used it. AND, it breaks some cleartype font effects of my gtalk themes. How can I give the congratulations to you guys?

• Anonymous
  October 25, 2006
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• Anonymous
  October 25, 2006
  when I try to save the webpage you posted ( http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-10442_7-6656808-3.html?tag=btn ) as .mht I get message that I have insufficient memoru to save it. But I have 2 gigs of RAM! What's that?

• Anonymous
  October 25, 2006
  @Sascha Lopez: IE7 does not appear to be vulnerable to anything at iecrash.com. The site doesn't appear to do anything other than say "You still here? :-)" after throwing script error "Interface not supported".  

• Anonymous
  October 25, 2006
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• Anonymous
  October 25, 2006
  Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis: The Data:url specification is finished?  According to the RFC folks, it's still just a proposal, and has been for quite a while now. http://rfc.net/std1.html So, does that make those who implement it subject to derision for supporting "tag soup"?

• Anonymous
  October 25, 2006
  @Harry and Mike Williams Can you contact us through the IEBlog contact form with the IP addresses that you are running IE from? You can tell what IP address a server on the Internet (like the runoncepage) thinks you have by going to a site like: http://ip-address.domaintools.com/ Thanks, Sean

• Anonymous
  October 25, 2006
  My program is not going to work now that you guys took out the browser status bar messaging. Nice that you guys help the big guys like Mcafee and Symantec when they have problems with their programs and security settings...but what about the little guy? I built a full blown VB application over the last 4 years using the browser control to display the interface and now it doesn't work because window.status can no longer be changed via javascript. window.status was a great way to generating events in my program when users clicked inside the interface drawn in the browser control. I tried changing it to use location.href and pass variables on the url...to bad I get overflow messages and when it does work it is allot slower than watching the status text change event of the browser control. Please fix it so "Allow status bar updates via script" is enabled by default so that all my hard work can live on with IE7.

• Anonymous
  October 25, 2006
  You're one developer. There is no way on earth that you're going to get that feature built back in to IE7. The long and the short of it is - you're going to have to re-think how your app works and update it. As has already been said, technology changes, software changes. The world doesn't (and can't) revolve around your app. IMO, maintenance/updates like this are just par for the course of being a developer.

• Anonymous
  October 25, 2006
  @FactChecker: Thank you kindly for the correction on Data URLs; consider it struck from my off-the-cuff list. It remains a Proposed Standard Protocol, so it is not an example of finished specifications supported by alternate browsers. I wonder what happened to it -- are they waiting for IE? "So, does that make those who implement it subject to derision for supporting 'tag soup'?" Certainly not (especially as it doesn't involve tags). I stand by my statement about IE and Ruby Annotations: "Copying Ruby Annotations into text/html is just supporting more non-standard tag soup." It is not remotely analogous to the implementation of a proposed standard like data URLs. The problem here is precisely that Internet Explorer hasn't implemented a standard or even a proposed standard, so Ruby Annotations should not be cited as an example of IE implementing a standard. Moreover, unlike implementing a proposed standard like data URLs or CSS 3, expanding tag soup arbitrarily in this way is generally counter-productive. Granted no specification defines how text/html documents that do not conform to standards should be treated and HTML browsers should offer support for HTML variants: "Due to the long and distributed development of HTML, current practice on the Internet includes a wide variety of HTML variants. Implementors of text/html interpreters must be prepared to be 'bug-compatible' with popular browsers in order to work with many HTML documents available the Internet." www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2854.txt But that is no licence to create yet more untameable variation, especially as such novelties may conflict with future standards and make content uninterpretable without that particular browser. Internet Explorer should be encouraging authors to create standards-based content that can be understood by as wide an audience as possible, will work across compliant browsers, and will stand the test of time when IE and Firefox are history. Implementing data URL would be more analogous to supporting CSS 3. Let's look at how we should treat an IETF Proposed Standard: "Implementors should treat Proposed Standards as immature specifications.  It is desirable to implement them in order to gain experience and to validate, test, and clarify the specification. However, since the content of Proposed Standards may be changed if problems are found or better solutions are identified, deploying implementations of such standards into a disruption-sensitive environment is not recommended." www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2026.txt IE implementing CSS 3 is an example of IE helping to create a standard in a similar fashion, and it is to be applauded. But it is not the same as implementing a standard. As the Last Call for CSS 3 Selectors stresses: "This is still a draft document and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to cite a W3C Working Draft as other than 'work in progress'." www.w3.org/TR/2005/WD-css3-selectors-20051215/

• Anonymous
  October 25, 2006
  Tom is correct. The Many Outweigh the Few. Congratulations IE7 Team on good launch! Furthermore, desk reading your code provides an excellent opportunity for commenting. .. four our years to develop a VB app for a web browser.. impressive. :) hhhhh khhhhh most impressive.

• Anonymous
  October 26, 2006
  @ Jeremy Regards IE7 breaking HP Director I didn't know that IE7 is a part of the OS. I thought it was a browser, stupid me. But it is funny though that Director worked fine with IE6.

• Anonymous
  October 26, 2006
  @moonwalker "I built a full blown VB application over the last 4 years using the browser control to display the interface and now it doesn't work because window.status can no longer be changed via javascript. window.status was a great way to generating events in my program when users clicked inside the interface drawn in the browser control. I tried changing it to use location.href and pass variables on the url...to bad I get overflow messages and when it does work it is allot slower than watching the status text change event of the browser control." It appears that the behavior has been modified so that the link's href is displayed in the status bar AFTER calling the onmouseover event for the element.  So the event still takes place and is updated, but the browser applies its own onmouseover event for A tags to update the status bar last.  But this is the only time the browser touches the status bar.  Once your mouse is already within the dimensions of the element, other events are free to alter the window.status property.  I tried using onmousemove and onmouse click, and they successfully were able to alter the status bar text. I know it's not the most pleasant way to handle it, but it does seem like something that can be worked around, again.

• Anonymous
  October 26, 2006
  Hola, mi nombre es Gonzalo y queria comentarles algo que empece a ver en Internet que me parecio muy interesante. La educacion a distancia empezo a ser el emblema de estudio en muchos paises de lationamerica. Calculan que es una de las principales fuentes del comercio electronico. Yo hace un poco, hice unos cursos en estos dos sites muy interesantes: http://www.designanimation.com.ar http://www.portuguesonline.com Saludos!

• Anonymous
  October 26, 2006
  "I hope you have a low budget or restrictions which stops IE7 from becoming a browser with potential" Yeah, Microsoft will stop production on a browser used by 85%+ of the US, that is used in hundreds of other applications. The problem with CSS3 is that it is slowing down progress. The recommendation is becoming the issue. IE should've decided not to implement features because a bunch of people can't decide on whether it should be X or Y? W3C is losing its focus and it is hurting everyone. They started out with the right idea, but now they've lost it.

• Anonymous
  October 26, 2006
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  October 26, 2006
  Regarding the select option swapping bug in IE7, there is an alternative that will work. if you change (depending on your need), the .text (and/or) .value of the options in question, the select list will NOT start shrinking. here's the revised code.  Click the second button to see it work, click the first button to see it fail in IE7. I would opt for the second option anyway, as the first will not work in any other browser anyway, and we should all be striving for standards! ;-) ---revised code--- <html> <script language="javascript"> function doClick(){ s.options[4].swapNode(s.options[3]); } function doClickW3C(){ var sel = document.getElementById('s'); var option3txt = sel.options[3].text; var option3val = sel.options[3].value; var option4txt = sel.options[4].text; var option4val = sel.options[4].value; sel.options[3].value = option4val; sel.options[3].text = option4txt; sel.options[4].value = option3val; sel.options[4].text = option3txt; } </script> <body> <select id="s" size=10 style="width:100%;"> <option value="a">Option 1</option> <option value="b">Option 2</option> <option value="c">Option 3</option> <option value="d">Option 4 Here</option> <option value="e">Option 5 There</option> <option value="f">Option 6</option> <option value="g">Option 7</option> <option value="h">Option 8</option> <option value="i">Option 9</option> <option value="j">Option 10</option> <option value="k">Option 11</option> <option value="l">Option 12</option> </select> <br/> <button onClick="doClick()">Click Me</button> <br/> <button onclick="doClickW3C();">W3C Click Me</button> </body> </html> ---revised code---

• Anonymous
  October 26, 2006
  @FactChecker: isn't it true that most proposals, working drafts and RFC's in their final stages are actually calls for implementation? Without implementations these will never become standards. While MS is holding off the boat when saying that something is not a standard yet they are actually just postponing it from becoming a standard.

• Anonymous
  October 26, 2006
  En quelques jours, la nouvelle version d'IE, la version 7 finale, tant attendue, a été télechargées plus de 3 millions de fois! Ce nombre est cependant à prendre avec recul car il inclut les téléchargements intentionnels du navigateur. Malgré tout, o..

• Anonymous
  October 26, 2006
  Your search on the IE7 addons page needs fixing. If I do an advanced search, and search for FREE addons, for IE7, it only returns 2 results. That search page is no where near user friendly.  I would recommend giving it some attention before November rolls around.

• Anonymous
  October 26, 2006
  "@FactChecker: isn't it true that most proposals, working drafts and RFC's in their final stages are actually calls for implementation?" So IE's implementation of CSS3 features is actually a good thing? @Mike: I installed it without a hitch. My Windows cleartype setting remained the same, my system tray didn't change, it never closes on its own, and I have no CPU/Memory problems running IE7. So does the problem lie with IE7, or perhaps the user? "And I work in a large enterprise 95% Windows environment, so I can't run firefox" So you can download and install IE7, but not FireFox? (IE7 hasn't been distributed through AU yet)

• Anonymous
  October 26, 2006
  @Philip Using advanced search, select freeware from the drop down leaving the keywords blank and then search. You should get a list of free Add-ons.

• Anonymous
  October 26, 2006
  @ Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis "IE doesn't support Ruby Annotations because it doesn't support application/xhtml+xml. Ruby Annotations only exist as an XHTML module:" Ruby Annotations don't relate to application/xhtml+xml. XHTML documents may be served as 'text/html', there's no restrictions; see http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml-media-types/xhtml-media-types.html. (Pay attention on the colorful table there.) Some ignoramus have claimed that XHTML 1.1 must be served as 'application/xhtml+xml', and hordes of other ignorami repeat after him. :-(

• Anonymous
  October 26, 2006
  I noticed that when a window is popup that the address bar is placed at the top of the window.  I understand why Microsoft added this feature but Microsoft should have added a way to disable this feature for windows that launch from within an web application with the same URL. This is causing me problem because I have controls (RadControls) I use that launch a window for input from the user and since the URL shows information, the user can easily manipulate the URL or see information about that I didn't want the user to see. You should be able to control this in a control web site as long the popup URL is the same as the URL of the site that launched it.  

• Anonymous
  October 26, 2006
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• Anonymous
  October 26, 2006
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• Anonymous
  October 26, 2006
  @Moonwalker: Why not use the interface (window.external) which was specifically built for the browser control to communicate to its parent container? http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/a0746166.aspx http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/01/04/web/

• Anonymous
  October 26, 2006
  Quesion regarding "CSS screen vs. print." I need to know, if the browser is displaying "on screen" for the user, or is "on print preview", from JavaScript. I thought about making a bogus div, with an ID, that only renders at print time, then check the dimensions of that object... but I actually need to know, before the <body> tag even starts rendering. Any insight as to what I can do here? Thanks, Henry

• Anonymous
  October 26, 2006
  Never mind, just realized that my JavaScript doesn't get executed when trying to do a print preview. Thus it doesn't matter. That said, for anyone wanting to know if they are in print preview or not, using: window.onbeforeprint = function(){  window.inPrintPreview = true; } will set this flag, just before printing, and or you can call whatever you want.

• Anonymous
  October 26, 2006
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• Anonymous
  October 26, 2006
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• Anonymous
  October 26, 2006
  I cannot believe what a clone IE7 is!  You are so proud of adding so many "new" features that Firefox has had for a long time. Mozilla ought to sue for plagiarism!

• Anonymous
  October 26, 2006
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• Anonymous
  October 26, 2006
  RE: It just shows why there are all these complaints about "broken" or "missing functionality". People keep inventing their own methods instead of the recommended methods. Since when is window.status = and using the status text change event an invention of a new method? I used the simplest/shortest/easiest method available for passing messages...the one called window.status...rather than needing to use a DLL or passing everything on the url where the navigate method quickly chokes on excessive use with cancel = true. It should be easy for ms to make it backwards compatible by adding an optional text2 variable that gets the javascript window.status messages so that programmers can keep using the functionality that was available with 6.0. All they would need to do is update it so WebBrowser1_StatusTextChange(ByVal Text As String) changes to use WebBrowser1_StatusTextChange(ByVal Text As String, Optional ByVal Text2 As String) Text can ingore window.status javascript messages all it wants. Text2 would always contain the window.status text from javascript.

• Anonymous
  October 26, 2006
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• Anonymous
  October 26, 2006
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• Anonymous
  October 26, 2006
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• Anonymous
  October 26, 2006
  @ieblog I tried your suggestion and it did work.  What is still broken, is if you pick IE7, then only 2 show up. Either your addons need to be flagged as 6&7 or the search needs to be the inverse. (e.g. searching for IE7, returns all where version != IE6 Thanks

• Anonymous
  October 26, 2006
  I'd like for the IE Team to talk about how many Error Reports have been generated now that 3M have been downloaded. Everytime I deal with 3 or more tabs then its only a matter of time before the browser crashes and the little MS Error Reporting Window launches.

• Anonymous
  October 26, 2006
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• Anonymous
  October 26, 2006
  jejeje Secunia: Second flaw in Microsoft IE7 browser Danish security vendor is reporting a new bug with the browser, a second in less than a week Just one week after claiming that users of Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7 could be at risk to an online attack, Danish security vendor Secunia ApS is reporting a new bug in the browser. http://www.codeproject.com/News.aspx?id=1813

• Anonymous
  October 26, 2006
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• Anonymous
  October 26, 2006
  IE7 it's so unstable that I'm reading this on FF :D

• Anonymous
  October 26, 2006
  @Aedrin: "So IE's implementation of CSS3 features is actually a good thing?" Yes, that's a good thing in itself, but I'd rather see MS fixing their extremely broken layout-model (hasLayout?) and correctly implement some fundamental CSS properties like 'inherit' and 'z-index'.

• Anonymous
  October 26, 2006
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• Anonymous
  October 26, 2006
  UI ick.  Buttons are spread out every-which-way, inconsistantly designed, and unable to be rearranged into intuitive spots.  Ick.

• Anonymous
  October 26, 2006
  what's up with sending the cake to the Firefox developers?

• Anonymous
  October 26, 2006
  I have seen screen shot of IE7 Automatic Updates Live from a reliable source. I suspect it is for updating of the Beta, but if you don't want IE7, then yes time is getting very short to install blocking software.

• Anonymous
  October 26, 2006
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• Anonymous
  October 26, 2006
  @Vic Berggren: "Everytime I deal with 3 or more tabs then its only a matter of time before the browser crashes and the little MS Error Reporting Window launches." Probably buggy plugins.  Try starting with them turned off (start>programs>accessoriez>systemtools>noaddons) also google desktop is buggy.  mkae sure you have the latest one.

• Anonymous
  October 26, 2006
  Indeed I can't access Firefox -were I to download it, the web tech team won't support it as we work in an MS environment, and the policy is to not mix browser types for support reasons - this way we patch often but patch all. I appreciate the ie7 application worked fine for you, but calling the user at fualt when the product doesn't work isn't going to win your argument. The fact lies with a buggy product when running on xp sp2, upgraded from ie6 sp2. I'll be uninstalling it today and rolling back to IE6 - here come the SMS patches all over again! - as I came into work this mornign to find all my IE7 windows had once again closed themselves. I wasn't even there, so you really can't blame the user this time - thanks guys - I really look forward to dealing with you on support calls if this is the attitude we'll get. I really can't disrecommend the product enough based on my experience. I do accept that it runs fine for MS staff - best of luck, what're you running, pre release Vista or what? - but my xp sp2 experience has been woeful. having said that, I tested on another xp sp2 machine where it worked fine - sadly a machine in use by someone else... Until I can either identify the points fo failure on this XP, or wait till there's an upgrade to it, I probably won't put a toe back in the water for a while. thansk anyway

• Anonymous
  October 26, 2006
  You shouldn't have released it. Not yet. It is full of simple problems that could be easily fixed, but you didn't even take a look at the comments on this blog. Every time I want to change tabs, I'm challenged by the UI. It always hangs for a while(5 to 15 seconds.) When it first starts up, since I have added those registry keys to actually SEE the menu bar on top, I have to watch the UI elements moving up and down, making some gymnastic movements, till they get still at the end. Partly because I have also removed those new buttons on the right, but at first when IE starts up, I see all of the buttons there, and after those movements, they disapear. I wanted to remove them all, but if I did, they would go back right where they were before after I restarted IE, so I just kept the RSS Feed button visible. Funny isn't it?! I remember, as a VB programmer, I read your book titled "Desktop Applications for VB6" and in that book, there was a complete chapter about the UI. I learnt how to make good UI that gives the user that familiar feeling of "Reliability." Now with IE7, and some close friend like Windows Defender Beta2, those teachings are gone. I won't comment about Windows Defenter, since after all the commenting for IE, I learnt that there would be no effect. Sorry fellows. Although I've always been an MS fan, if you keep it this way, I'll give up. At the moment I'm considering moving to Firefox 2.0 'cause it looked very reliable. Hope you change your course in future. This won't get you where you were headed before.

• Anonymous
  October 26, 2006
  Ah, I forgot to mention that my friend installed IE7 on his Compaq notebook, and now once in a while he gets weird blue screen crashes. He found out it was IE's fault after he reinstalled his Windows XP SP2 3 times! It seems to me like IE7 actually ATTACKED the streets!

• Anonymous
  October 26, 2006
  One last oddity - browsing football365 there to see how many mis-picks I've made this weeek on fantasy football, and mousewheel-clicking to open in a new tab stopped working. I right-clicked and selected Open in new tab, which then opened it in my existing and only tab... Right clicking to cut and paste properties into a blank tab failed, as it was a javascript link. D'oh! It's working again now though. If nothing else, this page will be a good debug source for the next release. I've sent on any end tasked 'Send Error Message' wndows i could, if that is of any help

• Anonymous
  October 26, 2006
  @Mike and Ehsan and others uninstalling IE7 I'm sorry you've had a bad experience upgrading to a newer version of your preferred browser. My gut feeling is that in most cases this will be a symptom of more general problems on your system rather than a product of bugs in IE7. You'd probably need to give a lot more detail about your system configuration for anyone to help you though. Here's where to go for support: www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/support/default.mspx#ie7Support But if IE7 really doesn't work out for you, may I encourage you to try out the other current browsers equipped to deal with the dangers and potential of the modern internet, rather than soldiering on with an insecure, obsolete IE6: Firefox 2.0: built-in MathML and extensions for just about everything (XForms? IRC? social bookmarking? you name it) Opera 9.02: built-in IRC client and newsreader SeaMonkey Application Suite 1.0.5: includes webpage editor and newsgroup, email, and IRC clients Netscape Browser 8.1.2: swap at will between IE's engine for IE-only sites and Firefox's engine for modern sites Flock 0.7.6: designed for bloggers All these browsers support SVG, the modern vector graphics for the web. All these browsers have generally better support for HTML and CSS than even IE7. All of these browsers support application/xhtml+xml, intended as the primary content type for future web content. All of these browsers support tabbed browsing, but if you don't like tabbed browsing it's easy to turn off (e.g. in Firefox, select Tools, Options, Tabs and "New pages should be opened in ... a new window"). Firefox and Opera have extremely active community support (the Opera and Mozilla forums, plus irc.opera.com and irc.mozilla.org) if you run into any difficulties. All the browser UIs are sui generis, but in general the Firefox 2.0 and Opera UIs are closer to the Windows norm than IE7, which may appeal to those of you freaked by IE7 idiosyncrasies like the disappearance of the menu. You might check out the "IE6XP Native" skin for Opera: my.opera.com/community/customize/comments.dml?id=747 . Unlike IE7, none of these browsers overwrite IE6. But if you're hesitant about installing another browser on a fragile system, you could run one of the USB versions: www.opera-usb.com/operausben.htm portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable I wish you happy browsing, whether on IE7 or not :)

• Anonymous
  October 26, 2006
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• Anonymous
  October 26, 2006
  @Mike "If nothing else, this page will be a good debug source for the next release." Not really. That site is broken: its code cannot even be validated: validator.w3.org/check?uri=www.football365.com%2F See my explanation here for why this matters: http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2006/10/19/be-ready-for-automatic-update-distribution-of-ie7-by-november-1.aspx#848849 And my explanation here for how you can check pages' validity for yourself: http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2006/10/19/be-ready-for-automatic-update-distribution-of-ie7-by-november-1.aspx#867936

• Anonymous
  October 26, 2006
  @Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis Objective humility! To be applauded. Fantastic attitude. I personally have almost totally ditched Firefox 1.x and 2.x for IE7 now - I can't fault it and have been using it for months. I originally switched to Firefox from IE6 because of security fears and rendering experience. I'll be rolling it out over WSUS here as soon as it's available. Each to their own, of course. Sometimes I "feel" like using one or the other - and I (like everyone else) have the choice to do so ad-hoc. Too many people are evangelical about browsers particularly, and software in general.

• Anonymous
  October 27, 2006
  This new IE7 does not have a convenient tab to initate your e-mail, IE6 had one.

• Anonymous
  October 27, 2006
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  October 27, 2006
  If I open an Excel spreadsheet, in IE7, when I right click on the Excel tab at the bottom, and choose to "Add a new tab" (or anything for that matter), the current IE7 window loses all focus. (gets sent to the bottom of the window stack) needless to say, this 'feature' is not desired.

• Anonymous
  October 27, 2006
  "I'm sorry, but despite reading quite a bit of the controversy around that article I have no idea what you're talking about here." I was referring to the time that Ian Hixie decided a feature in FireFox should not be implemented because it was 'ugly', even though there were numerous requests for it. I wasn't referring to the article, because I hadn't read it. I've seen all the propaganda regarding to use or not to use XHTML, and no one seems to have a valid point. I just scanned his introduction, and it seems my point is still correct. "Not really. That site is broken: its code cannot even be validated:" One warning regarding using validation. A site may invalidate and still work fine. A site is not going to break because there is no alt property on an image. It's just one of those mixed interests that slipped into the "standard". (An XHTML/HTML standard should not be advocating accessibility features, there are seperate standards for that)

• Anonymous
  October 27, 2006
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  October 27, 2006
  I suspect you'll find that the problem is hinted at in the "More information" on the error pages.  I bet you're typing, e.g. https://google.com/adsense and you're seeing an error because they haven't configured the site correctly to return a certificate for "google.com" and instead are returning the certificate for "www.google.com".  The HTTPS specification calls for treating this as a security error.   If you are typing the "www", please send me some of the exact URLs where you hit this problem. (As for why you may see this on a plain HTTP search site, it's likely that they're delivering part of the content from a HTTPS server.  You can check using Fiddler from www.fiddlertool.com).

• Anonymous
  October 27, 2006
  @Don: To add the mail button to the toolbar, right click on the star icon, choose Customize Command Bar / Add or Remove Commands.  Move the Mail icon to the visible set.

• Anonymous
  October 27, 2006
  "I was referring to the time that Ian Hixie decided a feature in FireFox should not be implemented because it was 'ugly', even though there were numerous requests for it." Since you don't link to the bug or even describe it more fully, we have to rely entirely on your spartan evaluation of this incident. Quite why your disagreement with him on this completely different issue means Hickson is wrong on text/html, I don't follow. "I wasn't referring to the article, because I hadn't read it. I've seen all the propaganda regarding to use or not to use XHTML, and no one seems to have a valid point." Hickson's article is a key text in the debate about XHTML served as text/html, so your review of the "propaganda" appears to have been somewhat shallow. "I just scanned his introduction, and it seems my point is still correct." If your opinion of the rest of the "propaganda" is likewise based purely on introductory material and you haven't actually reviewed the meat of the arguments, I'm not surprised they haven't persuaded you. "One warning regarding using validation. A site may invalidate and still work fine." I know what you mean, but it depends how loosely you define "work" and just how low a bar you set for "fine". I'd tend to stress the opposite problem with validation. Even validation does not guarantee your site "works", since:

1. There are bugs and idiosyncrasies in the validators. For instance W3C's validator pretends XHTML served as text/html was served as application/xhtml+xml
2. Content may sometimes validate but not actually conform to the specifications, as there are plenty of rules that cannot easily be incorporated into the validators. Developer therefore need to understand the specifications they are endeavouring to use, which means actually reading the relevant parts of the specifications.
3. Content may sometimes validate and conform but still be mangled by buggy parsers and renderers. Developers therefore need to be aware of user agent shortcomings to guarantee contemporary utility. For example, if you use Q, you need to find some way to force IE to render quotation punctuation (e.g. with conditional comments).
4. Mere validation is no guarantee that your site is actually accessible and usable. Developers should therefore follow accessibility and usability research (e.g. www.sitepoint.com/article/ajax-screenreaders-work ) and investigate the limitations of current assistive technologies. This is actually not as daunting as it sounds; most screen readers and magnifiers have a free trial or time-limited download, so go try one today, folks: www.freedomscientific.com/fs_downloads/jaws.asp (JAWS 7.10) www.dolphincomputeraccess.com/downloads/index.asp (HAL screen reader) www.gwmicro.com/Window-Eyes/Demo/ (Window-Eyes 5.5) www.aisquared.com/index.cfm (ZoomText 9.0) www.screenreader.net/ (free Thunder screen reader) www.opera.com (comes with voice browsing and supports aural CSS) Having said all that, valid code is clearly an essential first step if you want someone else to advise you or fix their browsers to handle your code: diveintomark.org/archives/2003/05/05/why_we_wont_help_you "A site is not going to break because there is no alt property on an image." If the images go missing, your user has images turned off, or your user hears your site instead of seeing it, then you risk incomprehensibility. Sure sounds broken to me. (Now it might be that a logical specification would have no ALT attribute rather than a blank ALT attribute for purely decorative images, but then HTML is a (pseudo) backwards-compatible specification not a rationalized one.) "An XHTML/HTML standard should not be advocating accessibility features, there are seperate standards for that" I'm sorry, Aedrin, but I couldn't disagree more strongly. Accessibility, flexibility, and usability should be a central concern in standards for web publishing and applications. (This isn't to say there shouldn't also be additional accessibility guidelines like WCAG that transcend individual content type specifications.) The web is a gift web designers can give to everyone, and the specifications should help not complicate that openness.

• Anonymous
  October 27, 2006
  The comment has been removed
• Anonymous
  October 27, 2006
  "I'm sorry, Aedrin, but I couldn't disagree more strongly. Accessibility, flexibility, and usability should be a central concern in standards for web publishing and applications." I wasn't saying that there is no room for such standards on the web. I just believe in properly seperating them. Otherwise we might as well make 1 large standard that encompasses all. Not exactly usable. "If your opinion of the rest of the "propaganda" is likewise based purely on introductory material and you haven't actually reviewed the meat of the arguments, I'm not surprised they haven't persuaded you." I've read others. Every side can produce interesting points, but none can conclusively exclude the other. So if neither way is right, it is merely a personal choice. From the article introduction: " 1. Authors write XHTML that makes assumptions that are only valid for    tag soup or HTML4 browsers, and not XHTML browsers, and send it as    text/html. (The common assumptions are listed below.)

2. Authors find everything works fine.
3. Time passes.
4. Author decides to send the same content as application/xhtml+xml,    because it is, after all, XHTML.
5. Author finds site breaks horribly. (See below for a list of    reasons why.)
6. Author blames XHTML." 2 things are assumed, and the only negative side effect pointed out is that the author (who was wrong in the first place) will wrongly blame the standard. This type of discussion is often used in political ads, where they try to convince you by portraying a situation which sounds bad, based on several assumptions. If the user had validated their site before publishing it, the chance of it breaking when served as application/xhtml+xml would've been quite small. Even then, all beginners will easily mistake the technology when the problem lies in their source. This is nothing new, and happens with all programming and scripting languages.

• Anonymous
  October 27, 2006
  Edit: will easily blame the technology

• Anonymous
  October 27, 2006
  Eric, I'm really sorry for any inconvenience I've caused, but I think I figured out what was happening - I hadn't set the time and date on my computer properly (had some more issues with it recently, something with the CD drive and it went to the bios screen and I was too lazy to change anything).  Anyways, changed to the correct date (from sometime in 2002, lol) and it seems at least on the surface of things to have cleared everything up. Once again, thanks for taking the time to respond.

• Anonymous
  October 27, 2006
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  October 27, 2006
  >> Try starting with them turned off (start>programs>accessoriez>systemtools>noaddons) I'm currently running with addons disabled. thanks though.

• Anonymous
  October 27, 2006
  That's odd, because on a computer with 512 MB and both Windows Vista (less memory available) and XP, I was able to browse a dozen or so tabs without a problem. Just because it is slow on your computer does not mean that IE is slow. It most likely means your computer is slow.

• Anonymous
  October 27, 2006
  @Serious Sam: Thanks for getting back to us!  Yup, having a seriously out of date clock would be a problem, because all SSL certificates have a validity period, and they are only valid for use during that time period.  If your computer thought it was 2002, then most sites' certificates would not yet be valid for use.  

• Anonymous
  October 27, 2006
  I think Everybody Knows that IE7 is the best browser in the world. ((no)) firefox users understand that web2.0 is real as linux CSS is important

• Anonymous
  October 27, 2006
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• Anonymous
  October 27, 2006
  Within 24 hours of the official launch on Tuesday, there were over 2 million people using Firefox 2.These were willing downloads as opposed to forced IE7 downloads (via Windows update). I would also like to mention the two vulnerabilities discovered by Secunia.com lately. http://secunia.com/internet_explorer_7_popup_address_bar_spoofing_test/ http://secunia.com/Internet_Explorer_Arbitrary_Content_Disclosure_Vulnerability_Test/ Shouldn't this be matter of concern for the IE team?

• Anonymous
  October 27, 2006
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  October 27, 2006
  Microsoft indique que des millions d'exemplaires de la version officielle d'Internet Explorer 7 ont été

• Anonymous
  October 27, 2006
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  October 28, 2006
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  October 28, 2006
  Why haven't you finished HTML support for IE7 (or even 6 for that matter)? You've had 5 years to finish implementing HTML4 support between versions of IE, and even a couple years before that to get it into IE6.   Please support the Q element in your browser.  You could even have quotes.msn.com where users could search the web for quotes.

• Anonymous
  October 28, 2006
  Why do they used truck advertising? So much pollution for a virtual object that is a software. It's a good peek at big corporations mentality.

• Anonymous
  October 28, 2006
  Do you guys going to release a linux version for IE7? Or will we, the poor people that use linux, have to get stucked with this FireFox forever? It's been more than 4 years that i completley removed windows from my computer[s] so i will have to wait for your linux version.

• Anonymous
  October 28, 2006
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• Anonymous
  October 29, 2006
  Your download stats mean nothing.  I downloaded IE7 twice, finally installed it last night, then uninstalled it this morning.  Although I'm sort of impressed with how much of Firefox's feature set you imitated, including the options dialogs, IE7 crashed repeatedly on the initial Microsoft runonce page to set the search engines.  I followed all the instructions in the install notes, release notes and the Reset IE Settings page, but made no progress.  Disabled all add-ons, but no go.  Even with only supposedly pre-approved add-ons IE7 crashes on that initial page.  With add-ons disabled, I randomly sampled other sites but encountered the same problem. Uninstall was uneventful and IE6 works fine.  However, after using RIES I have to reset my security settings again individually.  That initial runonce page doesn't seem to exist when I try to access it from IE6. I sure hope that Microsoft plans on hiring a huge support staff for when you push this disaster out on Automatic Updates.  I'm disabling Auto Updates well before then.  I'm not normally a Microsoft detractor, being a big fan of WinXP and Office, but IE7 is an embarrassment.

• Anonymous
  October 29, 2006
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• Anonymous
  October 29, 2006
  There are about 100 people working on Firefox (take a look at the about dialog), and I doubt if there are more than 10 people working on IE, is that really true? If it is true, then there is no need to ask why Firefox works smoother!

• Anonymous
  October 29, 2006
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• Anonymous
  October 30, 2006
  AutoComplete does not work at all for me since upgrading to IE7. I have posted in the IE newgroups, and to some tech sites, but no luck. There seem to be quite a few people with the same problem. Does anyone have a fix for this? I really get the feeling that this was rushed out too soon...

• Anonymous
  October 30, 2006
  http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/worldwide/default.mspx MS's page says: "Internet Explorer 7 is now available in Finnish, German, Japanese, and Spanish. To download Internet Explorer 7 in one of these languages, visit a worldwide download page:" But in fact, when you click on those pages, no such thing!!!

• Anonymous
  October 30, 2006
  Finally here, ive been waiting to see how it would compare to other browsers. I'm hoping it will give Firefox some real competition.

• Anonymous
  October 30, 2006
  "nice monopoly move from Microsoft." Dictionary.com definition of monopoly: '-exclusive- control of a commodity or service in a particular market' Windows is the only operating system in use? I didn't know that. "I just want to see a good OS for 3D games, good enough to attract game developers and forget about Windows once and for all." This will not be happening to Linux or Mac OS any time soon. Good luck having an average user using a Unix/Linux based OS.

• Anonymous
  October 30, 2006
  @Ehsan "There are about 100 people working on Firefox (take a look at the about dialog), and I doubt if there are more than 10 people working on IE, is that really true?" The past pictures displaying various members of the IE team on this blog alone should clue you in to this not being true.

• Anonymous
  October 31, 2006
  You mean you've had trucks driving round doing absolutely nothing! Absolutely outrageous ignorant waste of fuel and generation of CO2

• Anonymous
  October 31, 2006
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  October 31, 2006
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  October 31, 2006
  CHANGE WITH CONFIDENCE! RIGHT!...........

• Internet Explorer 7 Window Injection Vulnerability
• Internet Explorer 7 Popup Address Bar Spoofing Weakness
• Internet Explorer 7 "mhtml:" Redirection Information Disclosure Source: http://secunia.com/

• Anonymous
  October 31, 2006
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• Anonymous
  October 31, 2006
  Ebay and Yahoo Mail are both broke with my new IE7 that I just installed yesterday.  I get an error on page indicator at the bottom, but certain buttons just don't work.  I get nothing.  I downloaded the tool from the Microsoft FAQ that makes IE7 emulate IE6.  It helped a little, but basically I can no longer use Ebay or Yahoo Mail.

• Anonymous
  October 31, 2006
  Positives: Thanks for the new features.  Print preview with auto page fit is greatly appreciated!  Thanks for the single button to "Delete All..." on delete browsing history.   Negatives: Kills the icon display for file type .URL ... tried to set the icon a couple of ways, and it still refuses to display an icon.  I guess I have to do something to the registry, but I don't have a clue as to what to change.  Probably a simple fix.  Any of you smart young people out these know how to fix this? Comments: Looks like others are having a lot of problems, but I haven't seen these issues ... yet.  For example, Yahoo/Yahoo Mail work fine for me.  Good luck to all.

• Anonymous
  October 31, 2006
  I'm a bit Mozilla fan. Yet I find IE7 utterly better due to its tab logic. They are easy to discover (I really like the new tab button mouseovering effect that switches from clean state to the new thingy icon), nice to close (the X on selected tab, NOT on the others as FF2 does; so there are no distracting RED buttons and accidental closings) Yet I was perplexed by two user interface flips. First of all: middle button on tab closes tab on mousedown. There has been a long tradition of doing things on mouseup and I'd expect for the browser to let me think over whether I did the right thing by pressing down. Then There's the Tools dropdown (and Page dropdown), which do not work as normal menus do (that is mousedown opens, mouseup selects item that is currently rolled over); this is inconsistent with even your own search dropdown button. I'd like to do mousedown-move-mouseup actions instead click-move-click actions. Print Preview in separate dialog is okay, yet I think it should have a larger target button than the tiny corner-[x] to close it. All these are polishing issues, yet I did get the feeling of <i>wrongness</i>. I hope someone reads this, files proper bugs. Cheers.

• Anonymous
  October 31, 2006
  Oh, forgot. Autoscroll on middle button looks like I've used a time machine, gone back to 3.11 and triggered some bug on my way.

• Anonymous
  October 31, 2006
  Update on .URL issue: The problem is with existing shortcuts to files with the .URL extension.  A file with the .URL extension does show the correct icon.  But, when IE7 is installed, any existing shortcuts to these files no longer displays the correct icon. When I try to create a new shortcut to a .URL file, instead of creating a shortcut, it now copies the .URL file (and thus displays the correct icon).  Let me repeat that: if you try to create a shortcut to a .URL file, you don't get a shortcut, you get a copy of the .URL file.  That probably makes sense, but I have a number of existing applications that have installed shortcuts to .URL files, and the previously displayed icons are now gone. Solution is to manually set icons on each of these files, or to copy the .URL files to the Start Menus where the current shortcuts are located.  Or, just ignore the problem. Most people probably won't even notice this if they don't look.

• Anonymous
  October 31, 2006
  With regard to the increased standards compliance of IE7 there a large number of properties, e.g. "expando=true", in the MSDN library HTML and DHTML reference containing the note "There is no public standard that applies to this property". Will my 100+ page intranet applications which were written with meticuluous attention to the MS documentation require much work?

• Anonymous
  October 31, 2006
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  October 31, 2006
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  October 31, 2006
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  November 01, 2006
  Deleted IE7 completely after some reboot bugs, thank you.

• Anonymous
  November 01, 2006
  can i have one of those posters :)

• Anonymous
  November 01, 2006
  "I downloaded the tool from the Microsoft FAQ that makes IE7 emulate IE6." - just David I haven't looked, but could you or someone post a link to such a tool? Is it an official MS product (therefore supported)? Does it make IE7 render CSS like IE6? Could this be the tool web designers have been looking for to resolve the side-by-side IE6/7 install issue?

• Anonymous
  November 01, 2006
  @Tony Here's the link to that tool, and yes, it's from MS: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=9517DB9C-3C0D-47FE-BD04-FAD82A9AAC9F&displaylang=en Haven't tried it myself, have to buy a new PC running XP first to be able to install IE7 anyway... However, for starters I'll add a "use Firefox" banner to all of the sites I'm in charge of. If this becomes a habit to everybody, it should effectivly tell MS to change its business practices.

• Anonymous
  November 01, 2006
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  November 01, 2006
  Where is the Javascript console in IE7?  I look in tools menu, file menu, help menu... but can not find it!

• Anonymous
  November 02, 2006
  .........and now various other bits of Microsoft software have stopped working - such as media player, which no longer thinks it is connected to the internet.  How do I fix that?

• Anonymous
  November 02, 2006
  If you are using "Outlook Web Access" to connect to your companies mail server from afar, DON'T INSTALL IE7 !!!! When you try to send an email the exchange addon will cause IE7 to crash. EVERY TIME. You can start IE7 with all addons disabled and actually send emails, ALTHOUGH YOU CAN'T SEE DIRECTORY LISTINGS OR FOLDER CONTENTS SINCE THEY DEPEND ON THE ADDON. Once again the MS team hits the ground running with a real loser that isn't even compatible with their own software. Not to mention the horrendous GUI with practically no toolbar organization capabilities. I an attempt to compete with others and implement tabbed browsing, the IE7 team has developed a somewhat disfunctional layout. (Thought about putting the tabs on the status bar [or near] at the bottom and going with a more 6'ish toolbar/menu header??  At least give the user more control over placement??? IE7 Hits the Street  - that's about all you can say... Keep up the good work..... Why is it that all the really talented coders are independent of unemployed??

• Anonymous
  November 02, 2006
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• Anonymous
  November 02, 2006
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  November 02, 2006
  Ha! I just downloaded, installed and ran Firefox 2.0.  I got the toolbar configured just like I want it, and it's still shorter than IE7's! :-P Buh-bye, MSIE!

• Anonymous
  November 03, 2006
  Yeah, they won't miss you. What a ridicolous comment, go and spam the FF forums instead.

• Anonymous
  November 03, 2006
  Hello, thank you for the fantastic work you did on IE7 !! I'm using a dual screen config and I like a lot to drag'n drop links from one browser to another (each on one screen). I do that for several years now. I really like the tabs now avaible in this new version of IE. Can I suggest you something ?? Do you think that it is possible to drag'n drop links directly to a tab ? Lets get a example : There are 3 tabs. I could drag a link from a page (in tab 1 for ex.) directly to tab 3(or 2) keeping my page untouch in tab 1. I could also drag a link from a page (in any tab) directly to a new tab and get that tab opening it. (feature already available in the current version using the middle mouse button but the way explained here). What do you think of that ? Best regards to all, Olivier

• Anonymous
  November 03, 2006
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  November 03, 2006
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  November 03, 2006
  Some people might wonder why I would try to install WMP11 to try to fix IE6 or 7... It goes back to the way MS is overly integrated. Everything is all tied together, so I was thinking that integration would work in my favor if I tried to reinstall everything again, all new programs. But still I get nothing from WMP11 and no improvemnet with the errors in IE. Its sad really, that my system was fine, but my drive for some new updates has caused me to feel like I have to replace the whole thing just to get back to a usable system. Every MS powered system should come with a countdown timer so you can better cope with the preprogramed unusability and discintigration of it and move on like they force you to anyways.

• Anonymous
  November 04, 2006
  You know what I really hate? You guys come out blowing your trumpets and telling the world how great you are. With billions in the bank you still can't get it right. How about the fact that IE still doesn't properly support CSS standards? Float tags just don't work right. What a joke.

• Anonymous
  November 06, 2006
  Since ClearType is enabled by default now I'm noticing rendering anomolies with how it handles large-size text. I've written an article about it (http://www.kapowaz.net/uncleartype.html) with some screenshots, but it does look like the sub-pixel anti-aliasing system has some flaws. Any word on whether or not this is known about or if it's likely to be fixed in Vista?

• Anonymous
  November 06, 2006
  The new Address Bar short-cut overrides the Alt-D access keys defined on the document page. Why? All other shortcuts work properly (e.g. Alt-F)

• Anonymous
  November 06, 2006
  IE 7 IS A GREAT BROWESER TO USE BUT THE FILE GETS CORRUPT VERY FAST

• Anonymous
  November 06, 2006
  While accepting at face value the various security enhancements built into IE 7, this new browser significantly diminishes user effectiveness as described below:

1. Many billions of person-minutes will be racked up in wasted time as users re-familiarize themselves with the relocated buttons that are commonly used like Home Page, Refresh & Stop. These are now separated from the Back & Forward buttons unlike in IE 6 and previous versions that clustered these buttons together at the upper left of the page. And, there’s no way to move the Command buttons (Home Page, etc.) to the left side of that horizontal space to thus be closer to the Back & Forward buttons.
2. If one doesn’t enable the Menu bar, then there’s no command available to send a shortcut to the desktop.
3. With the Menu bar enabled, there’s no need for the Favorites Center and Add to Favorites buttons on the left edge of that bar. But they’re not removable and thus become redundant. Further, the Menu bar consumes one horizontal space whose center and right side is empty. Instead, perhaps the Command buttons could have been located in this space thus making more vertical screen space available for website content. Or, obtain the same result by moving the Menu bar content to the left of the Command buttons.
4. Tabbed browsing is a nice feature but I suspect most users will have trouble benefiting from it.
5. Users that possess the MSN Desktop Toolbar will have two anti-phishing tools apparently redundantly at work. And, at least two web search windows available plus another if their home page contains a search window. If they hide the MSN Desktop Toolbar, then it’s form-fill feature is disabled. To preserve that feature, the bar must remain visible which reduces vertical screen space at the expense of website content. MSFT should have built a form-fill feature into IE 7 to improve user security by permitting more complex password usage. Also, MSN’s desktop search feature should have been included as an optional feature. Or, set up like websearch in IE 7 with the selection of search engine left to the user. On balance, IE 7’s enhanced security features come at a significant price in user effectiveness.