The First Year of IE7

Articolo
11/30/2007

It’s been a little over a year since we released IE7 on Windows XP and for Windows Vista, so I thought it would be worthwhile to talk about where we are after the year.

According to internal Microsoft research based on data from Visual Sciences Corporation, there are over 300 million users are experiencing the web with IE7. This makes IE7 the second most popular browser after IE6. IE7 is already #1 in the US and UK, and we expect IE7 to surpass IE6 worldwide shortly.

Perhaps more important than the overall numbers is the positive impact IE7 has made for our users. As you know, we focused a lot on improving security in IE7. We believe IE 7 is the safest Microsoft browser released to date. According to a vulnerability report published today, IE7 has fewer vulnerabilities than previous versions of IE over the same time period. What’s more, the report showed that IE7 had both fewer fixed and unfixed vulnerabilities in the first year than the other browsers we compared.

In addition to having fewer vulnerabilities, as we previously mentioned, IE 7’s Phishing Filter stops more than 900,000 phishing attempts per week, stopping crimes-in-progress before users give up their personal information. On top of that, more sites are adopting Extended Validation Certificates as a way to help protect their users from fraud, and people are noticing. A recent USA Today article noted that “for the ultimate peace of mind, look for the address bar to turn green in IE7” in the context of securely connecting with your broker.

Finally, we’ve seen a decrease of 10-20% in the support call volume for IE compared with a year ago, before the release of IE7. This is typically a sign that the product is more stable and has fewer issues than the previous release.

While we’re happy with how well IE7 is doing, as always, we continue to listen to our customers and find ways to further improve Internet Explorer. Look for more news on this front in the coming weeks.

Tony Chor
Group Program Manager

Comments

Anonymous
November 30, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
November 30, 2007
While IE7 is (was) a big step ahead, we really need to move on, especially towards full CSS 2.1 (and even 3.0) compliance. Please update us on IE8.
Anonymous
November 30, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
November 30, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
November 30, 2007
Well, I could care less, about security...scrolling performance needs fixed!
Anonymous
November 30, 2007
I know you guys must love the kind of comments you get on this blog.
Anonymous
November 30, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
November 30, 2007
Hmm, lets see. Big brag post about IE7... IE7 adoption good? well, yes, but consider how many people chose not too, that were "forced" into the upgrade? kind of staggering isn't it! Employees in the Enterprise that are told what browser to use, account for many of these stats. They are forced to IE7, whether or not they would prefer Firefox, Opera, or Safari4win. The stats on security are HIGHLY questionable in the comparisons... Firefox 1.5x hasn't even been supported by Mozilla now for 5 months! and as always, the level of "severeness" is never taken into consideration in most of these tests. Good to see yet another post on the IE Blog attempt to sweep the real issue of bug tracking under the rug again... Less support calls? yeah, might be because all the support avenues have been closed! Hard to report an issue when there is no where to report it! I don't even know where I would find a 1-800 #. Oddly enough, I've never needed one with any other browser. 1 year, still no bug tracking 1 year, still no updates on IE8 features 1 year, still no updates on IE8 bug fixes 1 year, still no ETA on IE8 release 1 year, still no ETA on IE8 Beta release(s) 1 year, still no ETA on IE8 Alpha release(s) I'm not clear on the interest in a celebration?
Anonymous
November 30, 2007
Good job. You all deserve a big pat on the back. Now get back to work.
Anonymous
November 30, 2007
well the comments here just show, once again, how insecure the Firefox fanboys feel - and rightly so, if that vulnerability report is any indication... Congrats to the IE team. As far as I'm concerned my wishes when it comes to IE are not security related (been using Internet Explorer since version 2.0 under various MS OSes, never EVER been hit by any kind of malware) nor do I care much about any sort of self-proclaimed web standards (Some people should check the definition of the word "standard" - IE's implementation is it, de facto. It's all about numbers) but a few quirks mostly related to the UI (I want to move and customize my toolbars the way I see fit) and speed (it shouldn't take that long to open a new blank tab)
Anonymous
November 30, 2007
Hello Mr Chor, Internet Explorer 6 was vulnerable, unsafe for 284 days in 2006 according to Washington Post's Brian Krebs. Even Microsoft officials concurred with his findings. Compare with Firefox: Firefox was vulnerable for 9 days in 2006. So, for how many days was IE 7 vulnerable in 2007 (first 11 months)? You mention support call volume decrease for IE and that Microsoft continue to listen to its customers. Mr Chor, how exactly, concretely do you want/expect people to report on the phone crash bugs and hang bugs occuring in MSIE 7 to Microsoft? ... with call centers located in Philipines? I've tried to do just that, trying to reach Chris Wilson, and, from what I have seen and heard, it's not realistically feasible. Visit my webpage and then examine bugs #41 and #92. These rather serious, quite severe and incapacitating bugs were both reported before and, still today, they have not been fixed. They would have all been fixed by now if such bugs had been happening in Mozilla (Firefox), WebKit (Safari, Konqueror) or Opera. Like everyone else has been saying and are still saying, the IE development team still has to fix at the very least 700 bugs, incorrect implementations (all testcase-ed, all demontrable, reproducible) happening in HTML 4, CSS 2.1, DOM 2 interfaces and then implement more or less 500 properties, attributes, methods specified in official W3C Technical Recommendations, W3C web standards (HTML 4, CSS 2.1, DOM 2 interfaces, DOM 2 Core, DOM 3 Core). Every single day, web authors of all experience, from amateurs to experts/gurus, experience difficulties (from minor to major) with bugs of all kinds in IE 7. When is Microsoft going to finally fix all these proven and testcase-ed bugs? When is Microsoft going to implement valid markup code and valid CSS code in its microsoft.com webpages? In particular, in new or updated microsoft.com webpages? Microsoft just can not, on one hand, implement W3C web standards in IE 7 and then, on the other hand, refuse to adopt and refuse to implement these very same standards in Microsoft's own website. Microsoft has to become consequent and coherent regarding all this, in particular - but not exclusively - with MSDN webpages on web authoring. Regards, Gérard Talbot
Anonymous
November 30, 2007
Direct quote from the end of the "A vulnerability report" "ABOUT THE AUTHOR Jeff Jones is a Security Strategy Director in Microsoft’s Trustworthy Computing group." Once again, thanks for the un-biased reports! As always, the best source of information, is the un-biased source. ATM Report on IE7: http://secunia.com/product/12366/ Affected By: 19 Secunia advisories Unpatched: 37% (7 of 19 Secunia advisories) vs. Report on Firefox 2: http://secunia.com/product/12434/ Affected By: 18 Secunia advisories Unpatched: 22% (4 of 18 Secunia advisories) And Firefox has no issues in the yellow (medium) level. By anyones math, that puts Firefox out in front in terms of security. And if you want to compare to other browsers, it isn't worth it: Safari: http://secunia.com/product/5289/ Affected By: 6 Secunia advisories Unpatched: 50% (3 of 6 Secunia advisories) Opera: http://secunia.com/product/10615/ Affected By: 10 Secunia advisories Unpatched: 0% (0 of 10 Secunia advisories) Konqueror: http://secunia.com/product/3166/ Affected By: 14 Secunia advisories Unpatched: 14% (2 of 14 Secunia advisories)
Anonymous
November 30, 2007
Sorry, I can't get past the all-too-frequent IE 7 crashing or hanging at seemingly random times to appreciate anything you just posted.
Anonymous
November 30, 2007
So... what about IE8? I agree with the others calling for more information. The stats and pats on the back for IE7 are nice and all, but we need to know what to expect with IE8. The ASP.NET team is VERY good about providing tons of information, roadmaps, previews, etc. about future releases. The community has direct access, and can offer input to the ASP.NET team. What is keeping the IE team from doing the same?
Anonymous
November 30, 2007
What is keeping the IE team from it? Hmm... a desire to openly communicate with people since everyone who was interested in such has left.
Anonymous
November 30, 2007
Over 300 Million users are now surfing the web using Internet Explorer 7 and Microsoft anticipates that
Anonymous
November 30, 2007
IE7 needs an upgrade badly even though it's just a year old. Every time I fire it up I remember how bad it is in comparison to current release of FF.
Anonymous
November 30, 2007
Whine, whine, whine. All I have to do to remember that most web-devs are still in preschool is to visit this blog and read the negative comments. Good job, IE team! Keep it up.
Anonymous
November 30, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
November 30, 2007
How do EV certificates protect users? Either CAs verify subject identity before issuing certificates, in which case EV certificates are not any more secure than regular certificates, or CAs do not verify subject identities in which case EV certificates are not secure either. Would anyone please explain how are EV certificates protecting users better than regular certificates?
Anonymous
November 30, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
November 30, 2007
Now that we've hit this plateau, and trust me it's a welcome one that's well overdue, I'd be very interested in what's planned for the future now. Where is IE going? What features are being considered as something to be built in? What types of code will the next version be able to handle? Or will IE stale off again for a while until there's a percieved threat again? I'd really like to see e4x built into IE.
Anonymous
November 30, 2007
@Sam, Adam "1 year, still no ETA on IE8 release" "So... what about IE8?" As I mentioned before, there will be no news about future versions of IE at least until the end of 2009.
Anonymous
November 30, 2007
Give it up, rc. Wait, let me do it for you: "There is no IE team anymore." Thanks, rc. You don't need to say it now like you do in every post. :-)
Anonymous
November 30, 2007
On the one-year anniversary of the launch Internet Explorer (IE) 7, the IE team posted yet another “stay
Anonymous
November 30, 2007
Any news about IE 7.1, 7.5 or 8?
Anonymous
November 30, 2007
My last comment was up for a while and then deleted. Let me put it in a less pithy manner and see if it gets through this time. Like many others I would love to hear an update on the status of IE8. I fear that the IE team may really want to share this information because it is in their best interests to do so, but Steven Sinofsky's "translucency not transparency" memo may be behind the lack of information. I feel that calling attention to this change in philosophy may help to reverse the information lockdown before it hurts Microsoft too badly. Imitating the cultures of Google and Apple isn't always the answer, and it makes me sad to see that kind of short-sighted thinking gaining more traction at Microsoft.
Anonymous
November 30, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
November 30, 2007
Why the hype on IE7? Anyone with a choice uses a different browser! Give us a bug tracking system, and you will get developers to come back to IE. Get developers back to "Not hating" IE, and you might get "positive feedback" from the community, and your user base at large. Seems pretty simple to me.. too bad only Firefix, Safari and Opera seem to get it!
Anonymous
November 30, 2007
Today I have been developing another new website using CSS layout. I only triggered one IE CSS bug and it was in IE6. Developing for IE6 and IE7 still feels a bit like playing "Operation". But over the past year, I've built up a feel for the common ground between them. But I still get caught out at times. :) What I dread is an IE8 release which changes any aspect of how it renders pages compared to IE7. Developing for two versions of IE, one version of Firefox and one version of Opera already stretches CSS development time to the edge of what is commercially viable, in my experience. Please do continue your active participation at W3C's HTML and CSS working group. Please do continue working on your rendering engine, perhaps making this progress publicly available with tester versions. But don't put this in the public release until it's on the same page as the other mainstream web browsers (Firefox, Opera and Safari at the moment). On the UI front, I'm glad to see the menu bar was made visible by default in the end. However, there are lots of other oddities with the UI. I'm no usability expert, but I'm trying to do something constructive by taking screenshots and writing notes about things I notice: http://projectcerbera.com/ui/ie7/ An update which made IE7/XP fit in with the conventions of Windows XP would be a big help for my parents and non-technical friends. For example, make the tabs look and work like the tabs they see in Printer preference sheets or Windows Media Player's Options window. Whatever you decide to do, continuing to keep this blog open and letting people have their say is really cool. Especially given the negativity of some comments. It would be nice to get a "we see what you're all saying and here's what we think" in return!
Anonymous
November 30, 2007
IE 7 refresh or IE 8 which one? just wondering
Anonymous
November 30, 2007
But IE updates so much less than Firefox, so is the response for security vulnerabilities really speedy?
Anonymous
November 30, 2007
Fair enough, but..

Performance is .. not great
Why are add-ons allowed to crash the browser? -- honey@jklm.no

Anonymous
November 30, 2007
Dawson, This post by the VP of Engineering at Mozilla might help you come to your own answer: http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/schrep/archives/2007/11/use_the_metric_which_suits_you.html Al
Anonymous
November 30, 2007
Can someone tell me what IE is?
Anonymous
November 30, 2007
PingBack from http://blogs.dotnethell.it/vincent/The-First-Year-of-IE7.__12340.aspx
Anonymous
November 30, 2007
Deployment speed: Large downloads and interface changes slow clientside adoption. IE Team: "It's been a little over a year since we released IE7 on Windows XP and for Windows Vista, so I thought it would be worthwhile to talk about where we are after
Anonymous
November 30, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
November 30, 2007
Never trust a statistic you didn't faked yourself. Maybe 300 million Windows users have been forced to download IE7, but all independent stats show Firefox clearly in front of IE7. "Finally, we’ve seen a decrease of 10-20% in the support call volume for IE compared with a year ago" So you are saying that Firefox is responsible for the increased unemployment on the Philipines?
Anonymous
November 30, 2007
@oran & dk Absolutely right. And the MSFT web development platform (with Trident at its heart) is hugely important to a great many ISVs, too. At this time they/we undoubtedly feel really concerned about the 100% 'info blackout' being applied to IE's roadmap. Simple answer: move ownership to the developer division (these days, IE's logical home) and set folks like Scott Guthrie to work repairing some of the damage caused by the "shut your mouth" policy which I'm sure is so horribly embarrassing to the people working on the team.
Anonymous
November 30, 2007
it is far slower than firefox, you should work on this !!
Anonymous
December 01, 2007
A very simple fix would sort out most problems - IE is (in effect) already two browsers, one for standards mode and one for quirks mode. I would be satisfied if IE was upgraded so that in "standards" mode it ran the gecko engine (or failing that, adhered to W3C) and in quirks mode it ran the MS engine. That architectural change would solve the bulk of W3C and legacy problems since many "legacy" sites run in quirks mode. For web developers it would be easy to flip between which engine is needed to support their website.
Anonymous
December 01, 2007
I wonder when will you release IE without click to activate. I found a version for XP 64bit (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=37431bba-2d8e-48ab-8c9f-d5f5b2ea7be7&DisplayLang=en). But I am in doubted why Microsoft keep poorly discribe the thing:

This update includes minor changes to how Internet Explorer handles some web pages that use Microsoft ActiveX controls. Certain webpages will require users to manually activate Active X controls by clicking on it or using the TAB key and ENTER key.

What's above description means? can anyone here understand what it talking about if they don't know the think beforehand. Why can not make it simple and understand able. Btw, as we are using IE and continue to use Whaat the need of keeping your community and suporter in dark. Speakless on the think people want to know. It's one year already after IE7 is released and you have one year left to finish IE8 -- as your originally promise, Gates's word.

Anonymous
December 01, 2007
@Brian If you think Gecko is perfect for standard, I give you some pictures: http://n-blue.nblogz.net/firefox-extreamly-good/ Take close look on pictures (the article are in Thai, I don't think you can read it). And the last picture on this page: http://n-blue.nblogz.net/small-but-great-advantage-of-vista/
Anonymous
December 01, 2007
my ISP supports IE for making connections to the internet. So it is always open. But, that is the only use it has for me. I use Firfox for everything. And the statistics are hallucinations. Read this: http://shaver.off.net/diary/2007/11/30/counting-still-easy-critical-thinking-still-surprisingly-hard/
Anonymous
December 01, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 01, 2007
thanks for IE7! I used IE7 and IE6 for both development and normal usage. But please note followings about ie problems:

IE hangs more than firefox2 (firefox1 hangs more than all other browsers!), I thought you must solve this problem
IE does have "Save" or "CTRL+S" that is very important!
IE takes long time (in near all cases) for save web pages (firefox takes very short time) and during that, not only active can not be accessed, all other tabs is also inaccessible
IE does not save objects like "swf" when saving pages
I can not change IE7 default page! (it goes to "http://runonce.msn.com/runonce2.aspx" every time!)
(development) IE tries to verify cache each time a page request is made (and get "No Change" answer in many times)
(development) I did not found any good document for creating addins (i said just my experience about that) if you plan to do something right top, you may attract developers from using firefox. thanks

Anonymous
December 01, 2007
And what a year it has been. I believe that IE7 is catching IE6 in the ammount of CSS bugs it has. <a href="http://css-class.com/articles/explorer/guillotine/index.htm">IE7 Guillotine Bug</a> <a href="http://css-class.com/articles/explorer/floats/floatandcleartest1.htm">IE7 Guillotine Bug</a> There are plenty more. What is happening with IE8? Maybe it's back to the drawing board since IE8 had the IE7 Guillotine Bug.
Anonymous
December 01, 2007
Why can't this blog work like other blogs and have markup and preview. Here we go again. A variant of the original IE5 and IE6 bug which also effects IE7. http://css-class.com/articles/explorer/guillotine/index.htm A test involving the clear property on floats in which IE only supports 50 precent of the property. http://css-class.com/articles/explorer/floats/floatandcleartest1.htm A question.

Does a float behave stangely in IE because it has hasLayout or because it's a float?

Anonymous
December 01, 2007
Congratulations, IE team. Here's looking forward to an even better IE8.
Anonymous
December 01, 2007
I realize you can never please everyone all of the time, but... Concerning the overwhelming negativity on this site about IE7, two things come to mind: either the negative responses are from very depressed, whiny, negative people with nothing better to do than criticize, OR there's more than a grain of truth here... Are you listening Microsoft? Me, I don't have all day to coddle a finicky and quirky browser, so I avoid IE as much as possible.
Anonymous
December 01, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 01, 2007
It wasn't until I read dk's post, that it really hit home as to the real reason why MS needs to jump in to action on fixing IE. Microsoft doesn't make any money if: 1.) They adhere to web standards 2.) Open public bug tracking 3.) Talk transparently with the dev community 4.) Allow 2-way communication Thus they have no incentive to fix IE... until you analyze dk's remarks: 5.) By ticking off every developer that uses IE in any way shape or form, you are LOSING money on your other development tools, technologies across the Web spectrum, AND EVEN IN THE WINDOWS PROGRAMMING WORLD! as a result. Yes indeed! Tony, please go run this up the Microsoft flag pole! I don't care what the reason is that is used to get MS to fix IE, as long as it happens! But finally we have a reason that MS will listen too... MONEY! Best of Luck Tony, and please take Chris Wilson along with you, he's got the smarts to realize that this is a huge issue, and can translate what is needed in the fixes for the browser, to get IE back into shape. Kudos dk!
Anonymous
December 01, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 01, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 01, 2007
Are you still instructed by MS higher authorities to keep mum and make IE releases in sync with Windows releases?
Anonymous
December 01, 2007
I can't seem to decide IE's release pace is worse or Windows Ultimate Extras team's pace is.
Anonymous
December 01, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 02, 2007
I think it's really bad to celebrate because of the 300 million users which are "using" IE7. Every noob which buys a computer gets Windows. Every Windows gets Internet Explorer. So every noob gets, even if he does not like it, Internet Explorer. This noob does not even know that there are other, better, faster, more user friendly, safer, nicer, shinyer, and so i can go on for a minute or two, browsers. So the noob uses IE. Well, in that case i'm far from surprised that IE7 is being used by 300 million people.
Anonymous
December 02, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 02, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 02, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 02, 2007
@Al Billings "Wait, let me do it for you: 'There is no IE team anymore.'" It's you who says about "anymore", not I.
Anonymous
December 02, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 02, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 02, 2007
Wow! One more great Microsoft study.
Anonymous
December 03, 2007
Drop IE render engine, start using Gecko or Webkit
Anonymous
December 03, 2007
Not buying a word of the "study/report" based on: a.) Not declaring that it was an internal study/report indicates you aren't comfortable with 3rd parties doing the same study. If you were certain of the results, you'd sign your name to them. b.) All sites/comments/blogs out there point to the exact opposite! If I visit Secunia.com I always see IE with more issues, more unfixed issues, and more severe issues than any other browser. c.) Not an independent study. If you can point to an independent study, not commissioned, funded etc. by Microsoft, that claims that IE7 is more secure than Firefox 2, backed up with facts and references, then by all means post it. (but unless QA slips big time at Mozilla, I can tell you now, such a scenario is very unlikely!) Final note: So, once again, another post on this blog, and not a single word about being open with the community, IE8, bug fixes, new features, transparency, public bug tracking etc. except by every developer / manager / tester / designer / user / security expert commenting on this blog. Whats the issue here? If MS is not going to commit any time, resources, material to any of this, ISSUE A POST indicating such (preferably with a reason)! If you are planing to be part of the process, and be respectful of the community, POST something indicating that you've at least heard the several thousand readers on this blog that are SCREAMING for information! Seriously, if 50-70% of the end users for my applications were not using IE(6/7), I would no longer develop for IE, thats how ticked off we all are! Once 51% are not using IE, I will be pushing darn hard, to not support it, until the situation with the IE Team, and the developer community is FIXED!
Anonymous
December 03, 2007
Pleas MS make so more speed in IE8 more than firefox and safari .i think the best browser must hame this item: Secure more speed nice interface
Anonymous
December 03, 2007
What about testing Linux and Firefox versus Michrosoft Windows and Microsoft Internet Explorer?
Anonymous
December 03, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 03, 2007
Tony- You state that "we continue to listen to our customers and find ways to further improve Internet Explorer." I use FF/IE7 50/50. I would convert to IE7 100%, but FF has some great features I cannot give up. Can you implement these into IE somewhere somehow???
The integrated search bar in FF (ctrl-F) is much nicer then the find in IE7.
The ability in FF to put an RSS feed in the bookmark toolbar is incredibly simple and useful.
The drop-down search (next to the address bar) is better implemented in FF.
QuickTabs is really useful, but I find that many people don't know about. Maybe it should be better exposed to the user.
Anonymous
December 03, 2007
Chris Knight- Why would you want more than 60 open tabs? That would be a huge, cluttered, unmanageable mess.
Anonymous
December 03, 2007
"Year of silence from IE team" would have made a better article for this bliog
Anonymous
December 03, 2007
I wrote a blog entry about this on my website, in which I state I love IE, but the lack of news is frustrating. If you want to read (or reply to) it: http://blog.alex-media.nl/hello-ie-team-we-want-updates
Anonymous
December 03, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 03, 2007
Talk to us soon about IE 8. Though IE 7 works nice for my dev puposes. Please stay engaged with us like the .net team does.
Anonymous
December 03, 2007
Microsoft is a leader in Operating System, Programing Language, Technolgy & etc. My programing platform is .net, but Microsoft has no new idea for web browsing & web browsers software.... ie6 was not upgraded for 5 years beacuase has not any serious antagonist in web browsing software... and now, after years upgraded to version 7!!!!!!!!!!!!
Anonymous
December 03, 2007
ie ie ie..... i can see here so many fanboys... can you see what browser i'm using to read your blog? yes? can you read that easy word? Opera... you know? -the most compatible much more technologies support than ie or firefox.same for protocols -the fastest and the most secure or one of the most secure
Anonymous
December 03, 2007
Mozillas Chief Operating Officer John Lilly wrote in his blog that there are 125 Million Firefox users in the world. Two days after this anouncement Tony Chor, Group Program Manager wrote in his blog that there are 300 Million IE...
Anonymous
December 03, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 03, 2007
On Friday, 30th November, Internet Explorer 7 completed it’s first anniversary; the community of developers instantly started to stone the Microsoft’s browser, as you can see on IEBlog. I’ve decided to put my feelings here, out of the..
Anonymous
December 03, 2007
Make IE 8 like Firefox... Like a straight carbon copy. You won't be original but at least you'll have something that actually works. Hurry with version 8 so that version 6 will slowly become obsolete.
Anonymous
December 03, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 03, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 03, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 03, 2007
I just want to say congratulations to your team. I really don't care what people think, IE7 is a very stable and feature-rich browser. I have really enjoyed using it and have had no reason to switch to Firefox or other competitors. If i had any suggestion to make though it would be to add some sort of download manager into the product, at least something simple like Firefox does to their credit, otherwise keep up the great work!
Anonymous
December 03, 2007
I still like my IE6 and will use it as long as there are security updates available.
Anonymous
December 03, 2007
IE7 is a nice browser. BUT it crasches way too often. I always have FireFox as backup browser for when the constant crashing in IE7 get too tiering. FireFox is alot more stable than IE7 currently. I hope you can fix that in the next release.
Anonymous
December 03, 2007
No technology conscious user will use IE if you don't get 95%+ standards compliance in the next 2 releases, at some point of time, sites must be broken so that eventually it'll be over...why not do it in the next version itself? If you keep on preserving compatibility so that sites are not broken, that's worse for standards, isn't it? Please take the hard but right decision, rather than the easy and incorrect decision.
Anonymous
December 03, 2007
Are you IE guys serious? There's no way to know what's going on behind your closed doors! I like my information accessible, so if you want to impress, show us the internal bug tracking. Then we'll compare it to the internal bug tracking of Mozilla, which is completely open for anyone to see. Until then, pleas keep your rhetoric to yourself and show us some more of that sweet IE 8. (What do you mean, there's nothing to see?)
Anonymous
December 03, 2007
How about IE8??? and better support for webstandards...???
Anonymous
December 03, 2007
forward progress yes, and thanks for it. We all look forward to a complete standards ie8.
Anonymous
December 03, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 03, 2007
ie7 is just a typical product of microsoft... monopolistic thinking...
Anonymous
December 04, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 04, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 04, 2007
Yeah, PLEASE fix CSS in IE8 (or IE 7.5). You are making my job so much harder. I'd be a much happier person if IE disappeared off the face of the earth.
Anonymous
December 04, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 04, 2007
"This makes IE7 the second most popular browser after IE6". And IE6 is only six years old! I am expecting IE8 around 2012.
Anonymous
December 04, 2007
@Fredrik: A significant majority of IE crashes are caused by buggy add-ons. See http://www.enhanceie.com/ie/troubleshoot.asp for information about running without add-ons and determining which add-on is causing your crash.
Anonymous
December 04, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 04, 2007
Is this the kind of blog where someone posts and then doesn't read the comments? Because if you do read the comments I would have expected (from a serious and responsible blogger) two things:

Admitting that nobody has any insight into the actual amount of IE flaws and that the security statement in this post was therefore a mistake (anyone can make mistakes, it takes a real man/woman to admit them).
An actual statement about IE 8 (even if that statement is "no comment"). If these reactions are not forthcoming, than I can only conclude that this blog is the purest form of propaganda and that nobody should rely on any information posted to this blog, as it could in fact be harmful to them. Looking forward to your reactions! -Another developer who has been spending at least 8 hours of the last week fighting IE 6 bugs.

Anonymous
December 04, 2007
@Mike I'm sure you've encountered/suffered through most of these, but this site here offers some of the best bug tracking for issues in IE. http://webbugtrack.blogspot.com/search/label/IE there is also bugs for other browsers but most are for IE, and lots of them target IE6. Salut!
Anonymous
December 04, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 04, 2007
@Not impressed "It will take no less than 10 minutes out of your busy day to post something about IE8 on this blog" They know about IE8 no more than you and I. So they have nothing to post.
Anonymous
December 04, 2007
rc, I still can't figure out what you are trying to say? There are a couple of hundred people on the IE team. I was in their building about seven months ago for lunch, visiting old teammates. They aren't cardboard cut outs and they are working on the browser... I saw direct evidence of it. So, chill with the trolling of "The IE team doesn't exist and there is no IE8" on every post. It is monotonous.
Anonymous
December 04, 2007
And, rc, you can't say I have a vested interest in making IE8 look good or lying for them. After all, I'm QA for Firefox these days.
Anonymous
December 04, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 04, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 04, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 04, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 04, 2007
This is getting annoying! At microsoft they know which version of Windows is at my PC, they know if it is legal or not and they know which updates I have installed. They know which sites I browse and yet I still my standard startpage of IE6 is now and then taken over by Microsoft to tell me to update to IE7. HOW CAN I UPGRADE??? I USE WIN2K! YOU KNOW IT. Quit spamming me, I know IE7 is better but since I can't install it, don't tell me it is there.
Anonymous
December 04, 2007
IE makes web developers suffer. IE7 less so than IE6, but still more than is needed. Yay, one year of dissapointment is behind us. There's to one more year, and maybe another, until Microsoft gets IE right. Or halfway right. Or, at least, not painful. I know it's not the fault of the whole IE team, I know that there are a few really good engineers working on IE. But boy, some of the guys making decisions must be baboons, because I can not thing of any other explanation* for IE 7. *I'm going with "Never attribute to malice what can be attributed to incompetence." here...
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
I am very happy with IE7; keep up the good work guys :)
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
I'm less interested to hear about the first year of IE7, than I will be to hear about the last year of IE.
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
Reading al these comments made me think about how this became possible. Either Microsoft is trying to come up with something totally different in respect towards browsers (maybe something that won’t use html) or the IE team currently consists of perhaps only 6 developers and they are desperately trying to get more people on board but nobody wants to.
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
Evel, Show me the specs IE implements then. Show me tests I can run to make sure my sites conform to them. Show me something I can use to tell if my site is likely to work with future versions of IE, not just current. At the moment, writing pages for IE involves taking wild stabs in the dark until you hit something that works. That's insanity IMHO.
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
I'm quite happy with IE7 myself, it has everything firefox has (yes, that includes adblock and whatever random plugin you can think of except for the most obscure) and looks a lot more streamlined, loads faster and runs better in generel. I've had problems with it in which case I've fallen back to Firefox, so it isn't perfect, but firefox also has its issues. I just prefer IE7 and firefox is my back up. No need to take the martyrs approach, they're just web browsers for crying out loud, use whichever you prefer not because of some militant like hate of Microsoft but for conveniences sake. If the next firefox really provides a lot of advantages over IE7 then I'll be sure to switch, as it stands they're both literally neck and neck, both have their pros and cons. So congrats to the IE7 team, but like always in the world of software you gotta keep up or get left behind. Lots of work to be done to improve IE even more.
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
I totally agree with the comments from above. IE7 is not something to be proud of. Tony, you wrote the wrong words on the wrong moment. If you wrote something about office 2007, that it is a big improvement etc. I would totally agree with that, cause office 2007 just rocks. But saying something like that about IE7 is a big surprise for me and a big mistake from you.
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
When quizzed about the new features of IE7, are you proud of the fact your the only browser which sandboxes itself? That's laughable! You wrote the code - why does it need a sandbox? Because IE7 is too insecure that even it's developers don't trust it. You development team and your product is a joke. Just thought i'd say that. Congratulations on pushing IE7 out of Windows Update - that really got some good adoption stats. Phill
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
I guess I'm a Microsoft fanboy. I've worked there. I run primarily Microsoft shops for web development. But most of the people "whining" in the comments are correct - IE7 was a big step from IE6, but it needs to go further from a standards adoption pov. It also would help if the web development community was at least clued in to the direction IE was going.
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
The irony is that, I am reading this post on Firefox. By the way, if MS people IE7 DOES NOT work in Vista. I don't care cause I rarely use it (and then it crashes). Anurag
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
IE is a nightmare to all web developpers, it is a pain in the as of internet
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
There is nothing wrong with IE7 and firefix isn't better than microsoft's browser. If that was the case then firefox was themarketleader now. I don't get why people are so negative about microsoft. I think they have to think just before they say something based on nothing. I am not a fanbobut only want to explain why the negative critics against microsoft and it's browser are wrong and not fair. Most sites work on their browser. Programmers should face that the site on which IE7 not work is not the fault of microsoft nor their programmers skills. Also it is just a fable that ie7 is more instable against viruses and malware andso. Maybe it is not perfect but that dont give you the right to hate microsoft so much. Firefox isn't perfect also. And 4 the programmers who left a comment here I just want 2 say this: Think before you say sh*t like I am not gonna develop something 4 microsoft untill they realise the so called problem here cause it's just bull and you all know it if you really work with IE7!
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
"Finally, we’ve seen a decrease of 10-20% in the support call volume for IE compared with a year ago, before the release of IE7. This is typically a sign that the product is more stable and has fewer issues than the previous release." Have you considered the alternate possiblity, which is that there are 10-20% fewer support calls because 10-20% less people are using IE?
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
I think we are NOT interested in the past year but we are more interested in the upcoming year (IE8?)!
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
IE7 yes, yes, what a great browser...for ME TO POOP ON!!!
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
Vulnarability issues aside, I.E. 7 is simply incompatible with many websites and web based software, including the J.D. Edwards software used at my company. I.E. 7 will not be installed precisely for this reason.
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
Everyone here just got trolled by Tony.
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
To be quite honest, Tony, I am amazed you were brave enough to make that post. You should be hiding the fact that a year has gone by since your new browser, and it still has no standards support. Most of the people who have adopted IE7 did so because they were forced by your updates.
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
@Evel You are truly an ignoramus if you don't think web standards are important. Web standards decrease development time and enhance the user experience. IE is holding back implementation of css 3.0, and therefore holding back new potential user experiences on the web. Maybe you should look up the word "standards".
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
On behalf of the millions of Firefox, Opera, and Safari users who aren't even sure where the IE icon is on their desktop anymore, I extend my heartfelt congratulations.
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
are you serious? Firefox is WAY better. IE 7 is a joke! I never use it.
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
Yes! IE7 made the 8 hours I spent tracking down a simple javascript error so rewarding. No debugger, poor developer tools. I wish it would just go away. My life would be much easier. Think of all the extra time I would have!!
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
Can't you just relegate IE so its available for corporate intranets and buy Opera to actually publish a useful browser?
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
From purely a web developers perspective, layouts that work fine in Firefox, Opera and Safari always need fixing in IE7, to say nothing of IE6. So at the one year anniversary of your browser, it still can't render things properly, when all the other browsers can. How long before it catches up to the other browsers?
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
@Tony Chor It must be very frustrating to see so much negativity coming your way. It must be said that the IE team has deserved this all coming towards them. What did you think, while delivering a half and buggy product, to expect that the users are going to be thankful, even grateful? I suggest you go talk to the Mozilla organisation to embed their Gecko engine into a XUL application that looks and feels like IE. This way you can make up for the years of embarrassment that is called IE.
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
You released IE7 just so you could say your browser is "only" one year old, even though the standards it supports predate back more than 5 years.
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
I had 4 tabs open when I"m online then IE 7 suddenly freezes for a second and then when it came back i have 4 Different IE Windows instead of 4 tabs in on IE Windows. Can someone check if there's a problem with the tabs?
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
I teach web development at a college level and the frustration expressed by my students is almost impossible to relate here. IE6 was such a flawed browser that once you start to develop web pages, the students realize how ridiculously backward it really was. With IE7, the promise was that it would support more standards, particularly CSS standardization. But sadly, there are still bugs that require workarounds and special consideration. When is Microsoft going to get it? At what point will you actually work with the community and develop a platform that supports the same standards as nearly every other browser on the market?
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
As long as you don't ever print anything its ok at best. Go to Yahoo.com and print out a weather map!!!!!!!!!!!
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
IE is slow, IE is buggy, IE is bad. Sorry, you need to dump IE and all that it stands for in order to create a better browser. Resign and bloom from your programming experience so far. IE is dead! Also take a deep breath, Windows is next...
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
i think u ppl hate freedum. microsoft gives me the freedom to go anywhere on the internets.i hear that firefox blocks many sights,,but thats what i would expect because firefax is made from communists
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
Firefox had more functionality, and loaded faster than IE7 in the IE5.5 times. Microsoft should open up to some open standards. You're bragging about the number of users on a product that is mandatory on all windows installs. Microsoft will always inflate their count with OEM and mandatory installs.
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
Congratulations on doing your job. IE6 and IE7 are the only things that make my job as a web developer miserable.
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
At least it's not intended for the web....and what do you call those things?...standards? W3what?
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
Frankly, another user put it just right. It's a shame to see Microsoft go down the tubes with such delusion. Microsoft needs to come out, apologize for all its shoddy products. Slow IE7, buggy Vista..and then start building products that people actually want to use rather than being forced to use by enterprises.
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
Internet Explorer used to be the best browser for Mac OS X. Imagine that!
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
20% reduction in support volume? That seems pretty much inline with the 20% reduction in market share. ;-) Standards, please.
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
Can you imagine what would happen if the whole development community persuaded their employers/clients to ditch IE? This would mean increased productivity and a decrease in expenses! I realize developers would in turn lose money, they would also experience increased health and longevity (due to reduced stress)!
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
I dont seee the improvement comparing to avant brouwser running on top of IE 6.0 (so far the only productive brouwser i design i know of, it realy beats all others out there) Combined field for searching and highlighting intuitive GUI updates regulary with new nice to have options, Ms should have taken it as an example of a community tweaked product. Okay now there is some fishing protection (about time) that's good, but i see some top bars to often while not required. Well the good thing is, Avant can still be used on top of IE7 as well... (pfwww, lucky me) about popularity here some real world stats of just another website today visits, %, brouwser type. 257, 51.40%, MSIE, 6.0 156, 31.20%, MSIE, 7.0 53, 10.60%, Firefox, 2.0.0 9, 1.80%, Safari, 1.2 8, 1.60%, Mozilla, 5.0 4, 0.80%, Camino, 1.5 3, 0.60%, MSIE, 5.5 3, 0.60%, Firefox, 1.5.0 2, 0.40%, Opera, 8.65 2, 0.40%, MSIE, 5.01 2, 0.40%, Firefox, 1.0 1, 0.20%, Mozilla, 4.0 Oh and please stop give comments those who use products who are used less then 2 % that's for sure not a world wide standard. Dont say that you create a website for such small market shares. I have to conlude MS does a good job on becoming a standard, by numbers of users. But well the product might require some more attention as i read in the above postings.
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
IE7? what is that? Is it a programm? NO Is it in development? NO Is it a bug YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
With respect Nico (above) this is a Microsoft site. I've seen almost exactly the same figures except in reverse order for Mac and Linux-centric sites. People who don't use Windows couldn't give two shiny dog's eggs about IE's utter disregard for standards, it's Microsoft's own users who are complaining about this and they are being consistently ignored because egomaniacal and greedy naval gazing billionaires think they have the right to dictate to people about what constitutes good standards and practises.
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
We hear constantly, that MS does not want to break the web. Fine, but do realize, that every hour, of every day, developers are building new pages, new site, new apps.... and all of them have to deal with the fact that the web is already broken in IE. You can harp on about existing sites all you want, but the situation will never fix itself, until IE has a method of complying to standards. Once available, the horrible broken code of the past can be cleaned up and we can all move on. All we want, is a version of IE that is standards compliant (even to specs posted say 2 years ago) Add the switches, flags, magic comments whatever you want, but please, please, please, please make sure it is IN THE NEXT RELEASE!!!
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
I pretty much agree with the sentiment among these comments. Your arguments about volume of adoption are nothing remarkable, all they show is that people use windows (this also seems to be your main strategy in IE development: "they'll use it anyway, so let's not bother too much.."). I cannot for the life of me come to understand how the current (embrace-and-extend + institutionalized arrogace)-strategy on web technologies are going to be a net asset to your company when it spawns so intense dislike. If you'd really want to, you could do better, just look to any browser competitior, or what you're doing right with the DX framework or C#. Even so I'd like to comment on the new tabs in IE7, i found myself actually surprised by clean and functional implementation. Thumbs up for that one, at least!
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
I for one am glad that IE still stands firm as the absolute proof Microsoft doesn't care about the web or standards, no matter what other sounds come out of Redmond. It saves so much time debating those issues with people who like to believe Microsoft is actually changing.
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
You guys CAN not be serious. Yes, IE has a big market share. Sadly. Do you have any idea how painful webdeveloping has become because of your 'browser'? Every time I've made something cool, I have to spend the same I did creating, on making it all IE compatible and working around your bugs and inferior implementations. I can not even begin to imagine how much more productive I could have been if only you'd make this browser any good. How much is that to ask anyway? For a browser to be at least standard-compliant? After all these years? I literally have tears in my eyes. Congratulations for being proud on yourselves. That must have taken a lot of ignorance or arrogance and is quite an achievement in itself.
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
I don't know how other web developers work, but my routine is typically something like this:

spend a few minutes getting something really cool working on Firefox.
spend the next few hours/days/weeks trying to figure out how to make it work on IE. IE is the bane of every web developer's existence. That is reality. Most sensible people I know have switched their default browser to a non-IE choice. IE's market share is probably just a measure of the average user not being aware of better options.

Anonymous
December 05, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
As a very well educated technical employee of a massive Microsoft competitor, I have to congratulate you on IE7. I absolutely love the browser and while I wouldn't mind more addons, it does everything I want, rarely if ever crashes and does it all in good speed.
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
Web designers: When estimating the cost of developing a website for a paying customer, put an extra item on the quota: "Internet Explorer, additional development" and estimate some realistic sum for what you think the oddities in IE cost in development time and show it to the customer. We need more people to recognize the problem.
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
Dear IE team, How did you think people were going to respond to this type of post? Either 1)you are out of touch with the web development community and how we feel about IE, or 2)you know how we all feel but choose to press on with this type of marketing dribble. Either way, it's almost like this is an abusive relationship you have with the web development world. I could care less if it takes Microsoft 5 years to develop the next Windows OS... but it's different with your web browser. If IE8 and CSS3 adoption is 5 years away, you effect our livelihoods. And I really hate that. It's not that I love to hate you, I really want to love you. I wish you'd just communicate better, develop quicker, and aggressively/fully support standards. If an open source project (webkit) or a less-funded foundation (mozilla) can do this, then why can't one of the world's richest companies manage it?
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
IE 7 fails. Vista fails. Microsoft fails. If I had my choice, I would be on a Mac this instant. But it'll have to wait until the summer.
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
<blockquote>"Internet Explorer used to be the best browser for Mac OS X. Imagine that!"</blockquote> Why do you think it was discontinued? ;)
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
IE beats Firefox anyday just by the fact that IE implements Security Zones. In IE I can assign certain websites as Trusted and have them run and install ActiveX etc. I can assign certain websites to Restricted Zone and not have them run any ActiveX/Javascript, etc. And I can put the rest of the web in the Internet Zone and choose the security settings as I see fit. And I get a nice little indicator in the IE status bar telling me what zone I'm in right now. Now the zone implementation in IE is not perfect and has never been fully fixed. For example, if I add a website to a zone, and it downloads an Activex from a different subserver, that gets treated as Internet zone rather than put in with Trusted Zone. Either Firefox does not have security zones, or I am ignorant of the fact. And I don't want a add-on or a script that some 15 year old wrote. I want it in the browser. If you want to write a better browser, it should have all the features of other browsers and more, not missing critical features here and there. No other browser has implemented Security Zones. It's the reason I switched over from Netscape, back in the days, and refuse to use Firefox.
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
Can Microsoft please officially EOL Internet Explorer and reserve their future failings for Silverlight? In other words... why don't you do the world a favor?
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
Please, please, please just accept W3C standards.
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
I'm a customer relations rep for a large online trade company and speak with thousands of customers a year. Over the last nine months, I've made it a habit to casually ask which browser the customer is using. When the answer is IE6/7 (which it almost always is) I nonchalantly mention how Firefox is much better. What's interesting is that most responses are to the tune of "Thanks, I'm definitely going to try it out" as opposed to a more lukewarm reply. Quite a few even took the time to send an email stating how they switched and stopped using IE altogether. My perspective is that anything that makes our customer happy and reduces support on our end ($$$) is part of my job. Switching people away from IE to Firefox has been a slam-dunk and other reps are starting to do the same.
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
Congrats! IE7 certainly is more secure! I have witnessed it myself. Seeing as I only use it to visit web sites on our internal intra-net, it is rock-solid secure. I wouldn't trust it to open an Internet site farther than I could throw Bill Gates.
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
I doubt this is what the softies wanted when they made this post. But truth cannot be concealed, and now it is out, in the open. How can you ignore such a strong need of your customers (and developers), to get more standards compliant. I'm sure it isn't that difficult. You've got the people, and they have certainly got the brains. The only reason this charade continues is because it is more important for MS to maintain its dominant coughmonopolycough position rather than help customers or developers. No wonder people like me moved, and will never look back. Posted from Firefox, on Linux.
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
It's good to be the monopoly. Throw out all your stats about how many millions are using IE. What's the old adage about how millions of flies on a manure truck can't be wrong? Any web developer knows the headaches one has to go through to insure that their site functions in IE. And for what reason?
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
thanks for making my life even more difficult with IE7 and Vista. i wish microsoft could get something right. I'll be going to linux and firefox with hopes of never seeing a microsoft product again.
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
Ironically, increased usage of IE7 will only ensure IE is on a slow-track for future development and standards compliance. The business case for budget allocations for this project will only decrease when the PHBs feel, "victory is in sight!" And I echo the sentiments of many here in saying that developing in CSS/XHTML means you waste too much time on what should be needless IE work-arounds. Sadly, the World Wide Web should not be a battle ground for browser, video and sound file format dominance because the casualties of that war are the people who use it.
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
IE always makes me want to shoot something... or myself. I design and code a beautiful website, which works perfectly in Safari, Firefox, Opera and others. Then I move to IE. Some things look good. Most don't. And it isn't my fault. Rather, it's the idiotic way IE handles any sort of modern, reliable programming. Add to that the random crashes of IE, and I wonder how I get anything done on that browser. Please: accept defeat from the Mozilla group, stop development of IE, and focus on making Windows actually work. You're spreading your workforce too thin. You need to focus on one thing at a time, because otherwise, you'll be in your current position: turning out many shoddy products, instead of turning out only a few incredible products every year.
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
I've been using Opera since 1998, which was the first year I got into computers. I've tried other browsers, but feel safest using Opera. It's had tabs for many years, something I'm surprised took so long to make it into IE. What really amazes me is the overall amount of highly useful features it has, while those of IE remain somewhere between minimal to non existent. I do, however, applaud the anti phishing and other anti fraud measures that have been implemented into IE. Security should be #1 at all times in any product in my opinion. #2 in my opinion should be the following of standards - not creating your own. Additional features come after those 2 things. Given IE's security track record and inability to follow standards, it has fallen very, very far behind superior alternatives which have understood the importance of following strong security practices as well as standards. 300 million users means that you have a browser that ships by default with the worlds most common operating system - nothing more. Put even more effort into security and following standards, and you will gain a much happier and stronger user base. I don't dislike IE, but I see no reason to use something that makes me feel like it's 1998 all over again, puts me at bigger risk of being targeted by malicious websites (when you're the biggest, you will be targeted the most, so you need to code with safety in mind at all times), and refuses to follow standards.
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
Yes, well umm, you can count me as an IE7 statistic only for the reason that Vista didn't support firefox the last time I checked. I don't use IE7 willingly and there are way too many little things that don't work quite right when going to websites compared to IE6 and firefox.
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
You people don't get it. The entire point of IE 7 was a stopgap to prevent people from moving to Firefox. Firefox has tabs - look we have tabs too. Firefox displays pages correctly - look we sort of do. Firefox has something called web standards implemented - look, we can pretend that we made progress. IE7.x will not be out ever, because the whole point is to make managers say the following words: "We do not have enough in the budget to support two browsers. Therefore, we have decided to test this release on IE only." And for more enlightened ones, "If you have the time to make things work on other browsers, go for it." IE8 will be Silverlight + enough XHTML to specify where Silverlight features go. And there will be a point and click web dev kit, and everyone will say "I develop for IE only because it's so easy." And informed technical-minded people the world over will give up and shoot themselves.
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
The comments show the amount of deserved hatred floating around the web over IE, and this on an IE blog.. It must be good to be a monopoly, being able to hold back web advances for your own gains. As seen in these comments though, people are waking up, realizing IE is a horrible browser and realizing MS is purposefully trying to break and hold back the web to protect their precious desktop monopoly. Google showed Microsoft with ajax what horrible things can happen if they allow technology to advance, they don't want to make that mistake again. I can only hope this is IE's last birthday, but sadly I think their death will come slower
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
I just realized how many sites there are dedicated to IE bugs - complete test cases, samples, descriptions, and in many cases an image of the intended behavior (often from a standards-compliant browser). The entire internet is providing free, comprehensive, repeatable testing with itemized lists and zero ambiguity. If I had one tenth of the feedback IE has, my team's software (which has to render on the engine with so many documented bugs) would be spot-on perfect, provably so, taking about 80% of the time to develop, compared to not having that feedback. Even with the sheer amount of bugs, the descriptions could not be any clearer and there is actual test code which can be loaded quickly. Suggestion - make an A/B test for every bug. Page 1 has the first bug, along with a JPG/GIF/PNG of how it should look, and a link to the next page. Regression tests would consist of one guy clicking "next" hundreds of times to make sure everything renders correctly. And each developer can be assigned a bug according to the page number. This requires very little assembly, and no research - it has already been done for free. I would think myself in heaven if I had such a clear and dedicated user base who was able to locate bugs and provide test cases. I bet one person could fix all of these bugs in one year, unless the codebase is so horribly convoluted that each fix requires a redesign. But many of the samples I have seen are simple if (something) then (adjust something) fixes, or even default settings. PM for overall IE must be a dream job - unless higher ups are saying "intentionally sabotage everything for market share"
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
You know what? IE is irrelevant to me because of its broken implementation of standards. Standards are there for a reason. I dont care what your motivation is for not following them, if IE doesn't follow them, then you are providing a broken product, and people will realize this and slowly but surely switch to alternatives. And do you know what I tell other people regarding a broken product? Ditch it. Simple as that. Let me break it down for you. I design a website that is compliant to standards. An IE user comes across it and tells me whats wrong with it though his/hers IE browser. I tell that user that his/her browser is broken and that you need to switch to one that isnt, ie Firefox. User switches, everyones happy. I try to point out and show to as many people as possible alternatives to IE, and each and every one of those users are happy. So until you fix your broken browser, im just not going to put up with it, and you can sit back and watch as, slowly but surely, your marketshare decreases.
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
Microsoft: I rolled out Firefox at my clients long ago, because of security issues with IE. IE is easier to manage, especially on a large scale. However, I have no intention of moving those clients back to IE. You lost our trust with unacceptable security problems, and you're not going to get it back with a non-standard browser, even if it's now secure. Compared to the 90's, Microsoft has made dramatic improvements with security, but it’s been reactive. Only after your product's flaws are exposed have you taken security seriously, unlike Novell who took it seriously from the beginning. I must say I truly admire Microsoft's marketing division. They are the most impressive part of your company. Microsoft's management, marketing, and teamwork are truly remarkable. It's ironic, where's Novell today? They had excellent engineering, horrible marketing, and horrible management. Your performance should be a case study in every business school. If the product liability laws were changed so Microsoft could be sued like General Motors can be sued for defective products, that would level the playing field. I lost clients because of Small Business Server 4.0 and Outlook 97. Heck, I had to use debugging tools to watch Outlook 97 open its own .dll files in read/write mode, then corrupt them. Why would ANY program be written to open executable code in read/write mode? I had to set the files themselves as read only to avoid a problem your tech support wouldn't admit existed. Watching and studying Microsoft has given be a great respect for the art of management, I wanted to pursue an MBA after watching your company during the 90's. With an inferior product you took market share from your competition. WOW! And as for Novell, well I guess that's what happens when (most) engineers step into management. Someday if I step into management, I'll never allow myself to make those mistakes. Management is its own art form, microsoft proved that to me. Bill Gates: you are truly amazing. I wish I could say that same about your products.
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
IE7 has been very disappointing. Even with all of IE6 flaws, I still used it time to time because of sheer speed. With IE7, I have a slow Firefox wannabe.
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
I wish I could bill Microsoft for the time I've wasted over the years to get compliant web pages - which work perfectly in Firefox, Safari and Opera - to display correctly in their browser (and usually the previous two versions as well). Honestly, IE adds perhaps 20 - 30% to the development time required for most websites, especially those with interesting designs. Someone ends up paying for that - either the now irate client or the cost is absorbed by the developer. Most small development firms and contract programmers can't afford to absorb those kind of costs, either. Most web development projects I've worked on usually involved at least one instance of explaining why although we developed a feature on budget at first, we needed three extra days here and an extra day there to get it working correctly in IE. I've had to forego a clean, simple 3-column design and replace it with an image which faked the background columns because IE would not lay out the columns correctly! This drastically changed other parts of the design and made the whole thing much more complex than it needed to be. This kind of thing happens all the time with IE. What makes it worse is it's often required to support at least the two latest versions of IE, and historically they have always displayed pages diffrerenty. This situation is unacceptable, Microsoft. You have the talent and resources to develop a browser as good as Firefox, Safari or Opera, so why don't you?
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
Is it me or has MS done it again, IE7 a weak copy of FireFox - just a tad bit late don't you think so Bill? Tabbing? Pu-lease, FF did that a million years ago... Middle click to close tab? Come on... What ever happened to innovation and originality??
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
Unfortunately ie7 is just a slight improvement over ie 6 as far as user experience goes, scrollbar tends to stick. Slight, I tell you. As far as developer experience goes I don't see any improvements that really matter to a dev. And what's this Spy-vs-Spy clandestine behaviour from the IE team. If IE8 gets no lip service soon about what it is all about and maybe just a release date I will have to have my organisation move to Firefox.
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
Ie7 is a step forward, but it's still really lagging The most serious gripe I have with ie is that it dies not support web standards. Please follow the w3c. Why is it the sites I make work perfectly in firefox, safari and opera, but not Internet explorer? It's absurd to suggest microsoft "can't" do it. I don't understand how microsft, the most powerful software company with the mot resources cannot make a web standards compliant browser. It honestly seems like MS is deliberately breaking web standards just to keep people forced to windows and ie. This is not acceptable and my reaction has been to lose interest in microsft in general. By violating the spirit of the www and the spirit of open communication, you have lost my trust and respect. As a result, I no longer want anything to do with any microsoft product. No amount of value in the sftware you make can impress me because I have no confidence in your method and reliability.
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
I've all but given up on Internet Explorer users. Whenever I code a site, I always use XHTML 1.1 and CSS 3.0, and let the user agents worry about displaying it properly. I'd serve XHTML as the proper application/xhtml+xml were it not for Internet Explorer. My boss made me implement a couple of IE workarounds, which were not easy, let me tell you. If users want to see my site as I intended, I have links to Firefox and Safari. Quite a bold policy for a corporate site, but I've noticed IE's user agent all but vanish from my server logs -- and this is from a site which most users browse from their office computers. Microsoft is sinking. All hands, abandon ship. IE7 was too little, too late, and unless IE8 actually brings about standards-compliance, I'd say Microsoft has lost the browser wars. Bundle Firefox and Safari with Windows 7 and just let the poor Internet Explorer die in peace.
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
Tony, 10-20% less support call volume is nothing to brag about, it just means that less people are using IE7! Please stop making statements that only embarrass Microsoft and reveal your vast ignorance. Let me let you in on a little secret: I am a web programmer and most of the people I know use Firefox. Firefox is superior to IE because it has better support, bugs are fixed faster and new enhancements are introduced continually; this and the fact that it supports existing standards. So the next time you post a blog, please say something about how you made your browser better than before, don't waste our time with empty platitudes and dull exaltations.
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
First off, what I find interesting is the complete lack of response from the IE team. Secondly, again some real world stats for you all to share from a website getting around 55.000 unique visitors each month. This website is not only for the technically minded either, so no excuses along the lines of "But of course you get more Firefox hits!". Anyways, here's the short list: Firefox 58.6 % MS Internet Explorer 30.1 % Opera 10.1 % iBrowse 0.4 % Mozilla 0.4 % Safari 0.2 % Others 0% For IE, the numbers are 18.6% for IE 7.0, and 11.5% for IE 6.0. Firefox 2.0.0.11 makes up 38.1% of the total. Again, these are REAL WORLD figures from a site with a pretty standard visitor profile. Draw your own conclusions. Also, I'd LOVE to switch over full time to Firefox myself, but the ONE thing that keeps me using IE is Single Sign On for our company intranet applications, which most of the time only need IE cause they utilize some very specific IE oriented code instead of more standards based code. Can you guess which intranet portal system we're running? :)
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
Microsoft is "going down" because, like all of the above posts prove that MS is going in the wrong direction and is lost beyond words...
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
@ryAn: You clearly haven't read the posts. Everyone that is complaining already uses an alternative(s). The real problem is that the users of the sites that the developers build are not so enlightened. And telling users to change browsers isn't exactly a tractable solution (have you ever talked to a user?) unless a large percentage of main stream sites do it all at once (or over a very short period of time). Unfortunately, I doubt that management at these companies will be willing to allow this. Or allow the developers involved to retain there positions if it is "just done." It really does need to happen though. Standards compliance is necessary and I highly doubt that MS will do it unless put under a lot of pressure. Say the pressure of (what they think is) 300 Million users (sophistry).
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
As developer I try not to touch Microsoft products. I think I should send some invoices to Microsoft for lost time on workaround of their bugs... Microsoft makes my life more complicatet
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
you use Deep Blue computer to develop IE7? why so slow on my 4GB system.
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
We're working with developers and the Irish public sector developing a big web based application. Roughly one third of our development costs are being spent working around bugs in IE6 and IE7.
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
300 Million Users huh? So is that 300 million consumers that just bought PCs and needed to open IE to download FF???
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
I love the propaganda, and the fact you completely ignore your biggest rivals, saying that IE7 is the second most widely used browser after IE6. To people giving out about web developers whining. While some people may not care what developers gripes are, you are most likely end users, or project managers who only want to see the end product being a website with cross browser compatibility. While IE7 was an improvement on IE6, I love the way you "borrowed" the idea of tabbed Windows from Mozilla. I hope you pay heed to the comments posted here.
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
Thanks, if it wasnt for your product i would have never found Firefox!
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
I back up dk's remarks. http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2007/11/30/the-first-year-of-ie7.aspx#6627593 as a web developer, i will never support microsoft in any of their efforts. in fact i will do things in my power to see that all microsoft products fails. and perhaps adhering to standards and being more open will allow everyone to have a better experience on the web, but i don't believe they will bring back the countless hours spent hacking up my site so that the majority of users can experience it the way it was meant to be.
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
follow W3C standards, support SVG, please.
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
Please start charging for IE. Then MS could pay all us web developers for all the time and money we spend on coping with all its bugs.
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
I rarely, if ever, have any issues with any browsers i use that i dont cause myself. Thou I dont own an apple/mac/tiger/leopard, which also has issues, i do use firefox, opera and seamonkey for specific purposes on my pc and laptop. Perhaps I am one in a million that rarely has any issues with any softwares or systems. This knocking each other around is old and getting rather boring. Not one is perfect and each is trying their best to support their user base.
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
I rarely, if ever, have any issues with any browsers i use that i dont cause myself. Thou I dont own an apple/mac/tiger/leopard, which also has issues, i do use firefox, opera and seamonkey for specific purposes on my pc and laptop. Perhaps I am one in a million that rarely has any issues with any softwares or systems. This knocking each other around is old and getting rather boring. Not one is perfect and each is trying their best to support their user base. We are enjoying ie7!
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
If something works on most modern browsers, there's almost always a big chance that it won't work on IE. If IE would not exist, the world of web development would be a better place.
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
This is a joke right? Your using irony? Sarcasm? Please tell us all that you were paid to write this, paid a LOT. Sorry if I am not being very constructive in my posting but IE7 really is THAT bad compared to the competition.
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
I refuse to support IE on my sites. In fact, I have specific code the displays an warning if an IE visitor is detected. Try it on http://pantherfotos.com IE has made my job doubly difficult in putting together this website. Several javascripts are disabled when IE is detected.
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
If have nothing of value to add. It has all been said. But just count me in as another annoyed web-developer. The quirks in IE cost real time in development, hence money (not to forget, that it's no fun at all to build workarounds). (I often fantasized of redirecting all IE-users to the firefox-download-page.)
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
@mcNaz very nice. if every website would do this, a LOT of people would switch to a better browser like firefox, opera or safari.
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
developing a browser is a hard job. And i don;t expect miracles but neither can't i hold myself commenting on : "Finally, we’ve seen a decrease of 10-20% in the support call volume for IE compared with a year ago, before the release of IE7. This is typically a sign that the product is more stable and has fewer issues than the previous release." huh, really? Fortunately, this is one interpretation. And i guess you know very well what they say about statistics.... Please, Keep WALKING. Not bragging.
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
By now, all modern browsers support Acid2. Why doesn't IE support it? By refusing to improve your standards support, you waste lots of web developers' time.
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
The development of IE needs to be turned inside-out so that every bug is open for the world to see like it is for Firefox. The masses have spoken, and if you make it open you'll have a huge horde of people submitting bugs, doing test case reductions, and more work freeing up your engineers to fix the bugs and bring the standards compliance IE up to that of other A-Grade browsers.
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
If you remove all comments AGAINST IE, I wonder if you'll have any more comments left to this post.
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
I would like to see the rendering engine of IE6 updated so we don't need to waste so much time hacking our sites for this. IE7's rendering engine is better, but still REALLY needs work. But really, fix IE6 and hurry up with IE8.
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 05, 2007
I am a .Net programmer and have been programming with MS Technologies for over ten years. I am sick and tired of trying to get things to work in IE. I waste too much time making things work in IE because the lack of standards support. The quality of products that have been released in the last few years by MS is horrible. Office 2007, Vista, IIS 7 on Vista have major bugs that make some of the features unusable. It sad to say even though I develop with MS technologies I won’t push IE, Vista, or any of MS other software until MS starts releasing better products.
Anonymous
December 06, 2007
> IE has a lack of true dialogue with web developers. Is it just me, or is that somewhat ironic given that it’s written as a comment on the IE blog? Congratulations chaps. Here’s hoping IE 7 crushes IE 6 into the dust as fast as possible :)
Anonymous
December 06, 2007
@mcNaz Sadly your code is flawed because it looks at User Agent strings. I can use the User Agent Switcher extension for Firefox, set it to IE6/Win and when I visit your site it displays warning. This should not happen. I advise you investigate the use of conditional comments http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms537512.aspx You can use them to enclose the links to IE specific stylesheets and javascript.
Anonymous
December 06, 2007
@Mike Thank you for your tip and more so for your link.
Anonymous
December 06, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 06, 2007
Right, so now I have to support two broken browsers. Not really a success.
Anonymous
December 06, 2007
Would you just buy Opera for christs sake already and end this pathetic charade! We ALL KNOW you use IE as a brake to slow down the speed of progress on the web!
Anonymous
December 06, 2007
There is simply too much safety and flexibility in Firefox for me to consider any other browser (except maybe Opera). I feel sorry for folks using IE - they're the modern day equivalent of AOLers.
Anonymous
December 06, 2007
I think you're missing the point, jalf. If I download and use Opera, my clients are still going to wonder why everything looks garbled on their, and most of their customers', browsers.
Anonymous
December 06, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 06, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 06, 2007
"We believe IE 7 is the safest Microsoft browser released to date" Is that why I have half a dozen viruses on my computer after using IE7? Oh, I should mention I only use Windows for playing games and downloading patches for said games and yet, somehow, I get a bunch of viruses. With an antivirus solution, no less. CONGRATULATIONS! I go to great lengths, enormous lengths in fact, to get everyone I know, meet, or see passing on the street to switch browsers if they're using IE, period. IE5 was good in its time, IE6 was good before it took nearly a decade to update, and IE7 is a paltry improvement. You've failed. Please, for the sake of the Web, stop.
Anonymous
December 06, 2007
There's a theory that's been going around for years that IE's non-standard rendering is (or initally was) an attempt to have web developers code specifically for IE - the most commonly used browser - and thus rendering other (standards-compliant) browsers superficially inferior. Sound like a conspiracy theory? Maybe. Sound like an everyday business strategy one would expect from a huge worldwide company? Definitely.
Anonymous
December 06, 2007
When I do an estimate for a web development job I generally factor in the time I'm going to spend hacking the site to get it to work in IE 6 and 7. I don't think it's quite time to celebrate yet.
Anonymous
December 06, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 06, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 06, 2007
In the amount of time it took you to write your stupid blog post, you could have identified one of the many errors in CSS rendering that plagues IE7.
Anonymous
December 06, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 06, 2007
@ defproc grin! I heard a rumor that MS were looking to purchase Opera outright about 2 years ago. With thier excellent work in the Phone Browser space, and their excellent cross platform work (the Wii and DS versions of Opera rock), any company willing to embrace the web would be kicking themselves right now. I just dont see any evidence that MS wants anything to do with the web. Seriously. I would love to be enlightened though. Is there anything out there that proves MS commitment to the web?
Anonymous
December 06, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 06, 2007
Honestly (no sarcasm), isn't IE a more secure browser than Firefox? (Oh boy, can't wait for the responses to this post) Just go to Internet Options/Security tab in IE and click Custom and tell me Firefox or any other browser for that matter has that level of security customization, and I'll switch to that browser today. For example, in IE I can define IFrame behavior on a per site basis. I don't see how you would do that in Firefox. I go to Security Tab in Firefox and all I see is add-on settings. As far as I know, IFrames is how websites do cookie stuffing. Since I don't see how I would set IFrame behavior in Firefox, doesn't that mean that Firefox is vulnerable to cookie stuffing?
Anonymous
December 06, 2007
My IE6 tester VM expires tomorrow. Please give us another extension - otherwise I won't be able to test for 78% of my customers.
Anonymous
December 06, 2007
@Adam the iframe isnt a security issue, because you arent allowed to do anything within an iframe from another domain (so you cannot read cookies from another frame if they arent from the same domain) and actually you didnt even get the point. the problem with IE is not its security or insecurity. it's the f***ing BAD rendering engine that makes IE the WORST browser you can choose.
Anonymous
December 06, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 06, 2007
And hopefully the last year of Internet Explorer.
Anonymous
December 06, 2007
Within the last few days I had to switch a client of mine to Firefox, since IE7 (the automatically updated version) kept her from getting to her ISP's home page and her email. Since she does business from home, this is a large issue. Firefox has shown no similar problems, and is much faster. If Microsoft were actually interested in its customers, rather than its ability to spy on them, they might do some work with web standards and adopt UTF-16, rather than trying to force the rest of the world to go back to web development with tables and trying to keep its document metadata space for corporate secret use. While wating for Microsoft to admit it belongs to the world, rather than the reverse, people might want to try the Maxthon browser, which uses the IE engine to much better effect. And, btw, Maxthon (being Chinese) has something on the order of 750 million users, making it much more popular than Internet Explorer. It would be nice if Microsoft evangelizers did the research and count what's there, rather than what they want to tell you is there. I use Maxthon in office environments when I'd otherwise be stuck using IE, and it has caused no problems with the IT folks anywhere I've used it.
Anonymous
December 06, 2007
Tony, You going to step up and respond to some of these comments?
Anonymous
December 06, 2007
Oops; sorry for the double post. I had a hiccup with Opera and my ISP. Nothing's perfect.
Anonymous
December 06, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 06, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 06, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 06, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 06, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 06, 2007
Hurray, thanks Firefox fanboys. I wish the stupidity filter was complete so it would be easier to read constructive comments. I used to say this about Apple, but now it's true for FOSS. It's not just software, it's a personality disorder. I don't see any Safari or Opera users attacking this blog like vultures- but firefox people... they're on some sort of mission. Are you really satisfied with your product? I use Opera and I enjoy how effortlessly stable and fast it is compared with Firefox- so let me explain to you how professionals work-- I can't believe everyone is all up in arms about how IE doesn't release as many versions as Firefox-- do you understand how important product stability is? Major version changes are a big deal for IT infrastructures. When Firefox releases a "beta" it's sort of like Opera or Apple releasing an Alpha- because we're all testers in the open source world. In my experience as a user, IE7 is generally more stable than Firefox- easier on the system, as well- but it's occasionally annoying to see the forced incompatibility zealots linking you to firefox. It's a corporate product, too, you know- it's just pushed by Sun, Netscape, and Google instead. The browser is part of the platform- just as firefox is sort of part of the commercial linux platform, IE needs to be bundled with Windows for obvious reasons. It's a decent product, and it's not going away.
Anonymous
December 06, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 06, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 06, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 06, 2007
Releasing IE7 doesn't undo the sins created by any previous version, IE6 is still out there and people still use it. i have to deal with its non standard issues on a daily basis. Client: lets have a floating window with a drop shadow and have it work in every browser. me: sure, we can make it work in every browser except everything older than IE7. IE7 is still a pile, and until every issue is corrected or at least matches issues with other browsers and we don't need to make exceptions to make IE work then i may consider trying IE.
Anonymous
December 06, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 06, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 06, 2007
  <![if IE 6]> painful <![endif]-->  <![if IE 7]> less painful <![endif]-->  <![if IE 8]> still less painful, but still a PAIN! <![endif]--> <![endif]-->
Anonymous
December 06, 2007
IE is horrible when it comes to dynamic content. I will write javascript that creates dynamic elements for a website that works perfectly in EVERY browser except IE. When I go back to fix it following standards perfectly I still find out that it doesn't work because of some silly bug. Such as CSS styles not dynamically being applied to new elements or sometimes new elements will not register their id tags for finding later with other javascript code. It's for stupid reasons and because I have javascript that is on specific elements. But, it doesn't effect any other browser (and I mean ANY other browser, even lesser used ones). I am sick of wasting payroll trying to patch your browser's bugs. I've finally started detecting IE and posting a notice when someone logs in to use another browser for security and usability because IE is horrible. I'll even link bug articles and other people's trouble with IE. I usually just tell them to use ANY browser other than IE rather than be specific.
Anonymous
December 06, 2007
@ In the depths Firstly, I will concede that IE has rendering issues, since I've had problems in that area myself. But it hasn't been an issue in daily browsing that I have had to switch. In IE, if I put a site into a Restricted Zone and turn off everything (scritps/ActiveX, etc), theoretically, it should be just as secure as Firefox, no? Most of the IE security issues arise from ActiveX. I'm not a Firefox expert since I don't use it, but as far as I can tell, Firefox does not run ActiveX, hence more secure but breaks a few sites in the process. Maybe Firefox is more secure. All I know is I go to www.techbargains.com (in my restricted zone) in IE and don't have to worry about 20 different IFrames loading with 20 cookies stuffed into my system. Try the same thing in Firefox and look in the status bar as it loads every IFrame, and afterwords, check for all the cookies that Firefox has just accepted. Now you can add the site to your cookies exception list in Firefox. But you have to type/copy/paste it in, no option just to click the Add the current site button like you do in IE zones. Even if you did, you have to keep a mental list of which sites you added? No way to tell if the current site is in your exception list, unlike IE which shows which zone the current website is in. I'm not a web developer. I see that a lot of developers have had their IE problems. But from the point of a web user, I don't see any advantage to Firefox. I can make IE just as secure as Firefox on certain websites, and make IE more functional than Firefox on other sites. And I'm not a MS fanboy either. If MS doesn't get it's act together with Vista, and Vista becomes a forced upgrade (ie for running IE8 for example), I'll be joining the Firefox/Linux camp shortly.
Anonymous
December 06, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 06, 2007
As an occasional web designer, the obstacles that IE throws up for me are formidable. I have neither the time nor the patience to work around its peculiar implementation of most open web standards. By comparison, most other browsers make standards compliance look easy. It should be a point of pride for Microsoft to make its most ubiquitous product do the same.
Anonymous
December 06, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 06, 2007
I'm a small budget, small audience web app developer and I must say that writing code that works on all IE6, IE7 and FF is not commercially feasible. I trust in FF moreso than MSFT's products and must often educate and require that my clients run my apps with FF. I find it funny that MSFT supporters barely have anything to say except some absurd "way to go", "congratulations" or "IE rocks!". They offer no reasoning why they support MSFT. Yet look at how many frustrated users take the time to explain their pain every chance they get. MSFT is lucky that people still care enough to communicate their frustrations, soon they won't .
Anonymous
December 06, 2007
I have to tell you, I'm a full time web designer/developer and IE in all it's different versions is the bane of my existence. I have a full time gig as a designer/developer in higher education and IE has wasted untold amounts of taxpayer dollars in extended development time. In summary, IE is an ugly stain on the Internet, and that is not being melodramatic. It's a fact.
Anonymous
December 06, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 06, 2007
I don't think MS even bothers reading the comments anymore... it's quite the shame. So effectively, this is a waste of time but I'm bored so :)
Anonymous
December 06, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 06, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 06, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 06, 2007
"Finally, we’ve seen a decrease of 10-20% in the support call volume for IE compared with a year ago, before the release of IE7. This is typically a sign that the product is more stable and has fewer issues than the previous release." Maybe they switched to Firefox.
Anonymous
December 06, 2007
Byron: "  <![if IE 6]> painful <![endif]-->  <![if IE 7]> less painful <![endif]-->  <![if IE 8]> still less painful, but still a PAIN! <![endif]--> <![endif]-->" What he said. The answer is simple: SUPPORT STANDARDS!!!!!!
Anonymous
December 06, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 06, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 06, 2007
I have lost so many hours of my life trying to figure out how to work around some of the horrible bugs in IE. I want my time back!
Anonymous
December 06, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 06, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 06, 2007
I was talking to some people the other day... and came up with a new feature for Silverlight... which I think would save the web-dev industry hundreds of millions of dollars every year, and would certainly make web-design a pleasant way of making a living. How about introducing a feature that deletes IE from every PC on the planet?... installing something like Firefox or Opera in its place? The world would thank you.
Anonymous
December 06, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 06, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 06, 2007
Congratulations! Now can you please pull the plug on IE6 completely? Please?
Anonymous
December 07, 2007
Hey IE Team, As you can see we are all very frustrated, because of your work. Aren't you going to respond us in any way?
Anonymous
December 07, 2007
Thanks for the headaches. Congratulations on the pseudo-count of users on IE7.
Anonymous
December 07, 2007
Why don't you all just quit developing a browser. Buy Opera or adopt firefox and build plugins for it (for .net, for silverlight, for any other activex/extension)
Anonymous
December 07, 2007
I would honestly not miss Internet Explorer if it dissapeared from the web completely. As a freelance web developer and intranet application developer, IE is honestly a thorn in my side... standards compliance and debugging being the big issues... I would support a "Any browser BUT Internet Explorer" campaign, if it means that it will just go away... Not a very constructive comment I know, but IE has caused so many hassles, that I felt I just needed to cast a vote :) Think the IE team will actually respond to this thread?
Anonymous
December 07, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 07, 2007
@psyphen and @Ried Yes indeed! I would love that on a T-Shirt, what better way to spread the word!
Anonymous
December 07, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 07, 2007
came here cross-navigating sites ( a-la deriva ) sorry, what is Internet Explorer? it is like Firefox? Anyway.. congratulations for your "1st year" goodbye omz
Anonymous
December 07, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 07, 2007
So what i'd like to know is why everytime I want to map a network drive I need to go into IE7 and add that drive to my trusted sites before I have proper permissions in that drive. I don't remember this being the case with IE6. This means I have to have IE7 on my computer, does it not? Is there another way to deal with this? Why do they have anything to do with eachother?
Anonymous
December 07, 2007
Here is what I just read: "Boy, we sure do love having a monopoly. When all your OS users are forced to install your browser, and when not upgrading their browser actually takes more steps than upgrading, adoption rate is great! Sure, even with all the stumbling blocks we throw at our OS customers who want stay on IE6, or want to use a different browser, our Monopoly Browser is still just #2. But we'll force 'em over by next year, you'll see. Maybe the phishers will help force them over for us. Again, monopolies are fun. My favorite board(room) game!"
Anonymous
December 07, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 08, 2007
... but having read the follow up replies to this , I thought I would just say thanks. Not to Microsoft
Anonymous
December 08, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 08, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 08, 2007
Visit my webpage and then examine bugs #41 and #92. These rather serious, quite severe and incapacitating bugs were both reported before and, still today, they have not been fixed. They would have all been fixed by now if such bugs had been happening in Mozilla (Firefox), WebKit (Safari, Konqueror) or Opera. !
Anonymous
December 08, 2007
I dislike IE7, and have set it NOT to be shown for Windows Update on ALL of my XP based systems. Seriously, you will never beat Firefox or it's flexible addons.
Anonymous
December 09, 2007
I work for a large corporation and developing and maintaining our e-commerce site is a nightmare because of Microsoft. Relying on of their monopolistic practices, Microsoft manages to push their inferior browser on the majority of home and corporate users who are either too clueless to know better or are denied a choice of browsers. As a result IE continues to be the dominant browser, which means we have to develop primarily for IE. The result is that our site looks terrible on Firefox, Safari, and virtually every other (superior and more standards-compliant) browser on the market. We are faced with the choice of either spending double the resources to develop and test enhancements, or alienating the large minority of users who are savvy enough to use a competent browser. Thanks Microsoft.
Anonymous
December 09, 2007
Whenever IE 6/7 crashed on me (hopefully not freezing the whole system), I started to wonder if the crash was caused just by IE or by Windows XP or the even more buggy Vista. Now I wonder no more, as I have switched to Safari and Camino/Firefox for good. On a Mac. Nice to have known you, Microsoft, and happy anniversary to your slightly improved IE. It was fun to have known you while your browser was more innovative than the competition (Netscape at this time). Now it's not anymore, and you have tons of work to do to even keep sight.
Anonymous
December 09, 2007
I just tried to pull up this page on IE7 on Vista and it crashed the first time. What does that say about your little "product"?
Anonymous
December 09, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 09, 2007
Awfull ! You don't deserve be the #1 !
Anonymous
December 09, 2007
Only average Joe, who doesn't even know what HTML is, might be convinced that IE is a decent program. The only positive comments in the above are in fact from this part of the population. Everyone with the least bit of experience with CSS, Javascript, standards in general, knows that IE is the most evil of all browsers. But then again, this is in fact compliant with just about any software that microsoft develops... Writing to you from my linux computer with a firefox browser...
Anonymous
December 10, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 10, 2007
IE? i'm using it only because of windows update. except that, i'm using FF as my default browser.
Anonymous
December 10, 2007
"Finally, we’ve seen a decrease of 10-20% in the support call volume for IE compared with a year ago, before the release of IE7. This is typically a sign that the product is more stable and has fewer issues than the previous release." 10-20% ha? that's about the % of people who moved from IE to firefox !
Anonymous
December 10, 2007
Random crashes and browser shoutdowns happen with IE7 almost everyday(frustating). IE7 may be more secure, but IE6 was much stable.
Anonymous
December 10, 2007
The fact that it took a year for you to fix the "Header information won't print when printing from Outlook 2003" really angered the legal industry. Thank you for fixing it but WOW! it took a very long time. So, now I can begin implementing IE7, finally.
Anonymous
December 10, 2007
@Vipin: IE7 is more stable than IE6. If you are encountering frequent crashes, chances are good that you have a buggy addon. See http://www.enhanceie.com/ie/troubleshoot.asp for more info.
Anonymous
December 10, 2007
@EricLaw: You realize that you've been criticised for only telling people about buggy addons, right? So, why would you not only post just that in your last post, but it is pretty much the only content you've contributed to this entire conversation ignoring EVERY OTHER ISSUE! If you have nothing constructive to add, go to your manager and get permission to add something constructive. Otherwise, work on giving IE the ability to handle a buggy addon. Because, right now, you're only adding to a mountain of evidence that you people are completely useless.
Anonymous
December 10, 2007
Microsoft keeps over-promising and under-delivering and this applies to IE as well. I recall a promise to no longer wait 6 years between releases and to have a new IE within 12 months. Ok, so now 12 months later the only thing we are getting is that the next version will be called IE 8. For me IE is no longer relevant, the lack for support for web standards, lack of transparency and the huge disappointment with Windows Vista made me go back to XP & Firefox on one PC, and buy a new Apple laptop with mac OS 10.5 (looooove it!)
Anonymous
December 10, 2007
Also, all the buttons are in the wrong place. At least fix this sloppy mess. :( Buttons aren't supposed to be scattered all over creation. It took me several minutes to find my stop, reload and home buttons..
Anonymous
December 11, 2007
>Whine, whine, whine. All I have to do to remember that most web-devs are still in >preschool is to visit this blog and read the negative comments. I apologize for the above comment, which I posted a few weeks ago. It was immature and in poor taste. I applaud all the web-devs out there who spend hours making sites work with IE as well as Firefox and Opera.
Anonymous
December 11, 2007
i'm using vista and ie7 and unfortunately this combination has forced me to install and use firefox as my default browser. I can't remember the last time i actually shut IE down without having to close the task via task manager. I was hoping for some relied in the SP1 fo Vista, but after installing the RC SP1 I have seen no difference whatsoever. Its a real shame as I actually quite like IE7 (when it works)
Anonymous
December 12, 2007
For XML/XSLT/CSS browser based pages both Safari 3 and IE 6+ are superior to Opera 9+ or Firefox 2+. Firefox 3 and Opera 9.5 are improving their support for browser based XSLT but they still have a long way to go to catch up with the other 2 major vendors in this regard. In my opinion there are no 21st century browsers until browsers supports XSLT 2.0. For merely browsing the web, Safari 3 for Windows seems to have the other three beat if you take in consider hangs, security, standards compliance, and support for XSLT. Webkit seems to be a very good rendering engine being much better than the other 3. Safari's lack of support for full screen mode is a major drawback for me. If it had full screen mode it would be my default browser. Opera has the best full screen mode but the worst XSLT support. Firefox is nice for development but I do not like it much for personal browsering. The browser is too busy for my taste. Using Firefox always seems like work to me. IE 7 is much better than IE 6. All 4 major browsers are very good tools especially considering the cost but all need to be better at supporting "Web 2.0". Here is hoping we see IE 8, Firefox 3 (maybe 4), Opera 9.5 and 10, and a upgraded Safari in 2008. Hopefully we will see a move to XSLT 2.0 on the browser before the end of this decade. It is imperative we become declarative.
Anonymous
December 12, 2007
@Wraith Daquell: Apology accepted, don't feel guilty. This blog brings out strong feelings in many, as it is the only open vector of communication with the IE Dev Team, and the Dev community. Some of the posts here are "immature" when they just blurt out "Obey Web Standards!" "CSS!" etc. however a lot of those are the quick frustrated responses to the bigger problem, which is: The Dev Community is excited to see changes/fixes in IE, and waits patiently for the changes, but the changes are taking a VERY long time (which is OK), and are not communicated AT ALL with the dev community (which is NOT OK). Many of the well written comments/criticisms posted here are just blatantly ignored. Which puts a very sour taste in the community's mouth when they think about developing for IE. Case in point? There must be a 1,000 comments here about discussing the upcoming browser release (IE8), and reopening public bug tracking. ALL COMPLETELY IGNORED... there isn't even a post from the IE team indicating WHEN a post containing this info will happen, or WHY they are choosing to ignore us. It is all very un-professional the way this is handled by the IE Team. Simon
Anonymous
December 12, 2007
"It took me several minutes to find my stop, reload and home buttons.." Hate to say it, but I think that says a lot more about you than it does about IE.
Anonymous
December 12, 2007
IE makes me hate what I used to love, Webdesign.
Anonymous
December 12, 2007
Don't you see the help brought to you by Microsoft thanks to IE ? Webdesign would be too easy without IE ! Webdesigners wouldn't even exist ! Thanks to IE you can make money and have a normal life ! Everybody should now thank Microsoft
Anonymous
December 13, 2007
Halleluja: "Opera requests the Commission to implement two remedies to Microsoft’s abusive actions. First, it requests the Commission to obligate Microsoft to unbundle Internet Explorer from Windows and/or carry alternative browsers pre-installed on the desktop. Second, it asks the European Commission to require Microsoft to follow fundamental and open Web standards accepted by the Web-authoring communities." http://www.opera.com/pressreleases/en/2007/12/13/
Anonymous
December 13, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 13, 2007
Opera has just filed an antitrust case against Microsoft, I generally support this move. Yes Microsoft have put in some effort getting IE7, but its too little too late as far as I see it....

Condividi tramite

The First Year of IE7

Comments

This update includes minor changes to how Internet Explorer handles some web pages that use Microsoft ActiveX controls. Certain webpages will require users to manually activate Active X controls by clicking on it or using the TAB key and ENTER key.

Risorse aggiuntive