IE7 Released and Available for Download

Luis Escalante writes "After over a year and a half, IE7 has been released to the public as of Monday afternoon. Download it directly here. Word hit the streets after several mangers of the IE division posted on the IE blog."

Security patches

in 3..2..1...

"funny" but true

It's completely telling that the first comment on that page, is a comment by a guy who's worried IE7 is going to trash his computer [digitaltrends.com].

If that's the first reaction people have, firefox has a pretty good chance.

Re:"funny" but true

And in typical Microsoft fashion, downloading and installing an internet BROWSER requires... what else? That you reboot your computer.

Maybe it IS integrated, after all...

Re:"funny" but true

Same here. All it did after about fifteen minutes of installing was to give me the link to a IE Troubleshooting page [microsoft.com], where I found out that "Something has caused the computer not to trust the Internet Explorer 7 installation package."

It was bound to happen eventually: my computer became smarter than me....

Re:"funny" but true

IE 7 is actually less integrated than IE 6 was. However, the IE rendering engine is provided as a library for other applications to use. Any other applications that have embedded browser controls depend on IE -- and as they should. Applications should not have to deal with HTML rendering on their own. I would imagine this would cover everything from help systems to chat clients to things like the Add/Remove programs dialog.

Since other browsers don't come pre-installed on Windows computers, IE tends to be a neccesity (whether Windows should make it easier for applications to rely on other 3rd party browsers is a separate issue). As such, a system reboot is neccesary as the rendering engine itself, exposed as a library, must be updated. Basically it just ensures nothing is using the browser control at the time of update.

Re:"funny" but true

What would it even mean for it to "require DRM" ... methinks you don't actually know what DRM is. DRM "support" is like support for opening acrobat documents. If you install it, you can play the content, if you don't then you can't. If you never play the content it makes no difference whether or not you've installed it (ok, Acrobat is probably a bad example ... :)

It's not like having the code on your machine to support playing DRM'd WMA files is somehow going to change what happens when you play MP3s or run other applications.

Re:"funny" but true

What if glibc contains a security hole? What's the faster, more reliable option: rebooting or manually restarting ALL processes?

On a desktop, does it really matter if your reboot or logout/login?

MSIE is first and foremost a html rendering library. Surely it's bundled with a webbrowsing frontend named msie.exe, but msie.exe is just one of many users of the library. On a major upgrade like this, how do you guarantee all applications are linked against the new version of the library? And please take into account that most of your user base are users, not admins.

Rebooting is just a sane thing to do. I've seen way too many rooted unix boxes with uptime > 2 years...

Re:"funny" but true

A perfect example of why the filesystem model in Windows is broken.

The kind of issue you describe is solved automatically by the filesystem on Unix systems. If one process deletes a file that is opened by any process, then that file will be unlinked from the filesystem, but remain useable to the process that was already using the file. The file is not actually deleted from disk until all processes stop using it.

Among many other things, this means that you can safely upgrade a library, or even a program, that is running. The old processes will keep running the old library with no issues but any new processes that are created will automatically use the new one. Once all old processes die, the space used by the old library is returned to the filesystem.

There are gotchas with the 'Unix way', like correctly handling configuration files that are only open on startup and shutdown, but these issues can be handled with a bit of care.

Under Linux, people routinely upgrade Firefox or even the X windowing system while the programs themselves are still running. Afterwards, they simply restart the program in question to run the new version.

Re:WARNING

I know that this sounds like a troll, and you can mod it that way if you want, but it did really happen.

I already had RC2 installed on it. I downloaded the exe linked from the article and ran it.

It uninstalled the old IE, rebooted, worked on installing for about five minutes, then rebooted.

After that, it would get to the desktop without the menu bar at the bottom and show errors:

lsass.exe
The application failed to initialize properly. (0xc0000005) Click OK to terminate the application.

It had the same error for services.exe, and show them both twice.

After that, it does nothing.

This is just a warning for people. It screwed up mine, I assumed it was screwing up others, too.

Re:Security patches

What's that sound?

Oh yeah, it's thousands of webmasters scrambling to test their sites on the latest mutilation of web standards.

Re:Security patches

Since MS fixed the "* html" hack and a few others yet forgot to fix the rest of CSS they shit on, we're going to have fun with this one...

Re:Security patches

Oh, it's much worse: did you notice this part from the Webmaster checklist?

          HTTP content cannot be included in an HTTPS page (see the Internet Explorer Blog article).

Now expect the sound of thousands of admins whining as their critical mixed-content webpages fail to load, and the sound of millions of dollars of new servers and SSL accelerators to support SSL encryption of all the dancing bears on web servers that are signed into with HTTPS, but have all their image content on HTTP.

And oh, yes, expect the sounds of millions of tech support people with Indian accents getting phone calls from irate Americans and asking the inevitable question "Have you rebooted your computer, sir?" I hope Microsoft will pay for the new fiber-optic cable to support all the tech support calls.

This is going to be fun to watch, especially for web pages designed with old pieces of Microsoft design garbage like FrontPage.

Re:Opportunity for SSL vendors?

Actually, the change isn't as major as I thought. According to an IEBlog article [msdn.com]:

"In addition, users will no longer see the so-called Mixed-Content prompt, which read: This page contains both secure and nonsecure items. Do you want to see the nonsecure items? IE7 renders only the secure content and offers the user the opportunity to unblock the nonsecure content using the Information Bar. This is an important change because very few users (or web developers) fully understand the security risks of rendering HTTP-delivered content within a HTTPS page."

So basically, if pages previously displayed the Mixed-Content prompt, now they'll act slightly differently. But there's very few serious corporations or online services that display that error message, so I believe the impact on F5's revenues will be minimal. Oh well, I thought I was on to something :).

Re:Security patches

Clearly you are not a sysadmin or a web developer.

For sysadmins you have to decide when to push out IE7 to your great unwashed masses. Are there compatibility problems due to your corporate desktop configuration? You don't want to find out after you push it out to a few hundred or half million machines. It is significant because it breaks apart much of the previous integration, it uses a different security model, and it treats http content in https sessions differently. Making sure everything is going to work correctly in your environment is a big deal.

For web developers, you probably already have IE hacks running rampant through your sites. IE 7 adds another version to deal with. If the CSS handling really is much better, then you'll just need to exclude the many hacks needed for previous IE versions. If it is improved, but still not great, you'll have to tweak all the hacks so that your layout works with yet another partially-compliant IE version. Again, it's a big deal.

IE is part of your Windows system, like it or not. You can say "don't browse the web with IE", but you CAN'T completely avoid it on a Windows system without real difficulties. IE 6 is completely integrated into your system. Hopefully IE 7 is better. In ANY case, a system level upgrade on a functioning Windows box is nothing to take lightly.

Re:Security patches

Since MS fixed the "* html" hack and a few others yet forgot to fix the rest of CSS they shit on, we're going to have fun with this one...

Only if you're a web developer that's been living under a rock lately.

For the best part of last year proeminent webdev figures have adviced people to stop using the * html hack. The better alternative is to make use of the conditional comments supported by all versions of Explorer and conditionally include an extra .css file (or several) on top of the others, that only IE will see.

Those conditionals allow you to pinpoint various IE versions accurately and also let your website validate properly (since all the IE hacks are included via a stylesheet which is technically commented out).

I'm not giving you links, do your own homework people.

Re:Security patches

Can we mod -1 Deliberately Uninformative?

I thought the burden of proof was usually on the guy who asserts something.

Re:What happened?

I wonder what is it that she knows about Windows? Does she double-click icons in some other way? Or is it that she can't switch because she is a devoted gamer?

Re:What happened?

No, no no.. It is that grandma doesn't do much of anything but cause problems with her windows allowing me to come over and fix it. I look like a genuis and I am pretty much guarenteed a place in her will.

Fist, I try the trained monkey thing were I just click things and see what happens. If that doesn't work, I try looking for help on the interweb, If that doesn't work I'll post something on a message board or maybe microsoft's help and support mailing list, If still nothing after a day or so, I just reload everything and talk about how tuff it was. I might even throw out some scarry words like virus, spyware and malware. Generaly it isn't any of them but grandma has heard just enough of it on the eveniing news to know it is something to be reconed with.

Now everything works and I'm the hero! You see, If i install linux, I would likley loose the chance of being the hero, possible the spot in her will, and if something actualy did mess up, I would have to call someone who actualy knows something to fix it. So windows is good, linux is bad.

Re:What happened?

How come this is on Slashdot before news about Flash Player 9 for Linux?

Let's see now.. It's the world's most widely used internet browser. It's probably the most commonly used application in the world. It marks the date when Microsoft finally started to worry about Firefox. It is a huge improvement over IE6. Yeah, I guess that makes this news more important, despite the fact that Slashdot is more Linux oriented.

Last but not least, your complaint is ignorant because not only is there no such thing as a race for news, but a lot of people might find the IE vs FF wars more interesting, too. You know, almost 90 percent of the world's users browse with IE, so there's a pretty good chance that at least a few Slashdot users will enjoy this story.

Re:What happened?

What worries me about the Flash player update are the people who are downloading it:

THANK YOU A BILLION TIMES!!! OMG THIS IS SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO GREAT. FINALLY AN ALSA-FLASHPLAYER!!
still cant believe it =)
niiiiiiiiiiiice nicenicenicenicenicennice.!!

*kisses*

OMG!!! PONIES!!!

Re:What happened?

There are many web developers here. IE7 will affect them much more than Flash for Linux.

Re:What happened?

Oddly enough it won't. It will only affect web developers who code to non-standards. Most of us code to a set of standards so that all our code can work well in ALL browsers not just IE. Those who focus on IE only and use IE specific tags and ActiveX usually put themselves out of a job by neglecting a large percentage of the market

You've obviously never coded a page that had to display correctly on IE.

Re:What happened?

Flash 9 for Linux is newsworthy, too, but this is a new version of the best Firefox download tool available on Windows!

Re:What happened?

I may be paranoid, but on a new install of Windows, I usually use FTP to get Moz builds. Just in case I mistype the name or something and hit a site with malware.

Re:What happened?

Hmm... Number of people worldwide who use Internet Explorer vs. number of people worldwide who (a) use Linux, (b) want to have Flash animations in their browser, and (c) are OK with installing the proprietary Flash player.

I'd say based on numbers alone, the new IE release qualifies as "stuff that matters."

(P.S. Thanks for the link -- that's great news!)

Re:What happened?

Dude, Flash is one of the few things that sucks worse than IE. On any OS it's buggy, poorly designed, and frequently misused. When Flash is cleaned up and opened up enough to be fully intergrated into IE, Firefox, Opera, and Safari in the least then it might be worth caring about. The general concept of plug-ins has proven to lead to a sucky web browsing experience even if the average user isn't aware that it's these crappy plug-ins making their browser crash, run slow, give confussing plug-in required messages, and sites that are poorly indexed by search engines, have strange hard to use interfaces, and difficult to use for people with accessibility needs.

Just say no to plug-ins for things like Flash. They can be useful at times but in the vast majority of uses they are only used because programmers are to lazy, stupid, or harried by lazy stupid bosses to use more compatible solutions that do the exact same things.

IE7 isn't that big of news to us geeks but it is a huge relief to us as it goes mainstream - it isn't as good as Firefox, Safari, or Opera but it is worlds better than IE6 and will make it much easier to develop nice websites without having to disable everything cool because it doesn't work in IE. Of course it'll be a few years before the majority of users have updated but at least the process has begun.

If only Microsoft wasn't so lame as to make it difficult for developers to run IE6 and IE7 side by side.

Re:What happened?

Dude, Flash is one of the few things that sucks worse than IE. On any OS it's buggy, poorly designed, and frequently misused.

I don't think I agree with that analysis. With the arrival of things like YouTube and Google Video, it's starting to be used properly and implemented well. These companies get large numbers of people using their services mainly because they can pretty much assume Flash 7 is installed on the vast majority of browsers and they know they have it available. Would streaming video over the net be anywhere near as popular if they required an MPG-compatible embedded media player? I rather doubt it; we had those before, and they never got as popular.

Oh thank Christ..

of course, I would have prefered them to have released it before I bowed to management and hacked around all the non-standard shit in IE6 which IE7 fixes. urg!

Actually

Actually, there will be quite a few people downloading it. I upgraded to IE7 beta to test out my pages on that. Now I'll upgrade to the final. Sadly, you still can't ignore IE.

Re:Actually

Sadly, you still can't ignore IE.

Watch me.

Re:Actually

Sadly, you still can't ignore IE.

That's not necessarily sad. As a hobbist/freelance web developer, I love that Microsoft is finally starting to get their act together. A more secure, more standards-compliant, less buggy IE is a Good Thing for almost everybody. It might not be perfect -- I was hoping for CSS display: table support -- but it's a nice place to begin.

Re:Actually

Frankly, IE7 is a disaster in terms of a sane interface. It's bizarre--toolbar buttons on the same row with the tabs, giving you less space. A weird mini-tab always visible. Stop and refresh over on the right side of the address bar. The weird button+drop-down menu motif of the toolbar.

It's 2006, and Microsoft STILL hasn't learned how to simplify its interfaces? On the contrary, they're complicating them even further.

Re:Ah yes.....

The massive stampede to go out and download this truly amazing piece of software.

chirp...

chirp...

I'm not going to get it

I'll use Firefox (and OPera, if a plugin for Stumbleupon is released for it) for the rest of my life. Failing that, I'll use the worldf's most secure broswer: Mosaic 1.0!

Several Mangers?

Word hit the streets after several mangers of the IE division posted on the IE blog.

It's official--IE7 is the web browser used by Jesus!

Re:I can hear...

Microsoft have only from my reckoning only implemented 58% of the CSS 2.0 framework, compared to figures in the 90's for other browsers (I have no direct source for these figures this info- so may be wrong)

You're probably thinking of this table [webdevout.net].

User interface?

So can the WMP-inspired interface be made to go away, and the interface made to look like a real Windows app (with the menu bar, and IE6-style controls etc?)

I think I'll stick to Firefox, thanks.

Re:User interface?

Hmmm... a cleaner interface is a bad thing because it was Microsoft that innovated?

IE7 leaves much more space open on your screen for actual web browsing compared to IE6 (or Firefox, or most any browser minus lynx). Everything's accessible from a toolbar that uses the same icons Windows and IE have used since the dawn of time. And your precious menus that'll make it look like a "real Windows app" are hidden by your "alt" key.

Office 2007 uses a "ribbon" - a tabbed toolbar. It's pretty damn slick - you don't need your drawing tools open unless you're editing a picture, so you go to your drawing tab. (Or, you can use the toolbar that hovers by your mouse when you start editing a picture, or the formatting toolbar that appears by your mouse when you select text, etc.) It's so much cleaner, and intuitive.

But Microsoft changed things. They're not ugly and just-barely functional anymore. That's why I'm getting a Mac.