IE7 Released As High-Priority Update

jimbojw writes, "Internet Explorer 7 was finally released this morning and is available via automatic update or download from Microsoft." And an anonymous reader notes stats on IE7 and FF2 downloads, adding: "Looks like FF2 is already outnumbering FF 1.5, while IE7 is having a hard time to find followers. Will today's release as a high-priority, force-fed update fix this issue?" The sans.org stats site will be updated throughout the day, so perhaps we'll get an indication.

WGA

Will today's release as a high-priority, force-fed update fix this issue?

Only if Microsoft disables Windows Genuine Advantage on this update.

Re:WGA

That sound you just heard was a million spelling and grammar nazi's exploding.

Had this on my home comp

Installed smoothly, reassigned without giving a choice file types to IE, e.g. xml's

Force "feeding"...

Will today's release as a high-priority, force-fed update fix this issue?

Yes of course it will. Why would the majority of Windows users go out and manually download a web browser? For most of them IE works just fine. When IE7 comes in they will just consider it another one of Windows quirks and happily chug along with it.

Re:Huh?

Yes. People on drugs were downloading IE7 voluntarily, now Microsoft release it for real, forcing people to upgrade.

Stupid questions

Seriously. Of course the Firefox users jumped on the bandwagon and downloaded 2.0 (which is buggy and crash-prone, glad I'm still using 1.5 at work because my home browser is barely useable). If you've gone to the effort of getting a replacement browser you're obviously more up on what's available.

So tens of millions of users didn't swarm to download IE7 as soon as it was available. Seeing as I never once saw a major news report on it, the majority of users don't read technology news, and even most of the users who do don't care what browser they use so long as it works, why is the summary written as if there's a problem that the masses didn't mindlessly rush out and downloaded the latest shiny package from Microsoft?

I find the "forced" update (which isn't really forced) a little worrying, though. It should *at least* pop up a window saying that a new version of IE has been downloaded and is ready to install if the user wants it. It's a pretty major UI shift, people should be made aware of it. Blindsiding them with that isn't going to win MS any fans.

IE7 *should* be adopted. sooner the better.

I *want* people to upgrade to IE7. I don't care if they're using IE7 or Firefox. I just want to be able to write sane CSS.

Re:IE7 *should* be adopted. sooner the better.

Good luck. IE7 fixes enough CSS to make it not work with the old IE 6 hacks but not enough to allow you to use one sane standard CSS template. Sorry.

Hello chaos

In my company we have at least two programs whose functionality is broken when IE7 is installed, due to menus written using IE6's renderer. Even some of Microsoft's own software -- e.g. the file transfer function in their Xbox 360 DDK -- breaks when IE7 is installed. Pushing this major upgrade as a forced update is irresponsible. This isn't what the Automatic Update system is supposed to be for.

And even when nothing breaks, I suspect a lot of users are going to be pissed that their web browser interface has suddenly changed.

I heard Michael Howard talking about this one

Microsoft says they've taken steps aimed at the root causes of IE security problems, as in doing a real redesign.

It's not exactly sandboxed, but it has to ask permission from a "request broker" before changing anything in the rest of the system, and the request broker is smaller, more auditable, and not handling malicious input all the time. Troublesome features like installing Browser Help Objects are off by default.

If we're lucky this could be like IIS 6. If we're not lucky, it should still be better than the malware installation engine [oreilly.com] everyone's running now.

Don't expect your friends and relatives to report fewer malware installations, though. The bad guys will just shift to a different infection vector if IE7 lives up to its promises.

Nice out-of-context quote, there

For isc.sans.org (which is probably not your typical site), 50% of Firefox users already use Firefox 2.0, and 23% of Internet Explorer users use MSIE 7.0. Overall, we got about a 50/50 split between Firefox and Internet Explorer users.

The stats on the site don't say much at all about the uptake of IE7 (or FF2, for that matter) among the general internet-using population. As you can see in the quote, the article doesn't make any pretensions that they do, either, noting that sans.org isn't a typical site.

Which is obvious, given the breakdown of FF vs IE users. A 50/50 split is obviously not a representative sample.

The second half of this blurb is blatantly misleading.

Web Search

In other news, Google's market share in the web search business has plummeted, while MSN search rose to be the most used search engine.

Re:A few days behind

Uh... did you even read the article headline?

I've heard of people not reading the article or even the article summary, but at least read the headline...

Re:Firefox fans, get a clue!

Mozilla has not yet pushed 2.0 out via auto-update, and even when they do, it will ask permission.