Internet Explorer 7 RC1 Released

Kawahee writes "Microsoft, in conjunction with the announcement that they have finished Windows Vista RC1 have released Internet Explorer 7 RC1. Further commentary from the IE Blog post: 'The RC1 build includes improvements in performance, stability, security, and application compatibility. You may not notice many visible changes from the Beta 3 release; all we did was listen to your feedback, fix bugs that you reported, and make final adjustments to our CSS support.'"

Re:CSS = ACID?

[viniosity]

I'm really curious to see what kind of CSS modifications I'll have to make to support IE7 vs. Firefox. There are a number of well known hacks for IE6 and it'll be interesting to see how people keep those in place without jeopardizing the layouts in IE7.

Re:CSS = ACID?

[linuxci]

No, they said from the beginning that IE7 would not pass the ACID2 test. Maybe in a later release.

They neglected the browser for years (not the IE devs fault but management decision) so it'll take a long time to get upto speed with the rest.

One thing that we must make sure NEVER happens is that IE gets as dominant as it was pre-Firefox otherwise they'll just stop IE development again. It's happened once, it can just happen again. Fortunately, despite the hard work of the IE team, there's still a lot of benefits to be gained from using Firefox or Opera (or Safari, etc)

what

[Bizzeh]

welcome to last weeks news.

Re:CSS = ACID?

[mr_stinky_britches]

Firefox still doesn't pass that test...

Re:FINISHED?!

[linuxci]

Apparently they've already written the roadmap for the next two versions of IE (probably called 7.5 and 8.0) so they're probably going to just make security patches for 7.0 and then fix bugs, improve compliance and add features in the future releases.

Not much as been said on these future releases yet except that they're hard at work on them.

Re:CSS = ACID?

[linuxci]

Firefox 2.0 won't pass the Acid test because the rendering engine in 2.0 is based on the same gecko as 1.5 (1.5 uses Gecko 1.8 and 2.0 uses 1.8.1), however Firefox 3.0 should pass the acid test because a lot of work has been done on the rendering engine (Gecko 1.9).

Basically most of the changes in Firefox 2.0 will be in the frontend, 3.0 will have a lot of improvements to the backend.

However, 2.0's CSS support is vastly superior to that in IE7.

Re:Really?

[linuxci]

On a related note in a tainted and statistically useless sample (ie, mostly Slashdot users) even Mac users can be tempted from Safari it seems - so why everyone assumes that on the release of IE 7 Firefox market share is going to die I have no idea.

I definitely don't think IE7 will significantly hurt Firefox usage. Look at it this way:

• IE7 is not available for Win2000 or earlier (or and non-Win OS)
• IE7 user interface is totally non-standard on XP
• IE7's installation is more of a hassle than Firefox - it's a larger download, needs rebooting and takes longer

CSS Changes for IE7

[aymanh]

I couldn't find links to this page in the summary or IE7 blog entry, so I'm posting it here as I believe many would be interested in it: List of CSS changes in IE7 [msdn.com].

It's mostly bug fixes, notable new features are enabling :hover for all elements, implementing position: fixed, PNG transparency support, and min/max width/height.

Still Broken With Exponent CMS

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone tell Microsoft that thousands of us use open source content management systems like Exponent CMS. Using IE 7 is a study in patience, if not masochism. It takes nearly a minute to load ANY page on our site.

This needs to be fixed ASAP.

Breaks /. new discussion system

[psycln]

IE7 RC1 makes more than enough white-space in the beta /. discussion system. http://img396.imageshack.us/my.php?image=ndsyn9.jp g [imageshack.us] my eyes hurt...

Re:In Windows Vista Build 5536?

[linuxci]

This is not the same IE build as in the latest Vista build. This release only works in XP. Actually the versions of IE in XP and Vista are not exactly the same. Some of this they blame on the underlying OS but most likely it's just to make vista more attractive.

IE for Vista was going to be named IE7+ [msdn.com] and XP simply IE7, however they scrapped that naming convention.

Also another slight name change, on both platforms it's no longer "Microsoft Internet Explorer" it's now "Windows Internet Explorer".

PNG gamma handling is still wrong

[Glenn R-P]

PNG files with gamma=1/2.2 are still rendered differently from PNG files with the sRGB chunk
and from untagged images. See http://pmt.sf.net/gamma_test [sf.net] where the 1/2.2 patches
should match and the 1/1.96 patches should be lighter (use Firefox or almost any other
browser to see how the page should be rendered).

Re:Really?

[rts008]

You left out the part where WGA gets installed automagically during the IE7 install, even if you uncheck the box for "check for updates" at the beginning of the install.

I watched that happen on one of my boxes at home- unplugged the cat5, and the install claimed it couldnt finish without internet connection. And that's after you go through the validation process just so you can download IE7 from MS.

Be warned- if you don't want WGA, be careful trying to install IE7.

Re:CSS = ACID?

[lukas.mach]

I'm quite sure it won't pass ACID2, but that doesn't matter - CSS support is still pretty good in MSIE 7 RC 1 and that's more that I hoped for. I just had to port quite complex CSS layout for MSIE 7 (used position:fixed hacks in MSIE 6, maxwidth emulation and whatnot) and all it took was to change one conditional comment (to ensure that these many MSIE-6-workarounds won't be applied to MSIE 7). Now I'm using exactly the same stylesheet for Mozilla, Opera and MSIE 7.

Underscore hacks won't do the trick for MSIE 7 (which is probably good thing), pages with xml declaration are rendered in standards mode (which will cause some minor trouble, mainly because of that boxmodel change).

Re:CSS = ACID?

[aymanh]

Web developers can use conditional comments [quirksmode.org] to target a specific version of IE, and here is an article [positioniseverything.net] that goes into the details of what hacks are "supported" by IE7.

Supporting IE7 will require some extra work by webdevs, but it's doable even if code already contains hacks for previous versions of IE.

Re:CSS = ACID?

[dvice_null]

> Yes, and Internet Explorer 8 should also pass the test

Really? That is huge news. Do you have ANY proof for that?

About Firefox passing the ACID2 with version 3, here is a screenshot what it looks like in the reflow branch (branch where there is a lot of work done with the CSS support, which will at some point most likely be merged with the Firefox 3 trunk branch). That is why we bulieve that Firefox 3 will pass the ACID2:
http://www.nelchael.net/varia/fireflowfox.png [nelchael.net]
( For those of you who don't like clicking links or can't see images. There is a screenshot of Firefox browser, ACID2 page open and I see no errors with it. )

Re:CSS = ACID?

[WhiteWolf666]

The ACID test is not a CSS compliance test. It's more like a CSS torture test.

IIRC, Konqueror and a heavily patched Webkit (they share a similar code base, of course) are the only browsers that pass ACID 2.0 . Oh, and Opera, of course; but that's because Opera tends to be light years ahead in terms of rendering engine design (I do dislike the Opera UI, though). Even Opera on mobile devices passes.

Take a look at the results here [howtocreate.co.uk]. Look at the screenshots. Firefox fails the test, but it's pretty close. IE7 is miles and miles away. But either way, the test is not terribly relevant; ACID is a test of invalid CSS, to see how the browser handles broken code. I think that in terms of standards, a CSS compliance test is more relevant. Not that IE does well there, either.

Don't rely on your trusty IE hacks anymore!

[Gavin86]

A lot of them have been destroyed.

For further information on CSS compatability, check out the IEBlog entry, "Details on our CSS changes for IE7" [msdn.com], as well as the Quirksmode CSS browser compatability page [quirksmode.org].

Re:CSS = ACID?

[Bogtha]

But either way, the test is not terribly relevant; ACID is a test of invalid CSS, to see how the browser handles broken code.

Please do not spread this myth. It is simply not true. If you had actually read the Acid2 technical guide instead of relying on Slashdot hearsay, you would know this. From a previous comment of mine [slashdot.org]:

Have you actually bothered to read the Acid2 page? Because I hear this repeated all the time, and it's downright misleading.

There is a checklist of about a dozen things the Acid2 page tests. Incorrect code is just one of them. It is necessary to include incorrect code in a test like this. How else are you going to check whether a browser follows the CSS error handling rules?

It's incorrect code, sure, but it's incorrect code that has a defined rendering according to the CSS specifications. It's not something a compliant browser would trip up on. There is a correct way to parse the incorrect code, and the Acid2 page tests to see if a browser parses it correctly - among many other things it tests for.

Where are you guys getting this idea that the Acid2 test is all about error handling? It's a very small part of the test, but plenty of Slashdotters seem convinced that the test revolves around broken code and nothing else. Was there a weekly meeting I missed wher eyou all got this myth drilled into your heads?

installing ie7 rc1 breakes ...

[Anonymous Coward]

system restore on windows XP pro.
not sure it's because i installed ie7 rc1, but i can't seem
to make any system restores anymore ... bug?