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:Really?

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

I definitely think IE7 will significantly hurt Firefox usage. Look at it this way:

• IE7 will come down automatic update. Eventually it'll come shipped with computers.
  
  • IE7 is ripping off several FireFox features (tabs, etc.), thus making FF feel more like a pain in the butt to download for the average user since the differences won't be as large.
    
    • Microsoft actually markets their product.

Who the fuck cares about CSS?

[daniil]

All the reviews I've read have pointed out that IE7's interface is way nicer than that of Firefox -- even in first betas. The default theme that comes with Firefox looks awfully outdated. Now, you may say that it doesn't matter because hey, there's all these themes and extensions you can install, but the truth is, not many people use themes (even the most popular ones only have at most a hundred thousand downloads) it will take an ordinary person only one look at IE7 before they dump Firefox. I'm very sorry to tell you this but all the technical things don't even matter -- what matters is that from what I've heard and read, IE7 is much easier to use than Firefox and it will be the way to go for the majority of Internet users.

Re:CSS = ACID?

[linuxci]

You can download nightly builds of Firefox from the trunk (branded as Minefield to indicate use at your own risk) so you can see exactly how Firefox 3.0 is progressing. As for IE8 we can't see the current status of that so who knows how much work is left to be done on IE8?

For updates on thr trunk (which will become Fx3.0) see The Burning Edge [squarefree.com]

Can't customize the toolbar

[bogie]

I still can't believe MS won't allow you to move some of the features around, notably the home button. It is unbeliveable awkward to go to the top left to go back and forward and then have to move way down and right to get to the home page button. You want to put all of those other little buttons off to the bottom right? Fine. But move the fucking home button back next to the navigation arrows where it is supposed to go. Oh and smart move to hide the file menu and all the other menus. Nobody uses those menus anyway.

Pluses?

Tabbed browing - Welcome to the 90s.
Shrink to fit printing - Gee why would we need that? I like having 15% of every page I print cut off.
RSS Feeds - Does anyone even use this?
Integrated Search - About time.

Overall I think this is the browser that MS should have released 3-4 years ago. It is better than IE 6 in pretty much every way but I don't see Opera or Firefox users coming back anytime soon. I know that MS sees these changes as a big deal but I honestly expected more from a company that spends $1 Billion+ on R&D per year. With all of that money and talent the best they could do is copy features that other browsers have had for years and years? Talk about a total lack of innovation.

Re:Web developers have it backwards

[reanjr]

I totally disagree. I design for Opera first, dropping in Dean Edward's IE7 scripts with a single conditional comment (that is standards compliant in every other browser as a comment), and rarely have to make any updates for IE. I usually make a minimal number of adjustments to get things to look right in FF and (depending on the site), Safari. Sometimes I don't have the time to make things look perfect in FF and Safari, but that's not too big a deal. The site still renders in a usable format, it's just the exact vision of what I had in mind.

The only thing I really spend any time on cross-browser support is with the script. I admit, alot of this has to do with the fact that I almost never use ecma/javascript (besides Dean Edward's IE7 scripts), so I am not up to date on the differences. This is the major place I would like to see updates made to IE.

Can a release candidate be released then?

[niceone]

Can a release candidate be released then? I just seems plain wrong to me.

IE7 is spyware

[eneville]

http://tinyurl.com/ezeey [tinyurl.com]

Re:Can't customize the toolbar

[SanityInAnarchy]

My guess, Slashdot autodetects and adjusts itself for the IE6 bug suite, and that this adjustment also occurs for IE7. To make it work on IE7, we'll have to have yet another bug suite.

This is why the Acid2 test exists, folks. We are sick of having to do browser detection, especially for different versions of the same browser.