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IE7 Released As High-Priority Update 438

Posted by kdawson from the meet-the-new-boss dept.
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.
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IE7 Released As High-Priority Update More

IE7 Released As High-Priority Update

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  • WGA (Score:5, Funny)

    by ColinPL ( 1001084 ) <colin@colin.net.pl> on Thursday November 02, 2006 @11:09AM (#16688685) Homepage
    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: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Apocalypse111 ( 597674 )
      Look up a little utility called muBlinder. It doesn't work right now, as MS updated their WGA software just a few days ago, but give it a couple days and you can pretty much download whatever you want/need.

  • ohhhhhhh (Score:2, Funny)

    by darkchubs ( 814225 )
    Work that monopoly ... yeahhhhhh you like that dont you .. yeahhhhhhh whos your daddy

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by msobkow ( 48369 )

      Download running. 2+ hours. Yay.

      But I need to see if it's got any compatibility issues with the CSS and hopefully a fix for the black backgrounds on "transparent" images. i.e. Is it any closer to W3C, or still a mess of workarounds and hacks on the server side?

      • Slashdot comments have trouble, if that helps answer your question.

  • Had this on my home comp (Score:3, Informative)

    by mapkinase ( 958129 ) on Thursday November 02, 2006 @11:10AM (#16688697) Homepage Journal
    Installed smoothly, reassigned without giving a choice file types to IE, e.g. xml's

  • Internet Explorer 7 was finally released this morning and is available via automatic update

    If anyone has ever wondered how MS gets those fantastic browser numbers, here's your answer. Just you watch - here in a few months MS will be crowing about how there are more IE7 users than Firefox 2.0 users. As if anyone with a windows box has a choice in the matter.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Tim C ( 15259 )
      As if anyone with a windows box has a choice in the matter.

      You'd rather people stayed with the old, proven-insecure IE6? Besides, what part of it being a high-priority download forces people to use it, rather than FF or Opera? Remember - total number of downloads and total number of users are not the same thing...
      • > You'd rather people stayed with the old, proven-insecure IE6?

        And that affects me how?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Tim C ( 15259 )
          It affects you when the amount of spam you're dealing with increases because yet another PC is recruited into a zombie bot-net by a malicious website using an IE 6 vulnerability.

          Apart from that, it doesn't, but then neither does the reported number of users of any given browser...
      • "total number of downloads and total number of users are not the same thing."

        You think they're going to honor this distinction when they crow about what 'the market' wants? This company allows dead people to speak out for them.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Tim C ( 15259 )
          You think they're going to honor this distinction when they crow about what 'the market' wants?

          No, but then neither do we generally speaking when we crow about the number of Firefox downloads. Oh sure, some people do (me, for a start), but then there will be plenty of MS employees muttering about it too.

      • You'd rather people stayed with the old, proven-insecure IE6?

        What reason do you have to believe that this version will be more secure? It's not exactly like it has proven track-record of reliability. I don't know were people get their definition of the words "secure" and "unsecure" sometimes, but I have a hard time seeing how you could defend this statement as anything more than an out-of-your-ass guess.

        Besides, what part of it being a high-priority download forces people to use it...

        Nothing is forcing an

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Tim C ( 15259 )
          What reason do you have to believe that this version will be more secure?

          None at all, and I made no such claim. However, it has been demonstrated time and again that IE 6 is not secure, and given that IE 7 is being pushed out as a high priority upgrade, we can expect updates for IE 6 to cease at some point in the not too distant future. I'd say that upgrading is the least bad option.

          And how am I, an experienced IT engineer, going to tell them that they need to install every other high-priority patch except

      • You'd rather people stayed with the old, proven-insecure IE6?

        No, I would rather they download FireFox or Opera than use IE.

        Remember - total number of downloads and total number of users are not the same thing...

        And we all know how honest companies like MS are in pointing facts like that out. "Ya, we have 100million downloads so far! However, we only show about 15% of web users actually using it.... guess that means IE7 sucks. Oh well. Hey, why are all the shareholders selling or calling for our CEO

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Tim C ( 15259 )
          No, I would rather they download FireFox or Opera than use IE.

          So would I, but IE's rendering engine is used by a lot more than just IE itself, and so an IE vulnerability is potentially exploitable via other applications. Given that it's hard to imagine how IE 7 could be less secure than IE 6, I'd much rather people used FF or Opera *and* installed IE 7.

          And we all know how honest companies like MS are in pointing facts like that out.

          As are we. Every time a story is posted on slashdot about FF download number

        • And we all know how honest companies like MS are in pointing facts like that out. "Ya, we have 100million downloads so far! However, we only show about 15% of web users actually using it.... guess that means IE7 sucks. Oh well. Hey, why are all the shareholders selling or calling for our CEO to resign all of a sudden??"

          wait, lets try that another way

          And we all know how honest companies like Mozilla are in pointing facts like that out. "Ya, we have 100million downloads so far! However, we only show about

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by gstoddart ( 321705 )

      As if anyone with a windows box has a choice in the matter.

      You have a choice, you just have to know how to exercise it.

      My company has already said we should not take IE7 since it's not compatible with some of our stuff.

      You know how you do this? Instead of using the (stupid) Express Install for updates which says "install everything", and instead of setting up auto updates to grab and install everything, you use the Custom Install, and deselect the change for IE7.

      It aint that difficult. I won't be installi

  • Force "feeding"... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by garcia ( 6573 ) on Thursday November 02, 2006 @11:11AM (#16688723)
    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.
    • Why would the majority of Windows users go out and manually download a web browser?

      Oh I don't know. Maybe the millions of people who went and downloaded Firefox did it to...be more secure?

      But seriously, every time I have to go and get rid of a virus off of a Windows machine, I tell the user to download firefox. Most of them do.

      Transporter_ii

      • Why would the majority of Windows users go out and manually download a web browser? Oh I don't know. Maybe the millions of people who went and downloaded Firefox did it to...be more secure?

        That's a small minority of users. Most users don't know Firefox exists, or that they can use something other than IE, or even what IE is. Most don't know that they could have fewer viruses, or even that they have viruses. In a classic capitalist system, this would not matter. Like evolution, capitalism lets money talk

        • In a classic capitalist system, this would not matter. Like evolution, capitalism lets money talk and the market moves towards the best solution since decisions are made by informed customers or by agents trying to win customers by choosing for them.

          The true free market is up there with the ideal gas, frictionless surface, undamped oscillator, the unbiased random sample, and bigfoot. Something always gets in the way. In this case, it's the fact that the average consumer is an idiot.

    • When IE7 comes in they will just consider it another one of Windows quirks and happily chug along with it.

      I bet most people will probably consider it more then just a quirk, since the UI in IE7 is different then IE6 (and most other Windows applications). After upgrading, I can see many people asking "Where the heck are my Favorites? Where are my toolbars?"

  • Huh? I thought IE7 was already out and had already had over a million downloads... Have I been hallucinating?

  • I'm sure since MS says they're now complying with antitrust laws they'll also be allowing Firefox, Opera, and anyone else who wants to, to roll out their own browser as a high-priority update as well, right?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by IflyRC ( 956454 )
      *shrug* Maybe when Firefox releases their own OS they can do the same.

      • What exactly do you think "leveraging a monopoly" is?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by IflyRC ( 956454 )
          Microsoft doesn't stop any other software from doing an automatic update. Sure, it might not come down as an update from Microsoft but I know that many other applications contain "phone home" functionality to check and notify for updates. Not a single app is prevented from doing so. In fact, my virus scanner notified me of updates this morning.
      • ``Maybe when Firefox releases their own OS they can do the same.''

        Exactly. And, in fact, they've sort of done that: more and more applications are being developed that run under Firefox; AJAXWrite, various Google apps, YouOS, just to name a few.
    • On my Vista machine Firefox informs me when a new version is available. So does iTunes, and Photoshop, and Acrobat, and some other applications I am forgetting.

      So I think it is more a case of Microsoft never having prevented anyone from rolling out updates.
  • Clicked the checkbox off and told it not to remind me about it again.

  • Stupid questions (Score:3, Insightful)

    by PFI_Optix ( 936301 ) on Thursday November 02, 2006 @11:19AM (#16688841) Journal
    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.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ivan256 ( 17499 )
      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).

      Out of curiosity, what are you doing with it that is making it crash? Since I've switched, the only difference I've noticed is the spell checking in forms, and that it's significantly faster... Is it less stable on Windows or something?
      • Firefox 2.0 has had a couple of problems with JavaScript that can cause crashes.

        This only affects you if:

        a. You are running a vanilla install of Firefox and have not downloaded the NoScript extension (please do so right away).
        and
        b. You go to one of those maliciously formed pages.

        Failure to follow both of the above steps will result in Firefox not crashing due to either of the JavaScript issues. Which probably explains Firefox's stability on your system, my system, and most of the rest of everyone else's sys
      • I'm using it on Windows and Linux, and haven't noticed any crashes. I suspect it has to do with extensions that have been "upgraded" to work with Firefox 2, without proper testing by their developers.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Thaelon ( 250687 )
        I had 2.0 crash on me at home too.

        I wasn't doing anything outlandish either.

  • IE7 *should* be adopted. sooner the better. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by taybin ( 622573 ) <taybinNO@SPAMtaybin.com> on Thursday November 02, 2006 @11:19AM (#16688847) Homepage
    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.
    • ``I just want to be able to write sane CSS.''

      Well, you're able to do that today. If you do it right, your website will still work if the browser doesn't implement all the CSS features you use. If it doesn't, it's either a bug in the browser (file a bug report with the developers, complain, alert people, fix it), or, more likely, a bug in your code (fix it).
    • Many people will never update to IE7. The installer passes the WGA, so everyone with a pirated XP copy who do not want to crack the WGA or download firefox will just keep using IE6

      This is also why IE7 is not being "forced", like the misleading news comment says. Microsoft can't enforce it, I've heard that in fact they add a "no, and don't ask again" option

    • Re:IE7 *should* be adopted. sooner the better. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by caseih ( 160668 ) on Thursday November 02, 2006 @02:10PM (#16691611)
      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.
  • Most people don't feel the need to update unless they see things they need. There is no way people would update to IE 7 unless forced- just like there is no way people will update to Vista until they are forced to.

    I did check IE 7 out yesterday- we use IE for internal browsing at work, and my boss wanted me to make sure the new version worked properly. (Web browsing, of course, is done with Firefox). It definitely looks and feels better than IE 6, and they have taken measures to improve security (whe

  • Hello chaos (Score:4, Insightful)

    by pilkul ( 667659 ) on Thursday November 02, 2006 @11:20AM (#16688863)
    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.
    • Our head of IT sent out a note to all staff saying DON'T download Internet Exploder 7. He wants to make sure 1) it's compatible with all our existing apps, and 2) it doesn't have huge exploitable weaknesses that MS missed. I asked him about FF, and he said they've upgraded individual users to FF when IE6 had problems, but some apps don't work with it. Nothing, it seems, is perfect.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by onion2k ( 203094 )
        The point the original poster was making was that installing IE7 breaks standalone applications that use IE controls to render things. Installing FF cannot do that. If you're using web applications that don't work in FF the solution is very simple: fire the developers, there's no excuse.
    • ``This isn't what the Automatic Update system is supposed to be for.''

      It isn't? Updating IE to version 7 isn't what the updating system is for? Alright, so maybe it isn't what you _wanted_, but, if you use automatic updates, it's what you get. Don't like it? Well, don't use it, then.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by pilkul ( 667659 )
        This isn't an app upgrade system; so far it's only been used to push critical security updates that change as little as possible. (... and WGA, but I like that even less.) And I'm not complaining for my own sake; more for all the people this is going to catch off guard.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Mr.Sharpy ( 472377 )
      For corporate environments (using Active Directory), Microsoft released a set of tools and information you can use to block the installation of IE7 from Windows Update. This information was made widely available to administrators of Microsoft networks. If you were (too late now) anticipating problems with the update, your domain administrator(s) should have use the IE7 blocker toolkit.

      More blocker toolkit info here [microsoft.com]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Kjella ( 173770 )
      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.

      On the bright side, if they do have to redo it (I mean IE6 code could be written long long ago) maybe they'll put in something standards-compliant. Menus are certainly not something you need browser-specific-code for. In that sense, Mircosoft upgrading IE could help Firefox because the threshold of adding a nice-to-have feature is infinately much higher than "Ok we have

  • There's a guy named zefrank who puts out a video blog which is pretty amusing. One recurring topic is a behavior he calls "Rocketbooming" (not to be confused with the company of the same name, wink wink), which he explains as using really bad metrics to make you look hyper-popular. Of course, this behavior has been used since the business deal leading to the first advertisement on a 2-page town newsletter, but what with the puffy egotistical company name, I kinda like zefrank's term.

    Anyway, by shifting

    • ``Anyway, by shifting gears and making IE7 an automatic downloadable for anyone who has Windows (because you all know that IE is an integral component of Windows), it seems to me that this is just a great numbers-inflating gambit. "We have 100 million* IE7 users (defined as people who left their computers connected to the Internet and didn't crash long enough to download a critical patch update that included it)." Even devoted users of FireFox who happened to fail to aggressively avoid this update will be c
  • They hid the file menu for some reason, so you have to go change a setting to fix it. And then it doesn't work well: the tried-and-true menu motion for File-New to open a new window ends up going to the tabs instead. Why did they have to mess with the menus?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cortana ( 588495 )
      To differentiate their product from the competition.
    • If you think menus are bad in IE7, you should try WMP11 (under vista, at least). With as much as they ripped of OS X in, they could of at least copied the way it does menus. So much more sane...
  • If not for slashdot, I wouldn't have known about the forced upgrade.
    I don't use IE except when forced by microsoft- which is about once every 18 months to download the new directx.

  • I heard Michael Howard talking about this one (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Beryllium Sphere(tm) ( 193358 ) on Thursday November 02, 2006 @11:31AM (#16689015) Journal
    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.

  • WTF? (Score:2)

    by 8tim8 ( 623968 )
    From the Slashdot post:
    Looks like FF2 is already outnumbering FF 1.5, while IE7 is having a hard time to find followers.

    From the linked article:
    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.

    The linked article is only talking about users of isc.sans.org, and that includes the table in the article (the data comes from Google Analytics, but it's only for isc.sans.org.

    Jeesh. Does anyone bother to read t
  • As a result of this massive upgrade, the whole Internet will be offloaded as all those Internet Exploder clients will be hindering the Microsoft users "internet experience"!

  • Nice out-of-context quote, there (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Control Group ( 105494 ) * on Thursday November 02, 2006 @11:38AM (#16689125) Homepage
    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.

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

    Yes.

  • Die, older versions of IE, die!

    Finally, I can do mostly sane CSS. Still, there's so much more to ask for...

    Ditch VML for SVG.
    MNG support. :before/:after pseudo selectors and the content property!
    Border-radius, box and text shadows!
    And put some fucking -ie- prefixes on the proprietary stuff, for god's sake.
  • I received the notice last night through Windows Automatic Updates that the download was available. I clicked Cancel and didn't download or install it. Anyone who wants that level of control over their system just has to go into Automatic Updates control panel and configure it. Or, hell, even turn it off and run WindowsUpdate manually every second Tuesday of the month, with the Custom option that allows you to pick and choose what you want to install.

    The only people being "forced" are people who are too d
  • First, I think that it's a good idea for as many Windows users as possible to get IE7. It's a good update for a number of reasons. But anyone working support lines is going to have their hands full, because it is different enough (at least the way it installed on my systems) that most Windows users are going to be traumatized. Really, most Windows users don't think of IE as a web browser, IE is the Internet. When IE7 is installed, their "Internet" is going to be broken in ways that will scare and annoy many
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • . . . supposed to be reserved strictly for security patches and not new functionality?

    It couldn't possibly be Microsoft leveraging their monopoly to regain what share of the market they have lost to Firefox, Opera, etc. now, could it? Why couldn't they just FIX security problems in MSIE 6?
  • "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?

    Firefox 2.0 also popped up as update. IE7 is as force-fed as Firefox 2 was. IE7 won't install automatically, it'll first ask for you to agree to the install.

  • Web Search (Score:4, Funny)

    by RAMMS+EIN ( 578166 ) on Thursday November 02, 2006 @12:09PM (#16689605) Homepage Journal
    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.
  • stats on IE7 and FF2 downloads

    Why would you compare Internet Explorer to Final Fantasy? and that "II" is 11, not 2.
  • I just tried doing Microsoft Update with IE7, and it just hung. It's sitting there, blank and unresponsive.

    Could installing IE7 be the solution to incessant Windows updates?

    m
  • The overwhelming majority of Windows XP users never change the default. I am not sure when, but I think the automatic download of patches set as default already came with Windows XP in 2001. But it might have been SP1 or SP2.

    So it should be pretty easy to calculate the approximate marketshare for IE7 in december. Take the number of computers running the configuration mentioned above (all computers sold with XP preinstalled and all Windows XP sold since they made automatic download of patches default) then d
  • Don't offer it as a choice, just cram it down their throats and then let them deal with the after effects. Another classic example of customer service by Microsoft. They should change there motto from "where do you want to go today?" to " You're going where we take you so sit back and shut up or your going in the trunk again"
  • "Microsoft Partners With Zend"
    itsatrap! BUahahahahaha!!!

    "Windows CE 6 Arrives Complete with Kernel Source"
    itsatrap!! Hahahaha!!! *slapping knee*

    "Vista Gets Official Release Dates"
    itastrap! Ooo good one!! Hahahahaha!

    "Microsoft Considers Pulling Out of China"
    itsatrap! Pulling out!! Hahahahahah!

    "IE7 Released As High-Priority Update"
    itsatrap! Hahahahaha!

    So.. what.. are people subscribing to Slashdot so they can be the first to put 'itsatrap' on every Microsoft story?

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