Weblog comments: Internet Explorer 7 will have fixes
Internet Explorer 7 will have fixes posted 23rd April 2005
Over on the ‘official’ IEBlog, Chris Wilson confirms that support for PNG alpha channels and some CSS fixes, in particular the peekaboo and guillotine bugs, have been added to IE7 beta 1. Bring on max-width and friends.
I have to agree with Jon. Yeah it’s good news, but I feel this should have been supported ages ago. Also what springs to mind is how many people will actually still be using older versions of IE when version 7 is out of beta?
Now if they said that in version 7 we are finally going to make it it a standards compliant browser I might have been a bit more excited?
Or do we have to wait for version 8 beta for that?
It’s easy to diss the MS crew, but I’m very excited that they’re looking at positioniseverything.net. That’s gotta be a huge step forward.
What I’m interested in is what ramifications any IE7 bug fixes will have on hacks. Will we all have to go back and re-write code we’ve written for clients so that sites work in IE7?
Wish I’d kept my hacks in separate stylesheets now… :)
Small Paul – I think you’re bang on the nail here: that the IE team are looking at Position is Everything at all indicates to me that they are taking the standards compliance thing seriously. That said, one could be lead to believe that all they are going fix is the biggest headaches for web developers (and that has to be good thing, if a minimum requirement). Chris Wilson wrote that the IE7 team are doing a lot more than this in IE7, he doesn’t go on to say they are trying to get full standards compliance for HTML 4.01 and CSS 1 & 2.1, but one has to be careful reading too much in a short blog post.
I too am concerned that the fixes may break existing hacks but given that the IE team are reading the sites that document such workarounds, one hopes these would be taken into account.
And yes, Jon, it will take a long time for a significant proportion of web audiences to upgrade to IE7. After all, it’s only now that sites are considering dropping support for IE5, and even then some form of graceful degradation is still required for sites with sizeable audiences.
Yup, it’s a bit disappointing that IE7 will only be offered to XP users initially. I think it’s understandable, given XP’s been out for, what, 4 years? But it will mean that, unless they take it to Windows 2000, there will be a very sizable proportion of business users that don’t even have the option of IE7 for quite some time.
I can’t see much benefit to Microsoft in avoiding standards support. I think they realise that there ain’t no money in trying to own HTML – especially when they’ve got XAML coming.
Thank God it’s moving on. And now are the days where we’re just happy that major bugs are fixed and urgently needed features are implemented, but I can’t await it when the IEBlog announces niche features like some “azimuth” support or something like this. I’m really happy about every single part of any specification which makes it, and it’s cool that there are so many other people out there thinking the same :)
Jon Hicks wrote:
PNG is a good start, about f*****g time. Now, how long until we can actually use it?!
John Oxton wrote:
Much better if they had announced that they were pulling support for Internet Explorer full stop.
I can’t help but feel it’s all smoke and mirrors, just enough but no real full on commitment… though I may have to eat my words (again).
Steve P. Sharpe wrote:
I have to agree with Jon. Yeah it’s good news, but I feel this should have been supported ages ago. Also what springs to mind is how many people will actually still be using older versions of IE when version 7 is out of beta?
Now if they said that in version 7 we are finally going to make it it a standards compliant browser I might have been a bit more excited?
Or do we have to wait for version 8 beta for that?
Sebastian Redl wrote:
It’s hard to say, “You have the wrong browser. Get a better one.”
It’s easy to say, “You have an outdated browser. Get the newest version.”
I think IE 7 will bring IE 5-support down a lot.
Although admittedly, the lack of support for anything pre-XP in IE 7 will be a big obstacle there.
Small Paul wrote:
It’s easy to diss the MS crew, but I’m very excited that they’re looking at positioniseverything.net. That’s gotta be a huge step forward.
What I’m interested in is what ramifications any IE7 bug fixes will have on hacks. Will we all have to go back and re-write code we’ve written for clients so that sites work in IE7?
Wish I’d kept my hacks in separate stylesheets now… :)
Rich wrote:
Small Paul – I think you’re bang on the nail here: that the IE team are looking at Position is Everything at all indicates to me that they are taking the standards compliance thing seriously. That said, one could be lead to believe that all they are going fix is the biggest headaches for web developers (and that has to be good thing, if a minimum requirement). Chris Wilson wrote that the IE7 team are doing a lot more than this in IE7, he doesn’t go on to say they are trying to get full standards compliance for HTML 4.01 and CSS 1 & 2.1, but one has to be careful reading too much in a short blog post.
I too am concerned that the fixes may break existing hacks but given that the IE team are reading the sites that document such workarounds, one hopes these would be taken into account.
And yes, Jon, it will take a long time for a significant proportion of web audiences to upgrade to IE7. After all, it’s only now that sites are considering dropping support for IE5, and even then some form of graceful degradation is still required for sites with sizeable audiences.
Small Paul wrote:
Yup, it’s a bit disappointing that IE7 will only be offered to XP users initially. I think it’s understandable, given XP’s been out for, what, 4 years? But it will mean that, unless they take it to Windows 2000, there will be a very sizable proportion of business users that don’t even have the option of IE7 for quite some time.
I can’t see much benefit to Microsoft in avoiding standards support. I think they realise that there ain’t no money in trying to own HTML – especially when they’ve got XAML coming.
Jens Meiert wrote:
Thank God it’s moving on. And now are the days where we’re just happy that major bugs are fixed and urgently needed features are implemented, but I can’t await it when the IEBlog announces niche features like some “azimuth” support or something like this. I’m really happy about every single part of any specification which makes it, and it’s cool that there are so many other people out there thinking the same :)
mark rush wrote:
At last – some concrete information – and an interesting site – ill keep my eyes peeled on that one.