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IE7 set for release in just a few weeks

By | October 6, 2006, 10:58pm PDT

The IE Blog announced tonight that IE7 will be released by end of this month - and will be delivered to customers via Automatic Updates a few weeks after it’s available for download. The IE Blog states:

"Compatibility with sites, extensions and applications has been a very high priority for us as we develop new features, enhance the existing features and move the platform forward to be more secure and standards compliant.  We are continually listening to feedback from our customers, partners and leaders in the industry to resolve major compatibility issues to ensure our common customers have a great experience with IE7. As we make key improvements in areas such as layout and security, some changes need to be made by site owners to work smoothly with IE7.  We have produced detailed documentation, tools and other resources to assist site, extension and application owners in their testing and development efforts to ensure they are compatible with IE7.  We have also proactively worked with hundreds of companies to resolve issues that were reported through our beta testing to ensure those issues were resolved before IE7 is released."

Compatibility will indeed be a key test for IE7. Back in August I interviewed Microsoft’s Chris Wilson, the Group Program Manager for IE, to address the issue of whether Microsoft’s latest web browser IE7 is - and will be - CSS and Web standards compliant. Chris told me then that IE7 aims to support CSS and web standards, but at that point they were still a fair way off that target. It'll be interesting to see how much progress has been made when IE7 is officially released in a few weeks.

See also my review and screenshots of IE7 Release Candidate 1.

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Biography

Richard MacManus, formerly a ZDNet blogger, is a Web consultant and writer based in Wellington, New Zealand. He specialises in next generation web technology and runs a popular weblog called Read/WriteWeb on this topic. He currently does research, analysis and writing for Internet companies in Silicon Valley, the UK and beyond. Prior to that, he worked with some of New Zealand's top commercial companies as a web manager and producer.

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thookerov 9th Oct 2006
It's a sign of huge effort that they've made so many changes for standards compliance. But it's like stepping halfway across a gorge. They've improved a lot of things, but i still find it a pain in the ass to code across for Firefox and IE7. The Javascript DOM support is a lot better, but the CSS is still weak. i do find it a lot easier to maneuver with it as a user, but i don't like the button layout, nor that everything is practically fixed in place. It's the only browser i've ever come across with the Refresh button way over on the right side. What ergonomics testing did they do to come up with that idea? That and other quirks (behind the wheel and under the hood) are why it won't be my default. And believe me, i've been trying to give it a fair shake.
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My guess is too little, too late
Prognosticator 7th Oct 2006
While I'm a MS fan, the delay of IE7 from IE6 was fatally too long for me. I switched to Firefox and will likely never look back.
I think MS made a HUGE blunder by allowing the IE v6 browser to stagnate. Tabbed browsing, RSS etc was just too much of a compelling reason to head for FF.

For me to go back to IE, it would have to be at least 5X better overall. Not a quantifiable number but suggests how difficult it would be for MS to regain all those losses to FF.
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Reverse
perryroyce@... 8th Oct 2006
I went the other way. I have never liked IE from day one. Have always used Netscape up until FF come out. But I loaded IE7 Beta and have liked it so well that I set it as default last week. There are still a few sites that it wouldn't load or doesn't render right, but I am finding fewer of those as time goes on. You might want to kick the tires and run it around the block a few times.
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Halfway
thookerov 9th Oct 2006
It's a sign of huge effort that they've made so many changes for standards compliance. But it's like stepping halfway across a gorge. They've improved a lot of things, but i still find it a pain in the ass to code across for Firefox and IE7. The Javascript DOM support is a lot better, but the CSS is still weak. i do find it a lot easier to maneuver with it as a user, but i don't like the button layout, nor that everything is practically fixed in place. It's the only browser i've ever come across with the Refresh button way over on the right side. What ergonomics testing did they do to come up with that idea? That and other quirks (behind the wheel and under the hood) are why it won't be my default. And believe me, i've been trying to give it a fair shake.
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IE7 and compatibilty
toadlife 7th Oct 2006
It breaks the EPolicy Orchestrator console from McAfee. Hopefully either Microsoft or McAfee fixes this before release.

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