Internet Explorer 7 for XP Released

It's official folks: IE7 for XP has been released. You can also read more about it on the IEBlog.

Despite still being behind in overall CSS support compared to other browsers, I think this is a huge gain for us in the trenches. The quicker the rollout, the sooner we can leave a number of frustrations behind. Yes, there will still be continued frustration from bugs that haven't been fixed, bugs that have been introduced, and the lack of certain CSS support that we'd all love to see.

Min/Max-height/width is in, fixed positioning (yay, my fixed comments work in IE!), along with a bunch of handy selectors like first-child, adjacent and attribute selectors. These alone will help simplify a fair bit of styling that might have otherwise required extraneous class names littering our HTML.

Now that IE7 is out, we can all start talking about the imminent release of Firefox 2.

Published October 18, 2006

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Nobody too terribly important said on October 18, 2006

It's just frustrating because now we have 2 botched css browsers/standards to support, IE7 won't be released for Windows 98, and M$ has basically said they don't care about _really_ trying to support proper CSS Standards. Ah well... I'll keep on using OSS and cursing Bill in vain...

Heiko said on October 18, 2006

Now its time to test all the projects with that new microsoft product...

Ryan Brooks said on October 19, 2006

Like I said on my blog: Anyone that downloads IE7, fiery ant DOOM shall rain down from the skies upon thy beautiful scenery, fine dining, time at the spa and general merriment…

...

But I've had the Firefox 2 releases for a while now. Inline spell checking for text areas? SWEET! There goes my safari envy!

Ed said on October 19, 2006

Although IE7 will no doubt be criticised due to it's publisher, I have to congratulate Microsoft for finally working hard to give developers a fair deal. After all, developers are not the market for this product, it's the mainstream and applications that use IE that are. It's they who dictate the way the program is written which is why security and legacy support are top of the list.

Considering the weight of legacy applications that could 'break', thank you for going as far as you did in complying with the web standards.

I still won't use it as my main browser but I'm sure the 80%ish of the population will and probably be very happy with it.

As for anti-IE, try to just accept it. Would Firefox be as popular as it is if IE6 was fantastic? Does anyone want IE7 to be the best browser?

Heart said on October 19, 2006

Well! the way i see it, this new version of IE/win is great and its a big leap, but how in the hell em i supposed to support all version of IE when designing, specially when most of the CSS hacks dont work anymore "the way they should".

Kevin Navia said on October 19, 2006

I still want to have IE6 on my workstation... for testing purposes, can it be made to be a standalone? (either ie6 or ie7)

I'd might wait a few more days before clicking on the install button.

Teppo said on October 19, 2006

http://browsers.evolt.org/ had at least some standalone IE versions last time I checked, haven't tried those tho. For just IE6 + IE7 try http://tredosoft.com/IE7_standalone tutorial.

Terrill Dent said on October 19, 2006

Has anyone else had problems with Dreamweaver loosing all of the FTP connection details after insalling IE7? Every time I switch sites, or open the program I have to re-enter my FTP Username and Password. They were remembered pre-installation, and if I uninstall IE7 then the problem is corrected.

Graham B said on October 19, 2006

What's the worst thing that could happen on the day you release a product? Someone finds a flaw... http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/10/19/ie7_first_bug/

Tim McCormack said on October 19, 2006

I think some folks are missing the point. When a new version of IE comes out, there is usually a mass upgrade by the user base. Plus, IE 7 will come as a security upgrade, if I remember correctly -- that should help greatly with turnover.

Jason Kataropoulos said on October 19, 2006

I agree with Tim.
I think that in a month or so, almost all IE 6 will be upgraded to IE 7. I get the feeling that its gona be better.

Frans said on October 19, 2006

On Microsofts' website:

"Got a minute? Get familiar with the improvements made to Internet Explorer 7 that can help make your everyday tasks easier."

I don't need a minute, not even a second: I've been using FireFox the last couple of year(s), Internet Explorer 7 offers nothing new ....

Michael Jackson said on October 19, 2006

So what should I do now? Do you think it's safe to just leave IE6 behind? After all, from my experimenting, IE7 and IE6 are two very different beasts. It would be a major headache to try and support them both.

Tobie Langel said on October 19, 2006

@ Michael Jackson: I'm afraid you will still have to support both for a while.

On the other hand, if you haven't already done so, I guess you can completely drop support of IE5.5 now, it can definitely be considered a thing of the past.

Dustin Diaz said on October 19, 2006

Let's not forget the auto-updates that will start near the beginning of November. That will be even better. I am really liking Microsoft right now for finally moving past IE6 and having done a good job with IE7.

Kevin Hall said on October 19, 2006

@Terrill Dent: What version of Dreamweaver are you using? I've seen reports of this on other sites and that's a real problem if you lose all your FTP info. I'm not sure yet if everyone is having this problem or if it is an occasional occurrence.

For my part I'm still concerned with finding the way to setup a reliable standalone IE6 so I don't need two machines for testing. All the methods I've found have some nasty bug reports and broken functionality in the standalone.

Jason Kataropoulos said on October 20, 2006

@ Frans: Its not a question of which is better. We, as website makers need to support all major browsers in order to keep visitors comming.

Richard Resall said on October 20, 2006

@Heart: how in the hell em i supposed to support all version of IE when designing, specially when most of the CSS hacks dont work anymore...

Easy: stop hacking and use conditional stylesheets.

WD Milner said on October 20, 2006

IE7 has only been out 2 days already a security vulnerbility has been found (an unfixed bug in IE6 reported last April) Very encouraging </irony>

Jonathan Snook said on October 20, 2006

WD: They've already tried to address the issue on the IE Blog. I think a bigger deal was made of this because IE7 just came out.

Arzt said on October 21, 2006

I´m wondering why you can download the new IE from yahoo a few hours before it was available from MS....

Jeff Davis said on October 22, 2006

@Terrill: I've experienced the same problems with losing ftp login info while using IE7 betas. I haven't had the problem with this final release, yet. Adobe addresses the issue here.

Matthew Babbs said on October 23, 2006

The explanation for that security vulnerability seems to be that people shouldn't blame the browser for providing a way to attack another program. Hmmm...

IE6 is still going to be around for a while (IE7 is XP-only, businesses will take their time upgrading anyway, and so on), but just maybe IE5/5.5 can finally be pensioned off.

Whatever would we do without IE to keep life interesting?

BXT said on October 23, 2006

I think Firefox 2 beats IE 7. It has all features and even more.

Sorry, comments are closed for this post. If you have any further questions or comments, feel free to send them to me directly.