Internet Explorer Yawns Its Way Into the Hearts and Minds of Web Programmers Everywhere
by S. Isaac Dealey
After disbanding the Internet Explorer programming team for four years, Microsoft has finally returned to the browser market with some unimaginative improvements, some unsurprising technopolitical posturing and some underwhelming results. To start at the beginning, you'll have no problem finding mention of the IE7 Beta's implementation of (YAWN!) tabbed browsing, a feature which has been available from both competition and IE-shell browsers for several years and is no surprise given its popularity. It's only marginally more difficult to find reference to IE7's implementation of RSS syndication, which is well covered by a variety of existing RSS aggregators, both as desktop clients and on the web. (Whatever happened to LiveMarks in Firefox?) Neither will users of Mozilla Firefox miss the obvious similarity of IE7's new Search tool.
To give proper credit, it must be admitted that the Beta 1 release, available to a small number of developers, is indeed more than a handful of pedantic platitudes. The software giant appears to be the first company actively addressing the growing problem of "phishing" on the Internet by providing integrated reporting of "suspicious websites" to and from Microsoft. Although time will tell if the new feature helps the uninitiated avoid identity theft or provides them with a false sense of security, it's good to see that software manufacturers are starting to think about the problem.
For those of us in the web industry, the most amiable (and most awaited) new "feature" of IE7 will not be part of its user interface at all. Rather, web programmers can breathe a sigh of relief with the knowledge that Microsoft will finally be addressing a wealth of CSS bugs, which have plagued us for the last four years and been the source of much public lambasting of Microsoft. Although the IE7 programming team have claimed to place a high priority on these CSS fixes, they have not guaranteed full support of CSS 2 and have what appears to be casual disregard for the Acid2 test (which, it could be said, is casually disregarded by its authors). This has caused some controversy over the subject of boycotting the new browser.
IE 7.0 Technical Changes Leave Web Developers, Users in the Lurch (WindowsITPro.com, August 2, 2005)
Moreover, these new features come with a hefty price. Although the software giant has decided not to engage in the same bundling strategy which resulted in a morass of anti-trust litigation some years ago and make the new browser available to the general public, they have not decided to support all of their operating systems in common usage. Instead, they've decided to limit the browser to a minimum Windows XP operating system, forcing users of still stable and useful Win98 to Win2000 operating systems to purchase an expensive operating system upgrade if they want to use the new browser. While it's not difficult to understand Microsoft's desire to use their latest anti-piracy software, there is the distinct possibility that this tactic may be beneficial to alternative browser vendors in the long-run.
A Review of IE7 Beta 1 (Andrew Rondeau's blog)
Inside Internet Explorer 7 Beta 1 (Flexbeta.net, July 28, 2005)
Internet Explorer 7 Beta: A First Look (ZDNET UK, July 27, 2005)
IE Blog (MSDN's IE Blog)
Standards and CSS in IE (IE Blog, July 29, 2005)
