Microsoft Releases IE7

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061019/ap_on_hi_te/microsoft_s_web_browser' target='_blank'>http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061019/ap_on_hi_te/microsoft_s_web_browser</a><br /><br /></div><i>"Microsoft Corp. is giving its Web browser software its first major upgrade in years, amid signs that Internet Explorer's market share is eroding. The release late Wednesday brings Microsoft's browser more in line with competing products such as Opera Software ASA's Opera and Mozilla Corp.'s Firefox. Internet Explorer 7, or IE7, adds features such as tabbed browsing, which lets people open several Web pages without cluttering their desktop with multiple open browser windows."</i><br /><br />&lt;yawn> As a hardcore Firefox user, I can't say that this really excites me in the least, but I thought I'd post the news for you anyway. ;-) IE lost its way years ago, and I don't really feel like the IE team really grasps (or cares) why people aren't using IE. I was in a meeting at the Microsoft campus earlier this year, and there was a presentation from the IE7 team. The presenter asked how many people were using IE7, but crucially didn't ask who wasn't, and <i>why</i> they weren't. Or, even better, who was using Firefox, and why they were using that product. If you're afraid to ask, you're afraid to learn, and your product will never get any better. I know that IE7 is a big improvement over IE6, but I don't see any features in the product that lure me back to the crash-crash land of IE...

[Vincent Ferrari]

Wanna know why I still use FF?

Here's why:

Less than 24 hours after the launch of Internet Explorer 7, security researchers are poking holes in the new browser.

Danish security company Secunia ApS reported Thursday that IE7 contains an information disclosure vulnerability, the same one it reported in IE6 in April. The vulnerability affects the final version of IE7 running on Windows XP with Service Pack 2.

If a surfer uses IE7 to visit a maliciously crafted Web site, that site could exploit the security flaw to read information from a separate, secure site to which the surfer is logged in. That could enable an attacker to read banking details, or messages from a Web-mail account, said Thomas Kristensen, Secunia’s chief technology officer.

“A phishing attack would be a good place to exploit this,” he said.

source (http://www.macworld.com/news/2006/10/19/ie7/index.php?lsrc=mwrss)


Honestly, why should we trust a browser that has a bug that old in it? As I wrote on my very own website, this reminds me of the security holes found in the TCP stack on Vista that were fixed in the prior stack years ago.

Microsoft still has tons to learn about security and while they're effort to make the kernel unpatchable (a great move in my opinion) are terrific, their failings make me just scratch my head and wonder about quality control overall.

[Jason Eaton]

I used to be a firefox user, but have moved to IE7... (sigh)

Since I got my Tablet PC and have been using it as a house roaming web browser I have had to switch back to IE. The main reason for this is that the operating system for the tablet has a hover feature that is not supported by Firefox when using the pen input method.

Any time the OS notices the pen hovering over an input box, or URL address bar, it pops open a handy shortcut to the pen input method. So instead of having the pen input method always open at the bottom it would pop up and float just below the input area I am interested in and disappear when I am done.

The loss of 200 odd pixels on a 10 inch screen to always have the pen method open is a heavy price.

So I wait for Firefox to support the tablet pc or for Apple to get on the ball and try a slate style method computer.

[Chris Gohlke]

Our work computers are locked down, so I can't install firefox there, although I use it on all my home machines. So, I am happy that IE 7 is coming out only because I know they've copied many of the features I like in firefox and I'll soon be getting to use them at work.

[Filip Norrgard]

The funny (ironic) thing with with IE is that a nasty bug that disables downloading files over SSL is still there and has been there since version 5.01 *sigh* :(

I've been using Opera mostly for designing, testing and debugging HTML and XHTML sites mostly for work. Usually Firefox also plays nice, but IE is always the one giving headaches with CSS rendering errors and whatnots. If only CSS compatibility would have been fixed a notch with IE 7... :roll: (but, no, they couldn't do that)

[Janak Parekh]

Since I got my Tablet PC and have been using it as a house roaming web browser I have had to switch back to IE. The main reason for this is that the operating system for the tablet has a hover feature that is not supported by Firefox when using the pen input method.
Jason - that's a very good point, but I have a question for you: don't you find URL entry too awkward via the pen? I played with it a few times on the Tablet PC I had at the time, and rapidly gave up. I don't have the patience to enter URLs by the SIP...

--janak

[Jason Eaton]

URL entry isn't so bad, or at least I have gotten used to it. The shortcuts on the input layer for 'http', 'www', and '.com' cut down on some of the tedious parts and for the rest, the hand writting recognition seems to decipher my chicken scratch well enough.

[Janak Parekh]

URL entry isn't so bad, or at least I have gotten used to it. The shortcuts on the input layer for 'http', 'www', and '.com' cut down on some of the tedious parts and for the rest, the hand writting recognition seems to decipher my chicken scratch well enough.
Interesting. Maybe it's just that my keyboarding skills are much, much better than my inking skills could ever be. Well, at least you have IE7 now. 8)

--janak