Internet Explorer 7 Released
Posted on Thursday, October 19th, 2006
The waiting is over for those poor users of Internet Explorer 6 as yesterday Microsoft announced that IE7 is now available. Go, go and download it now and experience a safer and better way of surfing the web (with a Microsoft product). Then start up Firefox again, because you know better.
Big Changes?
IE7 means a few different things; a lot of bug fixes, removal of security holes, tabbed browsing, simpler interface, the list is probably longer than I’m willing to go on for, I’m not advertising it! But more importantly, this could affect any website already on the internet.
Your site may have looked great in IE6 after tweaking, and possibly hacking at it, but I urge you to try it in IE7 now (if you weren’t already looking with the beta versions). The problem is, the rendering has been improved, but it still isn’t of the capability of proper standards compliant browsers. Add to that the fact that all of the famous CSS hacks have been removed and any site could look wrong in IE7. My advice has always been to use conditional comments to keep your site looking good in IE, but I thought I’d warn you anyway.
Automatic Updates
Not only is IE7 officially with us, but it will be coming in force with November. As promised, IE7 will be pushed out to users via Automatic Updates so make sure you’re ready!
My Reaction
I’m glad that IE7 is now with us, it heralds a new age for web development, where Microsoft continue to improve their product because both users and developers need the constant improvements. Also, the poor guys who use IE because they know no better at least get a safer experience and, of course, tabbed browsing. But, there is one thing that stands out about this release that impresses me more than anything since hearing about the development of IE7. I’ll leave you with the last paragraph from the announcement of the release and hope you’ll agree, this is the best thing that Microsoft could have said
That said, we’re not done. Even as we put the finishing touches on Windows Vista and release all the remaining language versions of IE7, we have already started work on the next versions of Internet Explorer. We’ll post more here soon about our plans for the product and our plans for listening to you.
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1October 22nd, 2006 at 11:43 pm
Nyssa Says:I’m kind of dreading looking at the theme I’m working on at the moment with IE7. It’s okay in IE6, just a small problem with perhaps one thing which is here nor there. I have a feeling this new theme will be all over the place. :P
But I have to say, it’s quite impressive they’re already working on the next versions of IE considering the amount of time between 6 and 7.
2October 23rd, 2006 at 1:43 pm
Phil Says:Hi Nyssa, welcome to the site!
With any luck, your design should look closer to how it does in Firefox than IE6 since a lot of the rendering bugs have been ironed out of IE7. However, some still remain and you might find yourself with some tweaking to do.
I can’t wait until Microsoft properly catches up with the standards compliant browsers of today. That will make everyone’s lives a lot easier. At least there is hope.
3October 23rd, 2006 at 11:49 pm
Nyssa Says:You’re quite right actually. It does pretty much look the same in IE7 as it does in Firefox. But unfortunately I have issues in Firefox… changed something that really messed up the layout on pages. Hopefully I’ll be able to work out what I did. :P I had someone check it out for me though and it’s mostly fine. :)
I can’t wait either. It will remove alot of unneccessary extra tweaking people need to do on their sites.
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October 23rd, 2006 at 11:53 pm
4October 24th, 2006 at 12:06 am
Phil Says:I’m sure your problems won’t take long to fix, unlike my current tweaking, which looks like someone placed a bomb in the middle of my page in IE6 and almost as bad in Firefox.
Getting your design to look the same in all browsers is almost as much fun as getting it to look how you want it to in one!
5October 24th, 2006 at 12:27 am
Nyssa Says:You’re right! I just fixed the problem a few minutes ago and it was something as simple as height in the CSS which was causing some overflow on pages. :P I hope you manage to get yours sorted out. Seems like there is a fair bit to work through.
Too right!