IE7 Developer Beta Released

28 Jul

No, I haven’t got an MSDN acct so I can’t play with it. Bah.

However, I did download and look through the technical overview. The meat of it is in a section called ‘Platform Enhancements’.

First impressions are mixed. If you’re a reader of the IE Blog then there’s nothing new here at all. If you’re not a reader then its worth going over them.

CSS

The IE team say that:

The work Microsoft has done includes fixing some positioning and layout issues related to the way Internet Explorer 6 handles

tags

And thats the most specific sentence they make on the issue. Let me say that that in and of itself is a big improvement and I for one thank Microsoft for addressing these layout issues. I am however concerned that no mention is made of _how_ IE7 will address these layout issues – if its done badly, all our CSS positioning hacks for IE could fail badly and immediately.

I’m also disappointed that the IE team felt unable to commit to a web standard and meet it. I understand that they would’ve had to make very substantial alterations to the core rendering engine but isn’t that the point of whole version upgrades? To make big changes?

PNG

The IE team say:

With an alpha channel, designers can use special effects that were not previously supported

Which I assume means they’re supporting it. If so then ‘well played lads’. Nothing further to add.

And thats that for designers. As I say, I’m appreciative of that fact that the IE team listened and I’m aware this is only a Beta release but I can’t help but be disappointed that the changes aren’t more far reaching and show more commitment to web standards.

*Update*:

CSS Updates – Internet Explorer 7 includes fixes for issues with the Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) feature. Both the peekaboo and guillotine bugs have been addressed, and work on other issues is under way to provide web developers with reliable and robust CSS functionality.

SDK Documentation.

I really can’t understand the fuzziness of these statements. If you’re going to tell us what _has_ been fixed, why not just tell us what you’re _going_ to fix at the same time?

14 Responses to “IE7 Developer Beta Released”

  1. bonni July 28, 2005 at 14:00 #

    So did they fix the broken box model or not? Or aren’t they saying?

    Yeah, you know, they probably did break all the hacks, too…

    My “thorn in the side” browser used to be NS4.x, but as use of that one has declined more and more and I’ve mostly stopped supporting it except on a couple of client sites that MUST be as compatible and usable as possible, so it’s not an issue for me now.

    These days, my thorn-in-the-side browser is actually IE…

  2. Jonathan Snook July 28, 2005 at 16:08 #

    Only a couple of CSS bugs have been resolved so far… I’ve been able to confirm that the Phantom Box bug has been fixed and I’ve heard the Guillotine bug is fixed. Other than PNG support, everything looks the same as IE6. Let’s hope they blow us away with beta 2.

  3. Kev July 28, 2005 at 16:14 #

    Have you had a chance to look at any alpha PNG’s Jonathon? I’ve heard mixed reports on how well that features working.

  4. Jonathan Snook July 28, 2005 at 18:09 #

    I only did a quick test and they seemed to work fine. But some people have more unusual test cases than what I put together.

  5. Matt Setchell July 28, 2005 at 23:07 #

    Its interesting to watch it all develop, if nothing else.

  6. Matt Setchell July 28, 2005 at 23:10 #

    Do you have trackback turned off? Iwas just updating my vista blog linking to you that was all.

    http://www.mattian.co.uk/matt/1114/

    http://www.mattian.co.uk/matt/vista

  7. Faruk AteÅŸ July 29, 2005 at 00:34 #

    I think patience is a better idea than being disappointed:

    http://kurafire.net/log/archive/2005/07/28/ie7-beta-1-release

    This really shouldn’t have been such a surprise to so many people, but I’ll admit that my first thoughts weren’t quite positive either.

  8. Kev July 29, 2005 at 10:37 #

    Sorry to respond here rather than at your place Faruk but my works’ proxy won’t let me through :o(

    I hear what you’re saying re: patience and I wasn’t expecting miracles but surely if they can say what they’ve fixed so far it should be easy to inform us exactly what will be fixed in the full release?

    No one (I hope) was expecting a fully functional release here but playing cat and mouse with information, given MS’s track record, is worrying to say the least.

  9. Robert Nyman July 29, 2005 at 13:57 #

    Kevin,

    Sorry for the shameless self-promotion here, but I tested it yesterday and this is my IE 7 review.

  10. Matthew Pennell July 30, 2005 at 11:12 #

    The next version of the Beta is starting to look pretty sweet, though:
    http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/07/29/445242.aspx – now all we need to worry about it converting all those legacy sites that have the * html hack sprinkled throughout the stylesheet…

  11. Kev July 30, 2005 at 11:47 #

    Great news but why post a technical overview with a Beta release thats outdated 2 days later? Why not just post that whole list in the overview?

  12. Kev July 30, 2005 at 11:47 #

    Oh and promote away Robert ;o)

  13. imran November 2, 2005 at 22:16 #

    Hi

    The power of CSS is amazing. I’ve seen a few sites like this one where i’ve been blown away by what you can do. Alot of DHTML and other funkiness can be avoided if your clever with your stylesheet.

    I want to manage a stick up footer on the website for IE 5.0 +. with CSS As you can see 1 on bmw.co.uk

    thanks

    Imran

  14. Apple January 25, 2006 at 17:16 #

    IE7 beta2 seems to be (unofficially?) out now. Are there any new CSS updates?

Comments are closed.