Has anyone tried the IE7 Beta 1 yet?
MatthewHSE
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So the first IE7 beta has been out for a few days . . . has anyone here tried it? So far it's only been available - legally - to MSDN subscribers. That rules me out, but I'm looking forward to the time I can grab my copy. From what I hear, the IE7 Beta 2 includes almost the same level of CSS2 support that Firefox has. That would be great from a development standpoint, but has the downside of taking away one big area to pick on MS, which was so fun to do! ;)
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jeffd
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Yes, just tried it, there's some bugs that are fixed, looks ok.

I found a copy here. That didn't take very long to leak out, a few days after it was released, that's all for the best though, the more eyes on it the better.

Then I used the install multiple IE's method to test it. To make it brief:

  • Download the executable file, that's a zipped program
  • Unzip it into a folder in the windows XP directory. Note: you must have Windows XP SP 2 installed to run MSIE 7. You can use Winzip or WinRAR, just right click on the IE7-WindowsXP-x86-enu.exe file, then unzip it to whatever directory you want to keep in in.
  • Delete the 'update' folder from that directory, and the file: SHLWAPI.DLL
  • Using a text editor like EditPlus or Notepad, create a blank, empty document, and save it as: IEXPLORE.EXE.Local to the folder you unzipped IE 7 to.
  • That's it, just click on the iexplore.exe in the folder, and IE 7 will start up happily.
  • If you view the 'Help -> about MSIE' option, it will still list MSIE 6 as the browser version, that's because it wasn't installed into the registry. There's probably some other issues as well I'd guess.

This is a safe way to do it, since you're not actually replacing IE 6 in the process. This is a preliminary beta release, not ready for prime time yet, but it's still interesting to check it out to see how the boys over at MS are doing in terms of playing catch up.

I found some bugs fixed already, which is good news, some float/ul li things I've run into for example. And some stuff is sort of breaking, but not very badly overall I'd say.

The popup blocker barely works, you can't turn it off, at least I couldn't find a way to do it, and it's very agressive, it blocks by default user initiated popups, hopefully they'll take a closer look at Firefox to learn how to do that right, LOL. I couldn't get a javascript 'alert' type popup to work at all, we'll see how beta 2 handles that.

As you can see, IE 7 doesn't support xhtml, the real kind, application/xhtml+xml that is. That computer information queries the accept headers of the browser, so it's pretty much fool proof I think in terms of showing what a browser actually can handle re xhtml.

The screen shot shows the tabs, I superimposed the user agent id that it gave when I visited the browser detection page.


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MatthewHSE
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Well bummer. I knew it was only going to be available to Win XP SP2 users, but I figured the install method you outlined might let it work on W2K too. No such luck; guess I'll have to wait until I can get at my XP box to test this one.

That's really lame about requested popups. There are legitimate uses for popups like that and it's just contrary to reason to block them. I"m looking forward to trying out the tabs, though. Do they seem pretty intuitive to use?
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jeffd
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Checked it out a bit. Unfixed still is the background image in a div bug you found. Fixed is peekaboo bug.

Unfixed also is the span {position:fixed;display:block; width:auto;} bug you can see on this sample page. The position is not fixed, the display is block, but the width is not auto. You don't actually need IE 7 to see those bugs, since nothing has changed between IE 6 and 7.

As you can see if you're running IE 7 beta 1, the div background ball is still moving even though it's supposed to be fixed. The span tag is not position:fixed, which I assume means that position:fixed has no support.

Why people get so excited about this beta is beyond me. The tabs do work. The popup blocker blocks everything, and can't be turned off. That's a beta 1 problem, that should be fixed, although whether or not they decide to actually do it correctly is another matter.

<note to MSIE developers>
Earth to Redmond: pop blocking should block automatic popups, not user initiated popups. If you are unclear on this concept, download Firefox and see how their default settings work. Or just give up.</note to MSIE developers>
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MatthewHSE
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I think it's Beta 2 where the major CSS bugs are supposed to be fixed. The IE Blog has a whole list of important bugs that they've supposedly solved for the next beta. Whether or not they're actually fixed remains to be seen. If they are, it's a bright day for web standards.
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jeffd
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Meanwhile, Firefox's roadmap is looking towards CSS 3 and SVG, so IE 7 should get better CSS 2 support right around the time Firefox starts coming out with some CSS 3 support, already available for testing as proprietary -moz... CSS.
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vkaryl
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I'm NOT installing SP2! I can live QUITE well without IE7 of any flavor, thankyouverymuch.
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MatthewHSE
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Well, my laptop came with SP2, so I didn't have a choice. As soon as I get a chance, I'm going to be trying IE7 just to see what it's like. What I'm really looking forward to, though, is the second beta. True, Jeff, it's still way behind the times, but if it will only support the things it claims to support, it opens the doors to a lot of things that haven't been practical up until now.

Of course, I'm not switching away from Firefox under any circumstances. But if IE7 fixes all the problems they say it fixes, and the masses upgrade to it, I'll consider that a good thing for the web.
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vkaryl
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Ah, yeah, my laptop came with sp2 also. But here's how THAT'S going to work: I'm migrating to linux for real over the next while. As soon as I'm comfortable with it, I will be using it as my primary OS with dual-boot only so I can view sites I develop in windows for another while. When I get REALLY comfortable with it, the desktop will go to linux only, and the only windows machine I have will BE the laptop - and at that point, I'll format it and install XP SP1 - which it looks like I will NEVER let loose of....

I tried to get MS to let me buy a second license for the SP1 cd I have - I don't know if they just didn't quite understand what I was asking, they were being deliberately obtuse, or just obstructionist on general principles - in any case, the answer was no.... *sigh*
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