Internet Explorer 7

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["»Q«"; Wed, 16 Feb 2005 02:02:20 GMT]
Not that they cared about user requests before they started losing
market share, but they seem to care about them now.
Click to expand...

Hmmm ... imagine that! ;-) I've heard that IE7 will only be compatible
with Longhorn but I don't have any confirmation yet.
 
Wow, this has the potential to be *big*. Despite (and perhaps because
of) the fact that I am a huge fan of Opera and Firefox, I would wildly
applaud this move by Microsoft, if they do just a few things with the
new IE version.

I really don't give a rip about what eye candy they put in it, be it
mouse gestures, tabs, or whatever. Those are easily enough added on
through various IE shells, and are already available in other free
browsers. However, if MS decides to bring their browser up to speed
with regards to the various web standards such as CSS2, PNG alpha
transparency, SVG support, and such, it could have an absolutely
gargantuan impact on the web, at least from a developer's perspective.

With proper CSS2 support (namely working support for the
background-fixed attribute), there are any number of low-bandwidth
snazzy site designs that are possible using very simple code. See
Eric's css/edge at http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/css/edge/ for examples,
especially noting the 'complexspiral distorted' one.

Now, there is a very nice effect, making it appear as the background to
your text is mottled glass of different tints, with seamless scrolling
support and the background image appearing to stay in the same place.
All it takes is the same image rendered four different ways in any
common image processing program and some very simple CSS2 code. IE,
however, doesn't support the necessary CSS2 tags, so the page looks
like total junk in it.

Native PNG transparency support would also be a huge boon to the web.
Currently, to support variable image transparency with PNGs, IE
requires a nasty IE-only hack using a proprietary DirectX-based
client-side filter that breaks other browsers. As a result, virtually
no websites use PNG, even though it would be vastly useful to have
images that could have partial transparency and look good on multiple
backgrounds, instead of the on-or-off transparency support that GIF
currently provides.

Even though the browsers I typically use already support these features
quite handily, I would be thrilled if IE supported them. Why? That
would mean that the 90% (or so) web users who use IE would have access
to these features, which would mean that as a web designer I could
develop for said features without having to worry about a majority of
people not being able to see it correctly, or have to write separate
versions of the page for IE and non-IE browsers.

Just my $0.02...

Clint Olson
(e-mail address removed)
 
["»Q«"; Wed, 16 Feb 2005 02:02:20 GMT]
Not that they cared about user requests before they started losing
market share, but they seem to care about them now.
Click to expand...

Hmmm ... imagine that! ;-) I've heard that IE7 will only be compatible
with Longhorn but I don't have any confirmation yet.
Click to expand...

I've heard that it will also work under XP SP2.
 
Wow, this has the potential to be *big*. Despite (and perhaps because
of) the fact that I am a huge fan of Opera and Firefox, I would wildly
applaud this move by Microsoft, if they do just a few things with the
new IE version.

I really don't give a rip about what eye candy they put in it, be it
mouse gestures, tabs, or whatever. Those are easily enough added on
through various IE shells, and are already available in other free
browsers. However, if MS decides to bring their browser up to speed
with regards to the various web standards such as CSS2, PNG alpha
transparency, SVG support, and such, it could have an absolutely
gargantuan impact on the web, at least from a developer's perspective.

With proper CSS2 support (namely working support for the
background-fixed attribute), there are any number of low-bandwidth
snazzy site designs that are possible using very simple code. See
Eric's css/edge at http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/css/edge/ for
examples, especially noting the 'complexspiral distorted' one.

Now, there is a very nice effect, making it appear as the background
to your text is mottled glass of different tints, with seamless
scrolling support and the background image appearing to stay in the
same place. All it takes is the same image rendered four different
ways in any common image processing program and some very simple CSS2
code. IE, however, doesn't support the necessary CSS2 tags, so the
page looks like total junk in it.

Native PNG transparency support would also be a huge boon to the web.
Currently, to support variable image transparency with PNGs, IE
requires a nasty IE-only hack using a proprietary DirectX-based
client-side filter that breaks other browsers. As a result, virtually
no websites use PNG, even though it would be vastly useful to have
images that could have partial transparency and look good on multiple
backgrounds, instead of the on-or-off transparency support that GIF
currently provides.

Even though the browsers I typically use already support these
features quite handily, I would be thrilled if IE supported them.
Why? That would mean that the 90% (or so) web users who use IE would
have access to these features, which would mean that as a web
designer I could develop for said features without having to worry
about a majority of people not being able to see it correctly, or
have to write separate versions of the page for IE and non-IE
browsers.
Click to expand...

Except, of course, for those who use an older version of IE. And there
will be a bunch of those for quite a while IMO.

--
dadiOH
____________________________

dadiOH's dandies v3.06...
....a help file of info about MP3s, recording from
LP/cassette and tips & tricks on this and that.
Get it at http://mysite.verizon.net/xico
 
Almost certainly. They won't say much about planned features, but the
guy in charge of UI stuff has pointed out that it's the most frequently
requested feature by far.
Click to expand...

That would help, but the cynical side of me says that this is an
attempt to appease the European courts. And just that.

There are sources that suggest that M$ is playing hardball in Europe
(Denmark). But I cannot yet confirm the reliability. M$ denies the
hardball tactics.
 
Except, of course, for those who use an older version of IE. And
there will be a bunch of those for quite a while IMO.
Click to expand...

<IMO class="speculative">

As it is now, Firefox, Opera, et. al, have enough of the market to
make it difficult for businesses to keep producing fancy IE-only
pages, and the large number of IE users prevents them from making any
fancy standards-compliant pages. One result is that we see a lot of
bland, lowest-common-denominator pages which use neither the power of
Microsoft tricks nor the power of standard HTML and CSS. If/as MS
adds standards compliance, that will change rapidly, just as it sites
changed rapidly when browsers' rendering features were increasing
rapidly during the browser wars. People who won't upgrade to capable
browsers will just be told to do so, as they were during the wars.
People who won't update will just be out of luck, as they were during
the wars. The main difference for users this time around is would be
that they could chose any modern browser they like, rather than have
the choice imposed on them by one web designer or another.

None of this may happen, but I think it will because I think MS has
decided it's better to implement the last 6 or 8 years of browser
innovation than to keep getting hounded by articles pointing out how
out-of-date their software is. Those articles are making it harder
and harder for them to keep claiming that use of a single platform
enhances rather than detracts from innovation. And MS has nothing to
lose now by implementing standards compliance, whereas before I think
they were holding on to a pipe dream of controlling the ways
technology is delivered over the web for years to come.

As an aside, no browser currently supports CSS2 completely. I'd love
it if MS did by next summer (unlikely), since MS crowing about it
would force the others to step up. (Last I looked, a couple of months
ago, Opera was very close to full CSS support, and Gecko was fairly
close. I don't know about KHTML.)

</IMO>
 
Excuse me for being an idiot !!
I want it.
Click to expand...

If Mister Bates (Bill Gates, in disrespectful parody) beats his company's
record of setting *wildly* optomistic dates for releasing software & then fails
(as has been the case for much of the past decade's time) to deliver, on time,
I will not be surprised. As of this typing, IE 7 is *nothing* but "vaporware"
(as I suspect, will [also] be "Longhorn", missing advance file-handling-systems
which were *supposed* to have come-out along with NT4).

My verdict (of course, your mileage may vary) on IE7? "Don't hold your breath."
 
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