IE Update to Debut Ahead of Plans

[Digobick]

From the head of the IE team:

Today at RSA, Bill Gates talked about Internet Explorer 7. As the guy responsible for IE, I wanted to say a couple of things about it.

First, some basics: we?re committing to deliver a new version of Internet Explorer for Windows XP customers. Betas of IE7 will be available this summer. This new release will build on the work we did in Windows XP SP2 and (among other things) go further to defend users from phishing as well as deceptive or malicious software.

Why? Because we listened to customers, analysts, and business partners. We heard a clear message: ?Yes, XP SP2 makes the situation better. We want more, sooner. We want security on top of the compatibility and extensibility IE gives us, and we want it on XP. Microsoft, show us your commitment.?

I think of today?s announcement as a clear statement back to our customers: ?Hey, Microsoft heard you. We?re committing.?

Why are we talking about it today? Because our customers and partners have asked us, with increasing urgency, what our plans are. We want to convey our intentions to our customers and partners clearly and in a timely way.

I?ve gotten questions about the ship date. Yes, we have a date in mind. I?ll talk about the date after we get feedback from customers and partners. We?re going to release a beta and listen, then refresh the beta and listen some more. We?ll ship when the product is ready.

I?ve also gotten questions about support for Windows 2000. Right now, we?re focused on XP SP2. We?re actively listening to our major Windows 2000 customers about what they want and comparing that to the engineering and logistical complexity of that work. That?s all I can say on that topic.

Please know that the IE team is working hard. We?re eager to improve and better secure the web experience for the hundreds of millions of IE users around the world. We delivered on our part of XP SP2. We are actively delivering on our part of a great 64-bit Windows client. We continue to deliver on security updates for customers (across several versions of IE (back to IE 5.01) and Windows). We?re going to deliver on IE7.

Dean

IE Blog

 

[Schadenfroh]

thank you opera and mozilla.org

 

[MrChad]

Interesting. I wonder if Microsoft will improve or change any of their standards support. This could be potentially dangerous, as many websites out there are coded specifically for IE's idiosyncrasies.

 

[Drakkon]

yikes i cant iamgine how this is one again going to change the face of soo many pages that are now using layering and css to layout pages...hopefully everyone will conform to a set standard (w3c) and go away happy

 

[edmicman]

so they're going to drop activeX support altogether then?

 

[MrChad]

Originally posted by: edmicman
so they're going to drop activeX support altogether then?

This would break thousands of custom applications. I highly doubt they are dropping ActiveX support.

 

[Malak]

Still not going to use it.

 

[Jeff7]

Anywhere I see or hear it, execuspeak makes me a bit sick. "committed to quality," "want to serve you better" blah blah. But the message is clear - IE 7 is coming.
Wonder what improvements it will offer?

 

[Trente]

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2005/feb05/02-15RSA05KeynotePR.asp

 

[kamper]

Yay! Let's hope for some standards compliance. I see no reason why they can't implement this without affecting all the ie only sites out there. The reason the bad sites are bad is because they are largely non-compliant. They only have to change the rendering of (reasonably) compliant pages. However, it'll still do only a limited amount of good if they don't release it for non xp sp2 machines.

 

[Digobick]

Originally posted by: Drakkon
yikes i cant iamgine how this is one again going to change the face of soo many pages that are now using layering and css to layout pages...hopefully everyone will conform to a set standard (w3c) and go away happy

More robust CSS support would be nice.

 

[loup garou]

Glad to hear it's not exclusively tied to Longhaul. :thumbsup:

 

[kamper]

I find it kind of odd how he felt it was necessary to spend half the blog reiterating how they are "listening to our customers demands". You'd think he had a briefing by the marketing department about exactly what he should and shouldn't say on his blog :roll:

 

[Nothinman]

You'd think he had a briefing by the marketing department about exactly what he should and shouldn't say on his blog

There's no need for a briefing, the hive mind simply decided what would be published and the drones started typing it.

 

[Wolfsraider]

A day late and a dollar short IMHO

They are listening to the sound of users switching from ie to firefox.

I decided to take a higher road and remove xp...no matter what the cost.

I love xp...its very simple and easy to use...too bad its also so vunerable to exploits.

This year I hope to see a big trend of users switching away from microsoft.
I got a good feeling I will

Mike

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: MrChad
Interesting. I wonder if Microsoft will improve or change any of their standards support. This could be potentially dangerous, as many websites out there are coded specifically for IE's idiosyncrasies.

Well, that would be the fault of those website's webmasters; choosing to hitch their cars to a defective train. If they had coded them properly to non-proprietary standards in the first place, they wouldn't be in that position now, would they?

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: Wolfsraider
A day late and a dollar short IMHO

They are listening to the sound of users switching from ie to firefox.

I decided to take a higher road and remove xp...no matter what the cost.

I love xp...its very simple and easy to use...too bad its also so vunerable to exploits.

This year I hope to see a big trend of users switching away from microsoft.
I got a good feeling I will

Mike

I'm working on that myself. I'll probably keep a non-network-connected Win98se/W2K machine around for gaming purposes, but I hope to move my main internet/development machine to something else soon. What that 'something' will be, is currently open for question.

 

[BespinReactorShaft]

Do we need xpsp2 to run IE7?

 

[Schadenfroh]

Originally posted by: ming2020
Do we need xpsp2 to run IE7?

If i was microsoft, i would make you

 

[MrChad]

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry

Originally posted by: MrChad
Interesting. I wonder if Microsoft will improve or change any of their standards support. This could be potentially dangerous, as many websites out there are coded specifically for IE's idiosyncrasies.

Well, that would be the fault of those website's webmasters; choosing to hitch their cars to a defective train. If they had coded them properly to non-proprietary standards in the first place, they wouldn't be in that position now, would they?

That's all well and good, but from a business standpoint you should always try to maintain backwards compatibility when upgrading your software.

 

[Nothinman]

That's all well and good, but from a business standpoint you should always try to maintain backwards compatibility when upgrading your software.

Right and MS has always done that without any trouble...

 

[MrChad]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

That's all well and good, but from a business standpoint you should always try to maintain backwards compatibility when upgrading your software.

Right and MS has always done that without any trouble...

Well that's my point. I know that IE currently doesn't render many CSS elements properly. Fixing these issues would break backward compatibility. So there's a tradeoff associated with becoming more "standards-compliant".

 

[Nothinman]

My point was that even IE 5 and IE 5.5 had major differences, so it's not like they're been trying too hard so far.

 

[stndn]

Yes, XP SP2 makes the situation better. We want more, sooner. We want security on top of the compatibility and extensibility IE gives us, and we want it on XP.

nope, sorry. i'm not using winxp, and i don't think i ever will.
so what options do i have for sticking with windows 2000?

We continue to deliver on security updates for customers (across several versions of IE (back to IE 5.01) and Windows). We?re going to deliver on IE7.

did someone mention delivering security updates across several versions of windows? or did he mean several versions of windows xp?