Internet Explorer 7 Released

October 19, 2006 12:43 AM

It is done. Windows Internet Explorer 7 has been released.
posted by armoured-ant (131 comments total)

You make it sound like it was a monumental project instead of a software upgrade. Although it does seem to have taken almost as long. (I know, it didn't, but still.)
posted by pjern at 12:52 AM on October 19, 2006

I think it'll have a fairly impact on pretty much all IE users. Tabbed browsing will change the way some people use the web - at least, those who aren't already using FireFox. Or Safari.

That is, if you've got a Genuine, Validated Windows XP install on your computer.
posted by armoured-ant at 12:54 AM on October 19, 2006

* fairly big impact
posted by armoured-ant at 12:54 AM on October 19, 2006

It's all about the rendering engine, dude. Web developers everywhere can stop having to drill holes through their frustrated eyeballs once this gets a fair amount of penetration.
posted by Firas at 12:57 AM on October 19, 2006 [1 favorite]

I've been using it a bit and its not too bad... I have no idea what security for it is going to be like, but the GUI is nice. I'll stick with Firefox 2, but this is going to be cool for anyone who's only experience of browsing was IE6. IE6 should have been taken outside and shot many years ago.

*on preview* hah, my IE7 beta version just crashed going to the windows update site. Perhaps I was a little too hasty...
posted by davehat at 1:03 AM on October 19, 2006

Is this a joke?
posted by cgc373 at 1:06 AM on October 19, 2006

Also, what's with the favicon there? Is that a new MS logo, or have I been ignoring MS for too long?
posted by davehat at 1:06 AM on October 19, 2006

Ugh, its all round. Hopefully it will help increase the use of rss and tabed browsing though.
posted by scodger at 1:11 AM on October 19, 2006

Wow, it's buggy as all hell. I have a permanent "new tab" on my screen, and it doesnt like the windows update site.
posted by scodger at 1:14 AM on October 19, 2006

And why in the hell should I come back to the browser I left because it was a giant pile of dangeour shit and was kept so , FOR YEARS, by the richest software company ever ? Possibily that's the way they remain rich ! Without the presence of competent alternative products such as Firefox, Opera, Netscape we wouldn't have seen a change in IE , possibily it would have remained the same with minor cosmetic variation and significant change wouldn't have occourred ; yet given that we can't possibily know what could have happened, I will stick to the fact IE sucked for years and Firefox still haven't failed me once.
posted by elpapacito at 1:16 AM on October 19, 2006

hmmm, IE7 isn't listed as an update for me and I'm using an RC version, so can this really have been said to have "launched"? I mean, all trace of IE6 seems to have vanished from the windows site, but the update isn't being pushed yet, as far as I can see. I thought MS said this would be pushed as a mandatory update for windows users...

When I went to the download page I didn't have to do a genuine advantage check...

...is this download open to anyone now?

*on preview*

scodger: I think the empty tab is a "feature". If you click on it, a new tab opens... yeah, I don't really see the point either, but I guess it will encourage some users to click it, thus demonstrating teh powah of tabbination


*on re-preview*

elpapacito: I really don't think there's much reason to go back to IE if you've left it, but there's a hell of a lot of people who won't use firefox, not necessarily because they don't want to, but because they don't know how to get it, install it and then use it...
posted by davehat at 1:25 AM on October 19, 2006

Just waiting for 'This site is best viewed at 1024x666 resolution on Internet Explorer 7'.
posted by i_cola at 1:26 AM on October 19, 2006

Davehat, it is officially released, but it is not in the updates till November. Also, for me the validation check happened at install.

(the new tab thing isn't what you describe as the feature, mouse over that feature and see the little box that pops up saying "new tab (ctrl-t)"? That box was in the foreground of all my windows till I force closed explorer)
posted by scodger at 1:28 AM on October 19, 2006

Isn't IE7 going to go out as a high priority update soon?

If it's getting dropped into a Windows Update and requires validation, it's an incredibly strong squeeze move on everyone who doesn't have a valid copy of Windows.

I wouldn't be surprised if the adoption rate turns out to be very low. Countless Windows machines that can't validate will stay with IE6, and many people who have valid licenses but never use IE won't bother to go through the trouble of installing it.

No adblock plugin either, so they still can't touch Firefox.
posted by mullingitover at 1:32 AM on October 19, 2006

I've still had to code around IE 7's numerous CSS problems, from the betas to the final release.

It's been years since IE 6: Why can't Microsoft just follow the fucking spec, already?
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 1:34 AM on October 19, 2006

If I was Microsoft I wouldn't follow the spec. Why make it easier for people to use alternatives to your product?

In cooler news today, Adobe finally put out Flash 9 for Linux. Sweet.
posted by markr at 1:41 AM on October 19, 2006

What Blazecock Pileon said. I can't believe they actually released another browser that we have to hack around to get simple CSS to work. I feel like my head is going to pop off. Evil or incompetent, you decide.
posted by -t at 1:44 AM on October 19, 2006

Anyone got a nice way to run ie6 and ie7 ? I just need them in parallels for testing...crappy ie.
posted by rsanheim at 1:45 AM on October 19, 2006

I love this ad on the page page,. I mean that's something I've been able to do in Google earth and maps for quite a while...


As for IE. I suppose I might get it as an update, I dunno. I'm certainly not going to go out of my way to download it, or ever use it.

Do they implement the totally awesome <canvas> tag that lets you do absolutely anything you want visually if you can implement it in javascript, with no need for flash or any other plug in?
posted by delmoi at 1:47 AM on October 19, 2006

This is a joke. At the peak of the browser wars, the IE team had over 400 people on it. The team that put out IE7 has about 10, if I recall correctly. MS slammed the breaks on IE in 2001 because of a completely justified fear that web apps would start to replace the windows platform. They're still rightly afraid of that, and this grudging, minimalistic set of bug fixes in the implementation of an 8-year-old standard (plus tabs) reflects that. Its the bare minimum set of improvements they felt they needed to offer to staunch Firefox's gains.

The fixes in their rendering engine can't actually be used anyway. IE6 is so solidly entrenched at this point that it will take at least 3 years for its market share to drop low enough for any major website to consider optimizing for IE7.
posted by gsteff at 1:47 AM on October 19, 2006

Anyone got a nice way to run ie6 and ie7 ? I just need them in parallels for testing...crappy ie.

sure...
posted by delmoi at 1:48 AM on October 19, 2006

Ok, I have been playing with it for about half an hour, and have managed to crash it about 6 times. This must be some kind of joke.

On the plus side, it is good to see "add-ons" the poor windows cousin of extensions, even if you have to pay for some of them.
posted by scodger at 1:54 AM on October 19, 2006

Yikes. Cluetime:

1) IE7 will almost certainly eventually be pushed out over Windows Update. That'll mean every XPSP2 user will be running IE7. This is a good thing.

2) 10 people? gsteff, on what basis do you base that statement?

3) Word on the street has for years been that the old IE guys moved over to Avalon/CLR, since doing everything in Javascript seemed, you know. Ill-advised.
posted by effugas at 1:58 AM on October 19, 2006

Ah, since this is all over the news and the front page of Microsoft's front page, I guess this is the official release, silly me. I just checked and IE7 does not like my blog... the live search doesn't load and some of the .css is totally fuxed.

scodger: (the new tab thing isn't what you describe as the feature, mouse over that feature and see the little box that pops up saying "new tab (ctrl-t)"? That box was in the foreground of all my windows till I force closed explorer)

wow, that's a heck of a bug, does it happen every time?

markr:In cooler news today, Adobe finally put out Flash 9 for Linux. Sweet.

yay!

Some bloke somewhere else: What about 64bit? There is no Windows 64bit or OS X 64bit version either right now. As I said before it is not a question of 'recompiling' the source code, there is lots of generic non platform specific work which needs to be finished first. We will ship a 64bit version for Windows, OS X Leopard and GNU/Linux. It will happen. When? … When it is ready.

Boo! (says a 64bit ubuntu user)
posted by davehat at 2:05 AM on October 19, 2006

it's an incredibly strong squeeze move on everyone who doesn't have a valid copy of Windows.

Are you fucking kidding me? Bypassing WGA is as easy as replacing LegitCheckControl.dll with a cracked one, a ~400kB download. It's trivial.
posted by Rhomboid at 2:06 AM on October 19, 2006 [5 favorites]

That is, if you've got a Genuine, Validated Windows XP install on your computer.

Haha!
posted by The God Complex at 2:08 AM on October 19, 2006 [1 favorite]

effugas, I thought I recalled reading that on the IE blog awhile back, but can't seem to find the post.
posted by gsteff at 2:15 AM on October 19, 2006

That is, if you've got a Genuine, Validated Windows XP install on your computer.

lol, a what? good stuff.
posted by cj_ at 2:23 AM on October 19, 2006

I have uninstalled the mouse gestures addon I used, and haven't had a crash since. Seems to actually work now :).
posted by scodger at 2:24 AM on October 19, 2006

davehat writes "they don't know how to get it, install it and then use it..."

Yeah it's the vast majority of people, but not the greater part of computer users. There is this automatic assumption most people don't know how to install one more program, yet at least in my experience that behavior is becoming increasingly less common as people get confidence with their machines. Surely it was like that 10 years ago, but even if I don't have evidence handy, the overall sensation I get is that people install, they just need to get to know Firefox et al. Like by clicking here
posted by elpapacito at 2:33 AM on October 19, 2006

Excellent, now I can ignore a whole new IE.
posted by pompomtom at 2:37 AM on October 19, 2006

davehat: Re flash9 on amd65, from ubuntuforums "And with nspluginwrapper 0.9.90.3, it runs on amd64 flawlessly without having to use a 32bit browser." Which is better than nothing I guess.
posted by markr at 2:37 AM on October 19, 2006

IE hasn't been relevent since version 4 or 5, and that's only because (however unlikely it is) Netscape/AOL managed to do even worse at making a browser than Microsoft.

And then Firefox/mozilla came along, and you couldn't honestly force me to switch back at gunpoint.

I was recently using someone else's computer (during a move, in the brief time when I didn't have my computer set up) who only had IE and didn't want Firefox, and it was excruciating. It was like stepping backwards 5 years.

Between all the plugins and Firefox's default functionality that I've grown well used to, it's like chopping off limbs or something.

There's absolutely nothing that IE 7 can offer me (outside of new bugs, more ads and more crashes) that I haven't already had for a year or several years in Firefox/mozilla.
posted by loquacious at 2:54 AM on October 19, 2006

It's all about the rendering engine, dude. Web developers everywhere can stop having to drill holes through their frustrated eyeballs once this gets a fair amount of penetration.

You are under the impression they've totally revamped and fixed the IE rendering engine. They haven't. They've fixed some of the most retarded rendering bugs, but Moz, Opera, and Safari are still way ahead of IE7.

IE7 is only less of a joke than its predecessors.
posted by Mikey-San at 2:58 AM on October 19, 2006

I know they're way behind, but I don't know about you guys but native support for fixed positioning and PNG alpha transparency means a lot to me.
posted by Firas at 3:08 AM on October 19, 2006

Barely 24 hours out of the gate and we have the first unpatched vulnerability.

Internet Explorer 7 "mhtml:" Redirection Information Disclosure
posted by Rhomboid at 3:15 AM on October 19, 2006

IE7 is only less of a joke than its predecessors.

Internet Explorer: Not as funny as it used to be.
posted by i_cola at 3:17 AM on October 19, 2006 [1 favorite]

MetaFilter: Not as funny as it used to be.
posted by armoured-ant at 3:21 AM on October 19, 2006 [2 favorites]

Lo, the Beast of Redmond hath squatted, grunted mightily, and squeezed out another wormy, sulfurous, loaf. And there is much rejoicing among the legions of The Damned, who now proclaim 'It is done ".
posted by Optamystic at 3:31 AM on October 19, 2006 [3 favorites]

Seems to work fine and my production site actually works - which is a relief.

The install took no less than two reboots though - which has me wondering what else was installed. *taps finger waiting for other patches to fix things not related to browsing but introduced by IE7*
posted by fluffycreature at 3:35 AM on October 19, 2006

MetaFilter: Not as funny as it used to be.

Hee hee.
posted by armoured-ant at 3:41 AM on October 19, 2006

they just need to get to know Firefox et al. Like by clicking here

et al.
posted by three blind mice at 3:42 AM on October 19, 2006

Are the hills alive?
posted by trip and a half at 4:11 AM on October 19, 2006

In cooler news today, Adobe finally put out Flash 9 for Linux. Sweet.

Yea, that's huge news for us Linux users who have been shut out of (what seems like) have of the web for a year or so now. Downloading as I write this.
posted by octothorpe at 4:16 AM on October 19, 2006

I don't know about you guys but native support for fixed positioning and PNG alpha transparency means a lot to me.

This made me chuckle. Whenever anyone says something means a lot to them, I always expect it to be something like gun or environmental reform, or maybe windsurfing...

Also, I have no idea what that is, but it sounds like it might be relevant to ESPN Ocho programming.
posted by The God Complex at 4:17 AM on October 19, 2006

Anyone got a nice way to run ie6 and ie7

I don't think it will be long before the IEs 4 Linux project updates to include IE7. I've been running IE 5 and IE 6 side by side no problem!
posted by furtive at 4:29 AM on October 19, 2006

Now... that. That is what we call a zero day exploit. Fantastic.

I'm pretty sure Windows2000 is going to be my last voluntary Microsoft OS.

I already know I don't want anything to do with Vista.

No, I don't run XP. I used to support that shit. I know it inside and out, from the hives to the registry. It's terrible. Give me local access to the machine and I can "hack" any aspect of the default security in 30 seconds - with full access to your precious NTFS drives and passwords. I don't know how you people stand it, though I suspect 3+ Ghz dual processors might have something to do with aiding in tolerating XP.

I know I can probably putter along with 3rd party applications, security and driver support in Win2K for at least another 5 years, considering you can still get drivers and support for Win98 today.

Which will greatly aid in shifting to linux, unix or hopefully OS X⁸⁶ when Apple finally releases it for the mass x86 market. And I'm not much of an Apple/OS X fan, and I'm certainly no penguin-humping neckbeard, but that's how much I'm loathing the projected prospects of Vista.

IE 7 is mere mouse-droppings compared to the elephantine excretion that will be Vista.
posted by loquacious at 4:35 AM on October 19, 2006 [1 favorite]

davehat writes "When I went to the download page I didn't have to do a genuine advantage check...

"...is this download open to anyone now?"

While you can install it without going through pre-download checks, the installer itself does the validation.
posted by clevershark at 4:46 AM on October 19, 2006

TGC: Also, I have no idea what that is, but it sounds like it might be relevant to ESPN Ocho programming.

If you're asking what the transparent png issue is, its what made my blog (and a lot of others) look hideous in IE6. There's one element in particular a (dragable) button that allows users to look at old entries without leaving the front page. It's a transparent png and in every browser except IE6, it looked fine. In IE6, all rounded elements, particularly this button, have hefty grey boxes around them (the bit that's supposed to be transparent).

*on preview* clevershark: OK, looks like its for "legitimate" users only then...
posted by davehat at 4:54 AM on October 19, 2006

Can I run this on my Macintosh?
posted by Colloquial Collision at 5:03 AM on October 19, 2006

If you're asking what the transparent png issue is, its what made my blog (and a lot of others) look hideous in IE6. There's one element in particular a (dragable) button that allows users to look at old entries without leaving the front page. It's a transparent png and in every browser except IE6, it looked fine. In IE6, all rounded elements, particularly this button, have hefty grey boxes around them (the bit that's supposed to be transparent).

Thanks. I'm a tech tard.
posted by The God Complex at 5:08 AM on October 19, 2006

Give me local access to the machine and I can "hack" any aspect of the default security in 30 seconds - with full access to your precious NTFS drives and passwords

Wow. It's not like you can't do that to linux with a bootable disk or anything. Windows is the sux!
posted by srboisvert at 5:17 AM on October 19, 2006 [1 favorite]

loquacious writes "Give me local access to the machine" ...

I am no fan of Windows (running FreeBSD here), but if you have physical access, then not even *nix is very safe.
posted by krinklyfig at 5:53 AM on October 19, 2006

IE7 will be pushed via Automatic Updates (will install for Admin users unless they have it set to let them review each install first, and opt out) and on Microsoft Update site. It will be labeled "urgent" or "critical" or some such.

This comes right after MS discontinued support for Windows XP Service Pack 1. IE7 is only for XP-SP2, and support for IE6 on XP will be discontinued soon.

Thus, those who have avoided the WGA (validation, "genuine" licence check) will have to choose installing it or going without security patches.

This is part of a shift to a rental model. The intrusions increase, Microsoft taking more and more control over the OS from the computer owner. Vista has built-in DRM and regular check-ins with the mothership, and this is being extended into legacy versions of Windows, all under the pretext of "security" and fighting piracy.

Dot-net is not exactly a big success; Office upgrades have been more bloat and less improvement since 1997 and users are beginning to notice; Vista is a vast boondoggle; developers and the server market are gradually going to Linux; Xbox is not the revenue stream it once was; the iPod clone and TV strategies are not going anywhere; MS is locking competitors out of the market of bolt-on fixes for Windows' Swiss-cheese security. It's getting harder to keep stockholders happy with furure prospects. Manipulations to beat expectations are not working anymore.

The solution? Gradually move users to a pay-by-the-year model.

IE 7 is mere mouse-droppings compared to the elephantine excretion that will be Vista.

Thanks for the line loquacious, I laughed out loud.
posted by jam_pony at 5:56 AM on October 19, 2006 [1 favorite]

I will be sticking with FireFox, and I agree these improvements are less than impressive.

That being said I don't think you can say that IE is no longer relevant. It still has 60% of the market share, every single non-nerd I know uses it, it's embedded in thousands of windows applications, and it is the default browser on most PCs sold. It might not be relevant to you, or the tiny group that calls itself the blogosphere, but in the real world it is still very relevant.

Although, I have tried to push FireFox on my family members and most won't switch because it looks and acts slightly differently than IE, which is what they are used to. I'm interested to see what happens when the IE7 auto-update is released, and the interface changes completely.
posted by cmicali at 5:58 AM on October 19, 2006

Wow. It's not like you can't do that to linux with a bootable disk or anything. Windows is the sux!

Ironically it's a linux bootable CD I'd use to rewrite the password hashes, of course.

However, you can secure a linux box (and it's filesystem) to the point that it's not as trivial as an issue, even with full physical access.
posted by loquacious at 6:01 AM on October 19, 2006

Can I run this on my Macintosh?
posted by Colloquial Collision

No. They announced some time ago they would no longer be developing IE for Mac. So, there IS a silver lining.
posted by hal9k at 6:07 AM on October 19, 2006

jam_pony, the xbox part of your narrative is mistaken I think (newer version brings in way more revenue than the older generations), I'd actually believe that the xbox story gives MS hope in the ipod competitor idea.
posted by Firas at 6:08 AM on October 19, 2006

I don't know how you people stand it, though I suspect 3+ Ghz dual processors might have something to do with aiding in tolerating XP.

Uh. Are you retarded? I don't mean normal playground retarded, but you dropped the spoon and you can't find it and now you're going to throw a fit retarded. Your "arguments" aside, if you've actually ever used XP or know anything about the performance, you'll find it runs fine on even sub-ghz procs. Or maybe you're too busy sticking those hives up your ass. ~~wink~~

Which will greatly aid in shifting to linux, unix or hopefully OS X86 when Apple finally releases it for the mass x86 market.

Maybe high, actually. Like little baby waterhead shitting himself while taking hits off the markers. Or you just like to hang out with that moron Cringley.
posted by cellphone at 6:23 AM on October 19, 2006

Sleight adds PNG support for Internet Explorer, and bgsleight does the same for background images.
posted by kirkaracha at 6:25 AM on October 19, 2006

Delmoi: I realize I could run multiple instances of ie using vmware or something similiar. I'm already using one layer of virtualization (Parallels), so I'd like to be able to do multiple IEs on one winxp install.

Furtive: Thanks for the heads up on that project, I'll be watching...
posted by rsanheim at 6:28 AM on October 19, 2006

uh, cellphone, why are you hating on loquacious?
posted by cgc373 at 6:37 AM on October 19, 2006

Between all the plugins and Firefox's default functionality that I've grown well used to, it's like chopping off limbs or something.

I loved Firefox until it started spiking my processor to about 50% with just one window open, spinning up my processor fans and making it sound like my PC was about the shoot through my roof and try to go into orbit.

Opera works pretty good, though.
posted by Cyrano at 6:37 AM on October 19, 2006

So what CSS goodies are NOT supported that FireFox and Opera support?
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 6:37 AM on October 19, 2006

Uh. Are you retarded?

Yup. "Chromasonally aberrant" was the phrase the doctors used. I can't remember. I'm retarded.

Or you just like to hang out with that moron Cringley.

Holy blessed mother of fuck! Now that stings.

Yeah, I'm resorting to some pretty extreme hyperbole describing XP, but I don't like how it runs on sub-Ghz systems with anything less than a half gig of RAM, even after turning all the widgets off. And I know something about keeping old machines alive. The fastest box I actually own myself is only a 750mhz P3 slot A Coppermine, and I still regularly use a 266 Mhz P1 laptop, though I now have full access to a 3+ ghz P4. I still loathe XP. I loathe XP a lot.

As for the hyperbole on OS X for non-Mac x86s, it's a no brained - if excessively hopeful - prediction. Apple's been making not-so-subtle moves in that direction for a few years now, and there's lots of people clamoring for it. It's probably not going to happen, but I wouldn't be at all surprised or shocked if it did.

On preview: uh, cellphone, why are you hating on loquacious? Step back, sucka. I can handle my own. I'm not argumentative and frequently wrong for nothing.
posted by loquacious at 6:39 AM on October 19, 2006 [1 favorite]

Yeah, okay, loquacious; besides, I see you asked for it.
posted by cgc373 at 6:42 AM on October 19, 2006

I loved Firefox until it started spiking my processor to about 50% with just one window open, spinning up my processor fans and making it sound like my PC was about the shoot through my roof and try to go into orbit.

See, I've never really had the processor or memory leak problems with Firefox, tweaked or not.

Sure, it'll get some mother-huge memory suck going every once in a while, but my machine is comparatively dinky compared to the average these days, and I hardly ever notice a slowdown* - much less any actual browser crashes, and it has yet to hang my whole system. (*The only time I get lag is when I enable flash or java/javascript objects, but I'd get such lag on the initial pageloads anyway if I didn't have NoScript installed.)

I can easily open up hundreds of graphics or layout-heavy tabs in multiple windows and it'll barely take a performance hit. Opera may offer better performance, but it doesn't have the broad plugin support I now crave. (Yeah, bad argument - mass adoption isn't always better, etc.)
posted by loquacious at 6:47 AM on October 19, 2006

Why have this derailed from an "I loathe IE7" to "I loathe loquacious" ? Why do you hate amerika so much ?
posted by elpapacito at 6:48 AM on October 19, 2006

I mean, all trace of IE6 seems to have vanished from the windows site

Except it's in the side menu of the IE 7 page.

I manage to use the !important hack for IE 6, and other hacks that still validate, like child selectors to hide pngs. I will be greatly interested in what is and what isn't fixed and the adoption numbers.
posted by juiceCake at 6:55 AM on October 19, 2006

MS slammed the breaks on IE in 2001 because of a completely justified fear that web apps would start to replace the windows platform.

Wrongsauce.

MS "slammed the breaks" on IE because it doesn't make them any money. However, they've gotten such bad press over the years for having an inferior product that they decided to re-form the IE team and start making releases again.
posted by Afroblanco at 7:09 AM on October 19, 2006

Tried Firefox. Could not open email.

What's all the fuss.

6 & 7 work much better.
posted by wfc123 at 7:10 AM on October 19, 2006

Opera may offer better performance, but it doesn't have the broad plugin support I now crave.

I was only really running Adblock anyway.

But it's happening on a super high-end system with a pretty fresh Windows install. Fixed it briefly, then the problem came back and the fix didn't work anymore. Annoying as hell.
posted by Cyrano at 7:12 AM on October 19, 2006

Are the hills alive?
posted by trip and a half at 4:11 AM PST on October 19

No, but they have eyes.
posted by Pastabagel at 7:13 AM on October 19, 2006

IE7: greater job security for sysadmins everywhere!
posted by mds35 at 7:18 AM on October 19, 2006

Yeah, I'm resorting to some pretty extreme hyperbole

You? Perish the very thought!
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 7:18 AM on October 19, 2006 [1 favorite]

Er, ~wink~.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 7:19 AM on October 19, 2006

But it's happening on a super high-end system with a pretty fresh Windows install. Fixed it briefly, then the problem came back and the fix didn't work anymore. Annoying as hell.

Hrm. I wonder if it's an OS or configuration problem. Are you running XP? :P
posted by loquacious at 7:21 AM on October 19, 2006

While we're bashing IE, can anyone geekier than me tell me about the status of the Firefox memory leak? Is it or will it ever be fixed? I love FF immensely but I'm a tab glutton and every so often it bogs down severly on my laptop.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 7:34 AM on October 19, 2006

Acid2 test results, for laughs. (Link to big one.)


posted by aliasless at 7:42 AM on October 19, 2006

See, I've never really had the processor or memory leak problems with Firefox, tweaked or not.

But would you agree, loquacious, that Firefox is CPU hog, not unlike IE?

It seems to me the folks at Mozilla are so intent on "beating" IE that they have lost focus of simply making a good browser. It's a match between two fat, bloated, CPU-hungry sumo wrestlers.

I'll stick with Opera.
posted by three blind mice at 7:50 AM on October 19, 2006

I love Opera, too, but why won't it play my YouTube links? I've got the Flash Player 9 completely functional! And why do I have to manually reload my home page?
posted by DenOfSizer at 7:54 AM on October 19, 2006

three blind mice
But would you agree, loquacious, that Firefox is CPU hog, not unlike IE? "

New IE7 install, task manager shows 64KB of memory being used.

My bloated, aging FireFox install, 52KB.

IE7 is slower (at least on my system) and looks like ass out of the box.
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 7:59 AM on October 19, 2006

On my other hard drive I've still got Windows 98 SE, and the only reason I use Internet Explorer on that is for the Windows Update -- for security fixes introduced into the whole damn OS by IE vulnerabilities. I don't know if 98SE will run IE7 and I don't care.

And wfc123, Firefox is just a web browser. For email you'd use Thunderbird.
posted by davy at 8:05 AM on October 19, 2006

While we're bashing IE, can anyone geekier than me tell me about the status of the Firefox memory leak? Is it or will it ever be fixed? I love FF immensely but I'm a tab glutton and every so often it bogs down severly on my laptop.

Not really a geek, but I've just upgraded from FF 1.5.0.7 to 2.0 RC3 and for the first time ever (and yes, I tried every "fix" for the memory leak in 1.5 and below I could find), Firefox is taking less than 100 of MB (with 22 tabs open). I tried leaving it open all night and it's still at 94 MB.
posted by longdaysjourney at 8:08 AM on October 19, 2006

But would you agree, loquacious, that Firefox is CPU hog, not unlike IE?

I can't actually agree with that, based on personal experience.

Either Firefox is better at managing it's CPU-hogging or IE is just so buggy, unsecure and unstable that it shows more or something, but Firefox bogs my machines at a fraction of the rate that IE 5/6 do.

However, to be fair, other than a personal opinion I don't have any empirical evidence or analysis to offer you.
posted by loquacious at 8:17 AM on October 19, 2006

22 tabs? Damn, you've got me beat: when I get to 9 or 10 I fire up an alternate browser on another desktop, usually Opera. Eventually I'll get to the point where I'm running every Linux browser I can find on as many desktops as it takes. But 22 tabs on one browser would confuse me.
posted by davy at 8:19 AM on October 19, 2006

And while we're at it, why is an IE upgrade FPP-worthy anyway?
posted by davy at 8:21 AM on October 19, 2006

Heh, 22 is nothing. The most I've ever been up to is 140 or so, and I routinely have 50 open at once.

I know, I know, I have a problem.
posted by longdaysjourney at 8:27 AM on October 19, 2006

Installed IE-7. Now all the text on my machine looks blurry and weird. Tried turning off ClearType. Didn't make any difference. Anybody else have this problem?
posted by Afroblanco at 8:33 AM on October 19, 2006

I cringe every time I have to open IE to get into our hospital's database. It feels like I'm trying to cut wood with a foot-pedal driven saw.
posted by docpops at 8:42 AM on October 19, 2006

22 tabs? Damn, you've got me beat: when I get to 9 or 10 I fire up an alternate browser on another desktop

22 tabs? I've done hundreds in a single pane, with hundreds more in one or more other windows.

It can become confusing. I still use multiple windows for stuff that requires interaction between different web sessions, (namely alt-tabbing between copy/paste) especially for something like composing a link-heavy MeFi post, as ctrl-tabbing through dozens or hundreds of tabs sequentially is a pain. But mousing always works, anyway.

Err, why hundreds of tabs? Linky + DownThemAll + Location Navigator = awesome pr0n image gallery navigation and leeching. That still doesn't explain hundreds of tabs, huh? Remember this: at least 90% of everything is crap.
posted by loquacious at 8:43 AM on October 19, 2006 [1 favorite]

And while we're at it, why is an IE upgrade FPP-worthy anyway?
posted by davy at 11:21 AM EST on October 19 [+] [!]

See numerous Apple related posts. Major technology posts are pretty standard.
posted by juiceCake at 8:46 AM on October 19, 2006

Yay! A Microsoft fruitcake for the holidays!
posted by taosbat at 8:55 AM on October 19, 2006

juiceCake wrote "I manage to use the !important hack for IE 6, and other hacks that still validate, like child selectors to hide pngs."

Easier to use the <!--[if IE]> tag to insert IE-version-specific CSS links. Other browsers ignore this as a comment. Did this on my own page to hide a transparent .png from IE6, while allowing it to show in the IE7 betas. Worked fine, and it validates. Best of all, it isn't a hack - it's an officially supported (by Microsoft) method of inserting IE-specific data into a page. It isn't strictly W3C standard, but you can put anything you want into a comment tag, right?
posted by caution live frogs at 9:07 AM on October 19, 2006

Seamonkey does very well on Acid 2 and standards in general, is fast, has a better interface for advanced users than Firefox, and is a little less of a memory hog.
posted by jam_pony at 9:12 AM on October 19, 2006

• Multiple IEs in Windows
• Taming Your Multiple IE Standalones
• evolt.org Browser Archive
• IE7 Standalone
• Internet Exploer CSS bugs

I use conditional comments instead of CSS hacks.

Position:fixed for Internet Explorer, Min-Width for Internet Explorer , and max-width in Internet Explorer are fixes for some of IE's CSS problems.
posted by kirkaracha at 9:34 AM on October 19, 2006 [2 favorites]

Easier to use the < !--[if ie]> tag to insert IE-version-specific CSS links. Other browsers ignore this as a comment. Did this on my own page to hide a transparent .png from IE6, while allowing it to show in the IE7 betas. Worked fine, and it validates. Best of all, it isn't a hack - it's an officially supported (by Microsoft) method of inserting IE-specific data into a page. It isn't strictly W3C standard, but you can put anything you want into a comment tag, right?
posted by caution live frogs at 12:07 PM EST on October 19 [+] [!]

That's another way to do it as well, but I personally don't find it easier. IE7 should, I presume, respect the !important keyword. The !important hack validates as well.
posted by juiceCake at 9:38 AM on October 19, 2006

Installed IE-7. Now all the text on my machine looks blurry and weird. Tried turning off ClearType. Didn't make any difference. Anybody else have this problem?

That is because MS decided that ClearType would be enabled in IE no matter what, regardless of whether the user had it enabled system-wide. I personally like ClearType a lot but that kind of "fuck you, we know better" logic really gets to me.
posted by Rhomboid at 9:38 AM on October 19, 2006

IE7 is a rancid piece of shit, but I would expect no less from Microsoft.
posted by keswick at 9:47 AM on October 19, 2006

However, you can secure a linux box (and it's filesystem) to the point that it's not as trivial as an issue, even with full physical access.

Ah, no. The threat model for an attacker with physical access to the device is pretty much the same for any hardware running any operating system, and Linux certainly doesn't possess any qualities that makes it any stronger in the face of that threat than Windows is.
posted by cmonkey at 9:53 AM on October 19, 2006 [1 favorite]

Installed IE-7. Now all the text on my machine looks blurry and weird. Tried turning off ClearType. Didn't make any difference. Anybody else have this problem?


Others are saying it was an option upon install. Regardless, you can change it afterward by going to Tools/Internet Options/Advanced tab.. in the Multimedia category uncheck "Always use ClearType for HTML" and restart.
posted by juiceCake at 9:58 AM on October 19, 2006

Microsoft - packaging and reselling open source code since 1975.
posted by echo0720 at 10:08 AM on October 19, 2006

WIll non-admin users be able to install this when it gets pushed out using the "shutdown and install" method?
posted by damn dirty ape at 10:22 AM on October 19, 2006

cmonkey's got you there loquacious...the steps you'd need to take to secure your box from somebody with physical access are BIOS based, not OS. Give me a drive set to boot from external media and I don't care what OS you're running, you can be owned.

And regarding the confusion caused by hundreds of tabs (seek help!): the best Firefox extension I've installed lately, Firefox Showcase. Press F12 and it shows thumbnails of all your open tabs and windows. Click on the thumbnail to make the desired page active.

It's one of those rare extensions I actually believe should be built in to FF.
posted by JaredSeth at 10:23 AM on October 19, 2006 [1 favorite]

There's no way that IE7 is going to replace my well loved Firefox, but I am pretty excited about it bringing tabbed browsing and RSS support to the masses. I work in a large enterprise with over 10,000 desktops where FF is not approved software, and I'm looking forward to utilizing RSS and blogs as an way to trim executive inboxes.

Most of the IT support staff have been using the Maxthon browser the past couple months for the tabbed support. I'll be glad when we can get rid of that.

And as a previous web code monkey I still hate MS's non compliance to the W3C spec.
posted by daHIFI at 10:28 AM on October 19, 2006

mullingitover writes "No adblock plugin either, so they still can't touch Firefox."

That and NoScript, FlashBlock and Metafilthy are absolute requirements for me. If working equivelents aren't available I won't be using IE7 except for Outlook Web Access.

kirkaracha writes "Sleight adds PNG support for Internet Explorer, and bgsleight does the same for background images."

Ya, but you can't code for it because almost no vistors are going to have them installed.
posted by Mitheral at 10:48 AM on October 19, 2006

Oh look, tabs and RSS. Only years after Firefox and Safari got them.
posted by Saellys at 10:48 AM on October 19, 2006

Mitheral, sleight--like other solutions--is not a browser extension, it's code for the webpage that works with the standard browser.

Anyway, because someone above was wondering, alpha transparency is probably better described as 'translucency', in that the background bleeds through a semisolid cover in the image rather than that part of the image being all transparent or completely solid (IE can handle full transparency in PNGs fine).

Anyway, here's what mozilla could do back in 2000 (try it with a mozilla based browser, blow your mind!). Really interesting that they had the technology down pat but the Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox guys had to bring it to the masses through better UI... just goes to show how variable things are in the field, you can't make predictions between technological quality/popularity in either the negative or positive sense (unless you were defining quality has 'how many people it appeals to'.)
posted by Firas at 11:07 AM on October 19, 2006 [1 favorite]

I see that these cockbarns at Microsoft STILL insist on installing fucking MSN Messenger. No option to say no, no little friendly check box, just a "Fuck you, here it is, bitch. Deal." Yeah, I know it's probably easy to remove but Jesus Horatio Christ, give me an option!
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 11:09 AM on October 19, 2006

cmonkey's got you there loquacious...the steps you'd need to take to secure your box from somebody with physical access are BIOS based, not OS.

Point. It was late-ish for me, and I think I was pulling mystical/mythical tech shit out of my ass and thinking of encrypted filesystems and such, and security through obscurity.
posted by loquacious at 11:29 AM on October 19, 2006

longdaysjourney writes "Heh, 22 is nothing. The most I've ever been up to is 140 or so, and I routinely have 50 open at once. "

Yes, you know you have a few tabs open when the tab bar starts scrolling because you've got more than three lines of tabs. And I don't have the close tab button on each tab.
posted by Mitheral at 11:43 AM on October 19, 2006

IE7 is a rancid piece of shit, but I would expect no less from Microsoft.

How would you know, keswick, since it doesn't run on your beloved Mac?

Vista RC1 (which I'm running, and which is not quite the giant turd mentioned above) comes with IE 7, and I've found it difficult to even care about it, since I'm used to Firefox. But I do think that, in the long term, it's a significant improvement to IE 6, so I look forward to its distribution.
posted by me & my monkey at 11:46 AM on October 19, 2006

loquacious: "...I was pulling mystical/mythical tech shit out of my ass and thinking of encrypted filesystems and such, and security through obscurity."

We have an IT director position open. Forward me your resume.
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 12:05 PM on October 19, 2006

Here's the reason IE will never be the browser of your dreams:

Browser connoisseurs and web geeks aren't a constituency that Microsoft particularly cares about. Why? Because every install of Firefox, Opera or whatever costs them exactly $0.00.

Contrary to popular belief, though, they're not worried about common denominator users either. If they were, shipping IE secured would be trivial: maybe doing so would break the occasional add-on toolbar or crappy java-script enabled page, but life would go on and most people wouldn't notice.

Corporate customers, now they matter. Modern business runs on a bewildering array of custom applications, representing an immense investment, and quite a few of them specifically require IE as a platform. They're limited in the improvements they can make by the fact that any change has to be thoroughly vetted so that it doesn't break, say, intranet portals, web-based help desk apps, email web access clients, etc etc etc. If Microsoft were unable to guarantee an unchanging IE platform (buggy though it may be, at least the bugs are well known), businesses would seriously consider, say, purchasing or building apps that use open technologies and running them on non-MS servers. And that would cost Microsoft a ton of money.

So it's not that Microsoft is incompetent. Hacking some tabs into a web browser probably ain't rocket surgery, after all. It's just that quality of the IE experience doesn't affect their bottom line. If you aren't happy with their product, sure, get Firefox, run Linux or shell out for a Mac (I've done all three, myself). But you're unlikely to be using anything but IE at your job in Corporate America any time soon.
posted by a young man in spats at 12:11 PM on October 19, 2006

How would you know, keswick, since it doesn't run on your beloved Mac?

Because I installed it on my work PC to see how it renders the sites I'm responsible for? Geez, are you really that dumb?
posted by keswick at 12:16 PM on October 19, 2006

KevinSkomsvold writes "Yeah, I know it's probably easy to remove but Jesus Horatio Christ, give me an option!"

You can disable it with GPO which is what I do because as you've noticed Microsoft insists on hammering it in at every opportunity.

Firas writes "Mitheral, sleight--like other solutions--is not a browser extension, it's code for the webpage that works with the standard browser."

Ah, a behaviour. Are they dependent on ActiveX or other scripting? I notice they don't work cross site so there would seem to be at least a little risk.
posted by Mitheral at 12:29 PM on October 19, 2006

Because I installed it on my work PC to see how it renders the sites I'm responsible for? Geez, are you really that dumb?

Whether I'm dumb or not, that's certainly debatable. I'm just surprised that you, keswick, can touch a PC without suffering toxic shock syndrome. As far as "rancid piece of shit", that's not very specific. Do you not think that it's at least an improvement to IE 6, even if you don't care to use it yourself?
posted by me & my monkey at 12:37 PM on October 19, 2006

I'm just surprised that you, keswick, can touch a PC without suffering toxic shock syndrome.

Frankly, so am I.

As far as "rancid piece of shit", that's not very specific. Do you not think that it's at least an improvement to IE 6, even if you don't care to use it yourself?

It took Microsoft five years to release a major version update? And its big innovation is tabs, something every other browser has had for god knows how long? No, I'm not impressed.

Let's talk UI, too. They did away with the file menu by default. It can be enabled, but cannot be put its rightful place above the address bar. WHAT. THE. HELL.

No, I don't consider it an improvement. Of course, I'm of the opinion you can't polish a turd.

So who are you, really... Ballmer?
posted by keswick at 12:50 PM on October 19, 2006

Microsoft Upgrades Internet Explorer -- But Not Much Is New
posted by taosbat at 1:07 PM on October 19, 2006

They did away with the file menu by default.

Yeah, that's kind of odd. But how many people actually use the File menu in a browser? I tend to use it a decent amount, but I don't think it's very common for most people.

No, I don't consider it an improvement. Of course, I'm of the opinion you can't polish a turd.

So, if someone came up to you and said, "I can only use IE 6 or IE 7. Which should I use?" your response would be what, exactly? Assuming, of course, that your goal was to actually provide helpful advice.

And you know, when IE 6 came out, it was arguably the best browser available for Windows! Mozilla hadn't reached version 1 at the time, so you had Netscape 6. Yecch. So, yeah, it may be a turd, but only in retrospect.

So who are you, really... Ballmer?

You so funny. If someone doesn't partake of your hot Mac lovin', they must be Steve Ballmer. I'd respond by saying you must be Steve Jobs, but he doesn't strike me as being nearly as disagreeable as you. Anyway, you're misreading "me & my monkey" as "dance, monkeyboy."
posted by me & my monkey at 2:04 PM on October 19, 2006

keswick wrote:

Let's talk UI, too. They did away with the file menu by default. It can be enabled, but cannot be put its rightful place above the address bar. WHAT. THE. HELL.

Here's a a fix to put the Menu bar back where it should be in IE7. (I basically like IE7, but why Microsoft felt it necessary to make such radical alterations to the interface is beyond me.)
posted by longdaysjourney at 2:38 PM on October 19, 2006

Wow, um... did anyone else's security programs have a fit and throw up this message:

http://rad.microsoft.com/ADSAdClient31.dll?GetAd=&PG=CMSIE3&SC=F3&AP=1164
VBS:Zulu
Virus/Worm

upon loading the microsoft link?
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 3:11 PM on October 19, 2006

IE 7 is out and here are some notes
posted by kirkaracha at 3:28 PM on October 19, 2006

With Vista and Office 2007, menu bars are a thing of the past. Sorry.
posted by evilcolonel at 3:30 PM on October 19, 2006

That and NoScript, FlashBlock and Metafilthy are absolute requirements for me.

FYI, using trixie you can run most Greasemonkey scripts in IE, so there's a good chance Metafilthy would work, and you could probably find a Greasemonkey script that functions similar to FlashBlock.

Ya, but you can't code for it because almost no vistors are going to have them installed.

Sigh. No, it's just a piece of JavaScript. You put a link to it in a <SCRIPT> tag in the header of your page, and that's that. Or you copy the .js file to your site and host it there, or even just copy and paste it into your page source, if you don't want it external. All it requires is Javascript enabled. The only other gotcha is that IMG tags of PNGs require the height and width attributes to be specified explicitly. But you should be doing that anyway so it's not a huge problem. Otherwise, it works completely transparently (excuse the pun) to enable full alpha channel PNG support. Anyone bitching about IE's lack of PNG alpha channel support really is not that well informed as this has been reduced to a non-issue for a very long time.
posted by Rhomboid at 4:04 PM on October 19, 2006

a young man in spats: Browser connoisseurs and web geeks aren't a constituency that Microsoft particularly cares about. Why? Because every install of Firefox, Opera or whatever costs them exactly $0.00.

Absolutely 100% incorrect. Now, admittedly, it does not directly cost them anything. However, Microsoft do make a whole lotta money off the ISS market. If they can make a near monopoly of the browser market, they can push their proprietary extensions to ISS that make all sorts of fancy little interactions between their browser and their HTTP server. Suddenly, if you want to have the prettiest and wow-inducing web experience, you have to cater to only IE users and spend your money on Windows and ISS licenses.

When it comes to a company that makes both browsers and HTTP servers, the free browser is the base unit, the ISS servers are the razor blades.

As is, Microsoft showed it cared about it by certain actions here and there...trying to make certain sites use ActiveX eclusively, making Hotmail and MSN.com both only allow IE users (despite the sites working flawlessly if you tell Firefox to lie in its User-Agent string and pretend to be IE).

I would imagine that the market for people who use their computers for web browsing is much larger than that that use it for gaming, and frankly, Windows hold the upper hand ONLY in the gaming market. Every other OS can do anything IE can do except for gaming, and that's only because gaming studios don't write for other OS's, except for id, and I seem to remember Quake and such running better on my linux box than it did on my Windows box.

Outside of gaming, computers are mostly used for web browsing and office software, and the only thing holding back Firefox and OpenOffice is familiarity with Windows software. Both of those apps do a perfectly competent job without the restrictions that Microsoft has. However, in a fairly short amount of time (mostly related to "well, there's nothing you can do about that annoying thing" issues), I've got my parents, who didn't own a computer until a couple of years ago, using Firefox and OpenOffice instead of IE and MS Office, and they've never looked back. And they ain't geeks.

If you're right that Microsoft doesn't care about the web geek market, then they're in for a real rocky road...
posted by Swervo at 11:17 PM on October 19, 2006 [1 favorite]

Can I run this on my Macintosh?

I suppose you could get yourself a copy of Parallels, and get it that way. And there's Boot Camp.

But, I mean, why?
posted by sparkletone at 12:52 AM on October 20, 2006

How do you uninstall it? Really. I figured I'd have a look. Now I want to revert to 6, but Internet Explorer isn't listed in the "Add or Remove Programs" control panel and I don't see an uninstall option elsewhere.
posted by pracowity at 6:10 AM on October 20, 2006

pracowity - check the "show updates" box. This is an update, not an installed program, because it's tied into the system rather than added on.

(At least that worked for the beta versions, each of which required me to uninstall them manually before the new version would install.)
posted by caution live frogs at 6:43 AM on October 20, 2006

Shit. Never mind. I looked under "Internet Explorer" and "Micosoft..." but not under "Windows..."
posted by pracowity at 6:46 AM on October 20, 2006

Can I run this on my Macintosh?

I suppose you could get yourself a copy of Parallels, and get it that way. And there's Boot Camp.

But, I mean, why?
posted by sparkletone at 3:52 AM EST on October 20 [+] [!]

Because he may want to. Preferences, interests, needs, etc. differ. I'm personally not an IE fan but I have to use it because I develop web pages.
posted by juiceCake at 11:06 AM on October 21, 2006