Pigs can fly and Lucifer is down to his neck in snow!

IE7 will feature CSS2 and alphatransparent png files!

Published on July 31, 2005 By Thomas Thomassen In WinCustomize News

Yup! That's right! If you are a webdeveloper you'll be very interesting in one of the recent statements from the IE team. They are working to fully support CSS2 (and CSS2.1 when it's recommened). Additionally, they are fixing quite a few rendering bugs. They have spent alot of time identifying all the various bugs and quirks reported by the webdeveloper community and plans to fix at least the worst of them. (The ABBR tag will appear in IE7!)
It's hard to belive that such a statement finally came, considering it's all seemed so very dead from IE since XP. When we first saw lifesign it was all about security and the webdevs still felt left out. But now our time has come! Read the blogentry for you self. I*m sure it'll bring a smile to your face!

Comments (Page 1)

werewolf

on Jul 31, 2005

horiz0n

on Jul 31, 2005

Did I overlook tabs?

rabidrobot

on Jul 31, 2005

This is very welcome news. I am very new to CSS, but in working on Link I found it very frustrating to be writing compliant code, which would look fine in Firefox, but when checked in IE would look odd or not work.

In particular the 3-pixel jog and guillotine plagued me. In fact, the guillotine still affects some of my pages.

Teaching myself, learning as I went, was made more difficult be IE6's non-compliant rendering. I probably even picked up some bad habits as I incorporated work-arounds as a rule of thumb.

I do think it is a little late in coming, but overall great news.

Excalpius

on Jul 31, 2005

I think your title tends to overrate the importance of this non-event. I mean, Apple turning to Intel? Yes, big deal!

Microsoft tweaking their CSS code management? I'm sure there are at least eight people who really do give a flip about this, but come on now.

Just because the media makes money on the hype doesn't mean the rest of us need to succumb to it.

Hus

on Jul 31, 2005

I would switch to IE7...but I've been spoiled by Firefox's Extentions...and now I don't know if I could use a browser without them. If they make mouse gestures for IE7, I'll consider it...

RPGFX

on Jul 31, 2005

big whoop... as they say...

JDavidHarper

on Jul 31, 2005

I'm kind of a beginning web developer, and this news brings me overwhelming joy. Of course, we'll have to wait for a year or more for IE7 to take over IE6's place, but eventually, soon, designing web pages will get a LOT easier.

Tarkus

on Jul 31, 2005

I think the only people very excited about this are web developers, because IE already works virtually everywhere for the rest of us. And that's all most of us care about. Don't get me wrong, it's a good thing, but just not overly exciting.

Also, IE has had tabs, extensions (called plugins), mouse gestures, etc., for years. It's in a package called Maxthon.

Posted via WinCustomize Browser/Stardock Central

horiz0n

on Aug 01, 2005

What the old and new IE can and cannot do is the point here, not what silly amounts of plugins or other browsers can do to fix it. IE itself hasn't had tabs, gestures, pop up blocking or any of the other "what is now standard" features others have for any amount of time, and definetly not from a completely independent browser called Maxthon.

Thats like saying "Windows has had object dock and a taskbar at the top of the screen for years, it's called OSX."

Opera is to the point of almost non-use, it has all these features, Firefox the one generating the most competition to IE, it has them, Safari pretty much has them all, even Maxthon has them. But IE doesn't, hasn't, and still might not during the time that they're trying to play catchup is the point. Not to mention IE this new version was supposed to be out months ago?

As far as web developers go it's a big help to add some of the features we've been wanting to use but couldn't because the "standard" was so limiting compared to the others. Now developers can start to do more without worrying about whether the general audience will have a compatable browser. But aside from the developer position, as a user of the browser, if it can't hold up or offer anymore than just finally updating to the current decades code and doesn't give much in the way of usability features I don't see a whole lot to get excited about as far as actually using the browser. It's basically saying IE will "at some point" do at least some of what other browsers have done for years.

If it wasn't for the fact that developers have to design sites to work for IE in particular due to the masses of the common joe using IE because it's on their computer when they get it, developers wouldn't care too much either.

I'll be glad to hear the final list of what it has and what it can do to see if it's worth going back to using, but as much as this is a much needed step, it's not enough yet.

craeonics

on Aug 01, 2005

So pretty soon we can give it a right good kicking to find out what was fixed, what is still broken and any new fuck ups that have sprung up. Let's hope that when this comes out it'll quickly propagate, or else I'll have to keep track of even more browser quirks.

As for alpha support for .png: yay!

Tarkus

on Aug 01, 2005

What a silly analogy. Maxthon is a wrapper for IE. It's NOT a completely independent browser. And OSX is NOT a wrapper for Windows.

thomassen

on Aug 01, 2005

If you are making websites then this is a big deal. Consider that IE still holds eighty percent -something of the browsermarket. The webdeveloper community has been complaining about IE's CSS and rendering bugs for years now. When I make website the most amount of time is spent tweaking it to play nice in IE. A waste of time and money if you ask me.

paxx

on Aug 01, 2005

I've been waiting for IE to support transparent PNG's for a good 3 years now so I can at last drop the obsolete and ugly 8 bits GIF format at last. Yes, it is a big deal. Much bigger than the addition of tabs or popup blocking.

scratch_pentagon

on Aug 01, 2005

What a silly analogy. Maxthon is a wrapper for IE. It's NOT a completely independent browser. And OSX is NOT a wrapper for Windows.

he meant to say "it's called objectdock".

horizon

on Aug 02, 2005

Maxthon Internet Browser software is a powerful tabbed browser with a highly customizable interface. It is based on the Internet Explorer browser engine (your most likely current web browser) which means that what works in the IE browser will work the same in Maxthon tabbed browser but with many additional efficient features like...

That's pulled right off of Maxthon's website, so where exactly does "based on" translate into a "plugin or wrapper", or more importantly, no matter what Maxthon is; how does it relate to Microsoft's official release anyway? Maxthon isn't affiliated or in any way endorsed by Microsoft, nor would they likely ever care to be. Basically put, Maxthon and Internet Explorer are not the same thing.

And saying "ohhh...Internet Explorer has always been able to do this and that for YEARS (even though "it" hasn't), because IF you download and install this unsuporrted 3rd party thing, that supposedly isn't a seperate program yet is bigger than pretty much any other complete browser out there, (although ironically it doesn't list itself as "a package for IE called Maxthon" but simply called "Maxthon Browser") then that somehow means that Microsoft's Internet Explorer has always had things it just plain as day doesn't have..." is such a silly statement, it's hard to make an analogy that doesn't sound equally as silly.

But not that I don't believe you realize that already, the simple fact that Maxthon isn't IE, and IE doesn't come with Maxthon, the only real issue to this is what does IE do itself, out of the box. Bringing up what other browsers can do you might as well just throw in Firefox and Opera and all the rest.

We know that other plugins and browsers have allowed us to do new and often thought "better" things for a good few years, the point is we want, and it's time that Internet Explorer finally did them as well. Wouldn't you agree?

BTW, sorry for my all too common rants.

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