SillyDog701

[Andrew T.]

I hate to be the purveyor of bad news, but...

According to C|net, at this year's RSA Conference in San Francisco today, Bill Gates announced that a beta release of Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0 will be available this summer to Windows XP SP2 users.

Some interesting highlights of the news:

- IE 7 will be available to Windows XP (SP2) users, as opposed to only Longhorn users as previously assumed.
- Gates admitted that his company's browser was a security risk.

As for the browser itself, it seems that little news has been revealed thus far on what new features or technology Internet Explorer 7.0 will contain, aside from "anti-spyware features" (according to a Reuters article) and whatever has already been implemented in IE 6.0 for Windows XP SP2. It remains to be seen if IE will have better CSS support, or better PNG support, or tabs or an multi-document interface, or a better rendering engine than the antiquated Mosaic-based relic it uses now. As far as I know, this could be subtle enough a change for Microsoft to get away with calling it "IE 6 SP3" instead.

Again, this is a beta software release. The final release of IE 7 will probably come a while later...as part of Longhorn, perhaps?

I cannot say that I am looking forward to this software release. But from what I can tell, this update will not provide enough of an improvement to IE to nullify advantages Mozilla Firefox has over it, or provide an incentive for the growing number of users of Mozilla Firefox and other Gecko-based browsers to switch back to IE again.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win95; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0

[DJGM]

Uh-oh . . . the monster rises from the deep!

Mind you, this is only for Windows XPSP2 users, which amounts to roughly half of all Windows users.
Meanwhile, alternatives browsers of the likes of Firefox, Mozilla, and Opera remain available to all
and sundry, regardless of OS version and computing platform. Unless MS come up with some
earth shattering new features for IE7.0, (such as a much needed total overhaul of the browser
engine, then I don't think users and supprters of non-MS browsers need to worry too much.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20040913 Firefox/0.10

[Fulvio]

Good news. I am safe, for now. No SP2 on this computer, and so far no need for IE, in most cases.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.2) Gecko/20040804 Netscape/7.2 (ax)

[Al]

I still won't care about 7.0, but if it does have a option to use the Gecko engine by Active like Don once did, a lot of people will be happy or maybe not. If it does support tabs and lots of features in Firefox... then it's a uh-oh.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041108 Firefox/1.0

[Andrew T.]

I still won't care about 7.0, but if it does have a option to use the Gecko engine by Active like Don once did, a lot of people will be happy or maybe not. If it does support tabs and lots of features in Firefox... then it's a uh-oh.

The more I read about what's been said about IE 7.0, the more convinced I am that this will not be a major update along the lines of the transition from, say, IE 3 to 4. I don't see IE implementing new non-security-oriented features such as tabbed browsing or noticibly improved rendering capability. IE 7.0 may prove to be only a glorified IE 6.0 SP3.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win95; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0

[Al]

I still think that it will be a 4th generation browser. 6.0 SP3 is a better name, but 4.0 SP7 or 8 would have been a lot better name

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041108 Firefox/1.0

[Mandrake]

Microsoft have been developing an updated version of IE for Longhorn for quite a while .. this will be quite a significant update in terms of features. As for changes to the rendering egine - I wouldn't have a clue.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0

[Don_HH2K]

...if it does have a option to use the Gecko engine by Active like Don once did, a lot of people will be happy or maybe not...

It wasn't through the IE shell that I did that, you need a working ZIPped Mozilla distribution, a copy of IEPatcher, and knowledge of the command line Regsvr32 utility to do all that. AFAIK, Netscape Browser, Maxathon, and MozIE are the only browsers capable of natively running dual engines. Plus, I wouldn't dare do it to IE, in case something went horribly wrong and then I wouldn't be able to download updates, so I tried it with some beta clone I found of Longhorn's IE 6.05.
If you're wondering, the upcoming version of the [sdt=7971]Donzilla browser[/sdt] will have full support for the Mozilla ActiveX Control so you can use Donzilla's Gecko engine as the engine for the Control, which you cannot do with Netscape as it is. Sorry, though, no dual engines.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.2; en-US; rv:1.7.2) Gecko/20040804 Netscape/7.2 (Donzilla/0.6a)

[Antony]

I hope Microsoft would release a new version of Internet Explorer for Mac. Internet Explorer (in the early versions) was one of the "Mac feel" apps during the OS 8/9 days (okay, the original iMac days).

They were good browsers actually.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/125.5.6 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/125.12

[Don_HH2K]

I hope Microsoft would release a new version of Internet Explorer for Mac. Internet Explorer (in the early versions) was one of the "Mac feel" apps during the OS 8/9 days (okay, the original iMac days). They were good browsers actually.

That brings up another idea. Seeing that Tasman was technologically advanced when compared to Trident, does anybody think that there might be some renewed effort to port the Tasman engine to Windows?

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.2) Gecko/20040804 Netscape/7.2 (Donzilla/0.6a2)

[Al]

That might be possible, if someone knew how, plus the fake mac os x gui has to be removed somehow. Tabbed browsing and full spport for CSS2 might be the key for IE 7

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041108 Firefox/1.0

[keith]

An upgrade will probly be happening, cause the XP machine is technically my parents computer, and they just don't beleive that internet explorer sucks. and so i think i am going to upgrade when it comes out. It couldn't possiby be any worse then it is now!!! haha

keith

UserAgent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows 98; Win 9x 4.90; FunWebProducts)