SillyDog701

[Antony]

Update 1 Feb 2006:

Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 Preview is now available. [sdp=69732]jump to the post[/sdp].


From this IEBlog entry (hosted under MSDN Blogs),

MSIE 7 beta will have two important features:

• alpha channel in PNG images support
• addressing CSS consistency problems

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/312.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/312

[Don_HH2K]

It would be nice when IE supports the full PNG-24 standard and the full CSS profile. Of course (and this is just a rumor, of course!), there's always a chance that it could ship with Longhorn instead of Longhorn's redesigned-with-the-same-crappy-engine IE 6.05 with this summer's Release Candidate. I'll definitely be buying that, and I'm sure those here with MSDN subscriptions like DJGM will have it even faster than me (since I'll have to wait for the 2-week shipping), and everybody'll get more info then. I briefly used Longhorn, but it was quite unstable (Build 4051), and had IE 6.05. And, of course, I only had a 20GB hard drive, and that got eaten. (I'll have a 100GB drive by the Longhorn RC's).

What I'd really buy into, though, is a standards-compliant web browser that could actually render half the tags I use on HH. Right now, anything using the <abbr> tag doesn't work. Okay, it's a small annoyance, but it's perfectly viewable in everything else. It's where the BIG things come in like CSS3 support. What'd be even better, though, is if they got rid of ActiveX altogether and used an XML-based language to do what ActiveX was doing. Therefore, the user could just block whatever he/she didn't want via JavaScript (in a user interface for those that don't know JavaScript, of course), as so to just block out a tag from running.

I'd also like to see what kind of security features they say they're going to include. If they still use the buggy Trident engine, they're going to run into problems. On the other hand, they could do what Apple did and use KHTML, or they could take existing Win32-capable technology and make a Gecko-based browser. Even if they create a new engine I'll be happy, but it's definite now that 4th-gen Trident is ready to hit the junk heap. If they do use Trident, they're DEFINITELY going to need help patching all those holes before the RTM.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.7) Gecko/20050414 Donzilla/0.7PR1 (like Mozilla/1.7.7; wml/1.3)

[DJGM]

According to an article on BetaNews.com . . .

On the outside, IE7 will receive tabbed browsing capabilities - a much-requested
feature already offered by Internet Explorer rivals Opera and Mozilla Firefox.

Full article - BetaNews.com: IE7 Progressing With CSS, PNG Fixes

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.8b) Gecko/20050205

[DJGM]

It seems that Microsoft have decided that the upcoming Internet Explorer 7 will be only available for
users of Windows XP Service Pack 2. Anyone still using Windows 2000 (or older) and wants to use
a more secure internet browser than IE6, will have to go for one of the (no IE based) alternatives,
the most popular being Mozilla Firefox. Although there's no word from Redmond yet on IE7
support for Windows Server 2003, I'm fairly sure it won't be left out.

Microsoft: No IE7 for Windows 2000
By Nate Mook, BetaNews
May 30, 2005, 10:53 AM

With Internet Explorer 7 Beta 1 set to debut next month, Microsoft has quietly closed
the door on Windows 2000 users planning to adopt the new Web browser. IE7 will
require Windows XP Service Pack 2 due to internal security changes that
rely on Microsoft's latest operating system release.

More at BetaNews.com - Microsoft: No IE7 for Windows 2000.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-GB; rv:1.7.8) Gecko/20050511 Firefox/1.0.4

[Don_HH2K]

There will be a hacked build, no doubt. There is a copy of the XP-only Windows Media Player 8 that works on Windows 2000 hovering out there that me and beanboy89 found. XP, Server 2003, and Office's activation has been cracked. So, that means that we'll see IE7 Beta1 on Windows 2000, more or less, although it won't be supported by Microsoft.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.2; en-US; rv:1.7.8) Gecko/20050511 Donzilla/0.7PR2 (WML/1.3; WML/1.2; WML/1.1; WML/1.0)

[DJGM]

According to this article on IEBlog, Internet Explorer 7.0 will effectively still be a "4th generation" browser.
All of IE's rivals, such as based upon either "Gecko" or "KHTML" like Mozilla Firefox and Apple's Safari are
essentially "5th generation" browsers. Opera has "Presto" which is also technically "5th generation".

As we updated the User-Agent, we considered application-compatibility issues, historical
precedent, and feedback from the community. We arrived at a very simple string.

IE7 running on Longhorn will send the following User-Agent header:
[tt]Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0b; Windows NT 6.0)[/tt]

Even though IE7.0 will apparently have some welcome features (as mentioned earlier in this thread) the
underlying HTML rendering engine will still be the technically obsolete "Trident", albeit with some extra
bells and whistles added. IMHO, Microsoft are making a big mistake here, especially if they want IE to
keep it's (now diminishing, but still rather too high) majority slice of the internet browser pie.

All the more reason for IE users to switch to something better I guess . . .

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-GB; rv:1.7.8) Gecko/20050511 Firefox/1.0.4

[ryantologyistheway]

How about they ship it without ActiveX and VB Scripting capabilities to really make it secure?

It wouldn't cost them any development time and they would quit embarassing themselves by releasing applications that are so "secure" that the average user's PC is completely overtaken by malware within days of surfing the Internet.


Just a thought...

Oh right, thats what MS Anti Spyware is for, instead of fixing the security leak, they have some other half assed application of their's poke it's finger in to plug it.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.8) Gecko/20050511 Firefox/1.0.4

[Mandrake]

The Mozilla/4.0 in IE's UA string isn't really indicative of IE 7's rendering abilities, it's just there for compatability reasons. If compatability wasn't an issue, they would probably just ommit the Mozilla/x.0 entirely.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.8) Gecko/20050511 Firefox/1.0.4

[ryantologyistheway]

The Mozilla/4.0 in IE's UA string isn't really indicative of IE 7's rendering abilities, it's just there for compatability reasons. If compatability wasn't an issue, they would probably just ommit the Mozilla/x.0 entirely.

They probably should, thankfully there aren't that many pages optimized for Netscape 4.x anymore.

UserAgent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)

[Don_HH2K]

According to a C|Net News article, IE7 will have a built-in spyware prevention system, dubbed 'low-rights IE'. The system is designed to remove administrator rights from IE while browsing while logged in with administrator privelages. Sounds like it should be good, but it won't be shipped with the beta, and it will only be available in Longhorn.

For now, here's a sloppy homemade way of doing this under Windows 2000 and XP Pro.

1) Make sure in the MMC Services snap-in that you have the Secondary Logon service (under XP Pro) or RunAs Service (under 2000) enabled. If it isn't, set it for automatic startup and start it.

2) Use the Local Users and Groups MMC snap-in to create a new user account (this can be accessed through Computer Management or by typing [tt]lusrmgr.msc[/tt] into a Run dialog). Call the new account Internet Explorer and give it a password (so that people can't gain access to your computer with it). Give the new account Guest privelages.

3) On your Desktop (or wherever you want), create a new shortcut and point it to "%ProgramFiles%\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe". The shortcut that's already there won't work. Right-click and select Run As. Log on as Internet Explorer, and start.

If all goes well, software installation and file downloads should be disabled in IE.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.8) Gecko/20050511 Donzilla/0.7PR2 (WML/1.3; WML/1.2; WML/1.1; WML/1.0)

[Pu7o]

It is already possible to install IE7 on unsupported operating systems (tested on Windows 2000 and Windows 2003 Server, the last one by myself), the steps being basicly extracting the installer instead of running it.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.2; en-US; rv:1.8b3) Gecko/20050712 Firefox/1.0+ (Pu7o)

[DJGM]

I have a copy of the IE7 beta, and I've extracted the contents of the installer file to it's own folder on to
my Windows 2000 desktop. I assume the next thing to do would be to run the extracted iexplore.exe
file within that folder. I tried that, but I just get this error message in a dialog box . . .

[tt]
iexplore.exe - Entry Point Not Found

The procedure entry point TraceMessage could not be
located in the dynamic link library ADVAPI.dll.

[/tt]
. . . which makes almost no sense to me whatsoever!

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-GB; rv:1.7.10) Gecko/20050717 Firefox/1.0.6

[Pu7o]

You have to create an empty file named iexplore.exe.local inside the folder where you extracted IE7

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Konqueror/3.4; Linux) KHTML/3.4.0 (like Gecko)

[DJGM]

Tried that . . . same error still appears . . .

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-GB; rv:1.7.8) Gecko/20050511 Firefox/1.0.4

[Pu7o]

that's strange... do you have the latest Windows 2000 Service Pack?

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Konqueror/3.4; Linux) KHTML/3.4.0 (like Gecko)