Working together for standards The Web Standards Project

For those who missed it yesterday, Microsoft announced the ‘refresh’ release of IE 7 beta 2 at the MIX 06 conference in Las Vegas. According to some web sites, this Beta 2 preview was not going to be made public but this page says otherwise. The Beta 2 release is “layout complete”, or in other words, the rendering engine and CSS interpretation are exactly as they will be in the final public version. As such, you can test on this browser and be sure that the proverbial goalposts will not be moved later on. Get testing, people.

Your Replies

#1 On March 21st, 2006 4:12 am Pig Pen - Web Standards Compliant Web Design Blog » Blog Archive » Internet Explorer Beta 2 Preview replied:

[...] Internet Explorer Beta 2 Preview (via WaSP) [...]

#2 On March 21st, 2006 5:17 am Ray Drainville replied:

If this *is* the ‘layout complete’ version, then there are a lot of questions. No :before & :after support?

#3 On March 21st, 2006 8:26 am Rob Wilmshurst replied:

Been playing with it for a couple of hours now and it seems pretty solid.
I’ve given it a bit of stress-testing with a stroll through the CSS Zen Garden archives and it’s a fantastic improvement, even on the first preview release.
It’s encouraging to see the team behind IE7 taking on board what was said after the last preview release.

Here’s to a 75% reduction in development related headaches!
(at least in three year’s time when IE6 finally gets phased out ;)

#4 On March 21st, 2006 8:41 am Fyrd replied:

I’m rather disappointed that this is all there’s to it for now, still many features I miss that the other three browsers are capable of. But since the IE7 team has stated their intention to release more frequent updates and improvements over time, I’ll remain optimistic for the future.

Of course since many people will still use Win98/2k for many years to come, it will be a while before we can completely ignore IE6 users.

#5 On March 21st, 2006 8:58 am Joe Clark replied:

I think it’s great that Microsoft is improving its compliance with standards, but I really think it’s unwise to encourage them in the use of the neologism “layout[-]complete.” Not the most impactful term I’ve accessed this week.

#6 On March 21st, 2006 9:35 am WaSP Member lloydi replied:

Joe, ‘layout complete’ was the term that I read when I found out about this news, and I took that to be a piece of jargon like a ‘red book’ CD. I placed it in quotes to signify that it is an industry term (have I understood this correctly?).

I’d never suggest for one minute that the browser was complete in layout, or anything else for that matter. Sure, it’s been improved a great deal, but as the comments on this thread and many other CSS-related sites will attest, they’ve not covered it all off with this release.

#7 On March 21st, 2006 12:33 pm Chris Ruppel replied:

This MSDN article tentatively outlines some of the CSS selectors and hacks that the team has now altered for IE7 Strict mode. It’s from late January but it is still useful outlining the most common hacks that will be retired.

#8 On March 21st, 2006 12:46 pm Adam Wan replied:

Oops…I got it in first hand.^^

#9 On March 21st, 2006 5:02 pm José Jeria replied:

This release feels more like a IE 6.1 release. Or should I say, this is what we should have got 4 years ago. This might not sound so positive, but compared to all other browsers out there, IE 7 is lightyears behind.

This site might look great on a handheld, but seriously, most of the people access it via the web, make it more readable please (dificult to see where the comment starts and ends).

#10 On March 22nd, 2006 5:35 am Browser Junkies, Get a New Fix - The Web Standards Project replied:

[...] I have not yet downloaded and tried for myself, but I would expect it to bust numerous current Firefox extentions and themes but, as the blurb above says, if you are a web application developer it’s good to get a look-in at an early stage. [Please feel free to report your experiences on this page, especially where it concerns improvements or otherwise to standards/CSS rendering.] And while you’re at it, if you haven’t already done so, you might want to check out IE7 beta preview 2. [...]

#11 On March 22nd, 2006 10:18 pm Kanashii replied:

It is sad to hear that even with their billion dollar a year profits and all them developers they still refuse to fully implement a standard made how long ago? -_-;

Every other browser manufacturer is working hard toward passing ACID2 and a bunch already do. For Microsoft to release a new browser and purposely not fully implement CSS2—or even try for that matter—is disgraceful.

It’s not like it is an impossible feat as Safari and Opera have shown it can be done. Are Microsoft just ignorant or what? I can’t understand their reasoning behind continuing to flaunt bad design.

#12 On March 23rd, 2006 6:37 am WaSP Member Ian Lloyd replied:

Is Chris Wilson in the house? Kanashii would like a word with you …

#13 On March 23rd, 2006 7:03 pm Kanashii replied:

Yeah I get a little worked up sometimes, sorry bout that, don’t mean to be too offensive.

I just dream of a perfect world where everything works as it should. : )

I do wish they could have put in the psuedo-selectors and content attribute and counters though.

Oh well. *wanders off*

#14 On March 23rd, 2006 10:45 pm Bruno Girin replied:

Considering some of the bugs, I have a sneaky suspicion that IE6′s code must look like a giant bowl of half-cooked spaghetti. So if the developers have managed to solve some of the quirkiest bugs and extend CSS support to some extent, it can only be a good thing.

#15 On March 24th, 2006 10:54 pm paul pinoy replied:

IE 7 is a great fall from heaven for IE users and i’m worrying that it would be more phased out because all of its competitors are working fast for a new version of their browsers and i wish all of them pass the Acid2 test and will have a standard. END THE BROWSER WARS!!!

#16 On March 25th, 2006 12:55 am Adam replied:

Still lacks support of the internet standards

#17 On March 26th, 2006 4:09 am James Watcher replied:

Cant wait to see the comparative reviews of IE7, Firefox 1.5 or 2.0, Opera 8 or 9, Safari etc. See who has done the best job of implementing not just CSS and pass ACID2, but also SVG, JavaScript E4X, MathML and other important Web standards

#18 On April 3rd, 2006 9:59 am hAl replied:

Those are not important webstandards.
They are probably important to you.

and for SVG especially.
For MS it would probalby be wiser to support their own new scalable vector format XAML in the next generations of IE rather dan going for SVG. That format is the basis for their new Expression web design suite.

Especially since their VML format which is incorporated in IE was rejected by W3C due to competitors launching another format which was not supported by any browser at that time.
Adding XAML to IE before considering adding SVG support would be a big payback to those competitors that twarted the use of VML.

#19 On April 11th, 2006 5:15 pm Jacobus replied:

Even discussing IE is a waist of time. Every web developer knows how much time is waisted and how much functionality is comprimised to make feature rich web sites compatible with IE. It has no compliance to standards. A total “up yours” to anyone not using IE.

It’s time to stop supporting browsers that does not comply to industry standards. VML and now XAML, when there is already mature standards such as SVG out there! It’s just silly!

#20 On April 25th, 2006 3:35 pm Deirdre Saoirse Moen » Blog Archive » IE7, Beta 2 replied:

[...] I’m with José Jeria: this feels more like a 6.1 release. [...]

#21 On May 18th, 2006 5:13 am Helen, web design manager replied:

Jose, I think in the whole you are right, but still it has some new features as “ActiveX Opt-in” or Page Zoom.

#22 On June 13th, 2006 6:45 pm Zak replied:

Who needs ActiveX Opt-in when developers have to spend many valuable hours and days on guessing what the IE team has implemented and what they have left out.

With the comments so far, it doesnt seem anything has changed.

Did they ever think of opening their own w3c…

#23 On August 13th, 2006 8:06 am maxyy replied:

http://umora.info/

#24 On August 21st, 2006 1:38 am Helen Price replied:

tabs not showing after installing((((

#25 On December 18th, 2006 3:20 pm Bruce replied:

The line of the day goes like this, “Hello Mr customer, why don’t you _upgrade_ to firefox..you see for one it actually works, two it’s free and three is supports SVG”

Opera or Firefox!!

and one more thing, no more branch coding, am sick of branch coding, from now on it’s just tough, W3C standards and nothing else.

Maybe we need a standards group for implementing the standards from the standards group.

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