Holy crap, IE7 is here? Pinch me, please…
A few things.
First, if you’re using IE on Windows XP, download this update and install it immediately. Tell all of your friends. Now. I mean it. If I catch any one of you using an old version of IE on Windows XP, only God will be able to save you.
Second, kiss Firefox on Windows bye bye. There is no reason to use Firefox on Windows XP if you can get a (mostly) standards compliant browser that also supports all of the crap web sites out there that are written for IE.
Make no mistake: I hate IE. But more than that, I hate the fact that web sites need to be hacked to work around it. IE7 isn’t perfect, but if it allows me to develop web sites without hacks, I say it’s gold.
(Update: Some web sites barf when they receive the IE7 “user agent string.” Microsoft has a User Agent String Utility 2 download that launches IE7 in a way that makes it look like IE6 to web servers. I strongly recommend downloading it if you’ve switched to IE7.)
Standards are great. What about security? I’m still scared of Microsoft security problems.
Comment by cygnl7 — October 26, 2006 @ 8:08 pm
I’m not sure what to say about the security issues. The best I can tell, Windows is swiss cheese no matter what browser you’re using. Vista is supposed to be better than XP security-wise (issues with Symantec and McAfee aside), so perhaps things will soon look up?
Who knows. All I know is a standards-compliant browser running on ~90% of PCs will help drive developers to use standards, which in turn will help keep Microsoft’s proprietary goofiness at bay.
Comment by erat — October 26, 2006 @ 10:19 pm
I want to believe. I really do! But there are so many who say otherwise…
http://www.webdevout.net/browser_support_summary.php?uas=IE6-IE7-FX1_5-OP8-OP9
http://www.winsupersite.com/reviews/ie7.asp (See “Web Development improvements” section)
So I guess it’s better, but what makes it so much better than Firefox?
Comment by cygnl7 — November 1, 2006 @ 5:09 pm
There are two reasons I see for it being a better choice for Windows users (note I didn\’t go as far as saying it\’s better than Firefox):
1) It has support for web standards AND support for tricky IE-dependent web sites. For the first time since the mid-1990s Windows users get both. Firefox only operates on one of the two levels.
2) When the majority of web browsers are compliant with what is considered to be acceptable contemporary web standards (some of which Firefox doesn\’t even comply with), the incentive to develop specifically for IE diminishes significantly. Basically, it paves the road for one-site-fits-all development, something that\’s never happened before without either the use of semantically incorrect table-based layouts or Flash.
There is also the rendering engine issues such as PNG alpha transparency support and IE6\’s broken box model. This last item won\’t show up on compliance charts, unfortunately, but folks who have had to hack web sites to get around these problems are jumping for joy. I assume the box model crap is fixed in IE7, but I haven\’t checked.
I could go into Firefox\’s broken rounding error that makes elements of web pages \”sashay\” across the screen when the browser resizes (and also puts odd 1 pixel gaps in places where they don\’t belong), but I\’ll save that for another rant.
Comment by erat — November 1, 2006 @ 5:38 pm
Don’t mind the backslashes. Wordpress has issues with editing comments, and I don’t have the will to go fix them all…
Comment by erat — November 1, 2006 @ 5:40 pm