Some IE 7 news
Chris Wilson just posted some interesting news about upcoming versions of IE 7. Amongst the new features are:
- The
selectlists will be windowless, so one can layer elements on top of them. Finally! - A native XMLHTTPRequest object, instead of an ActiveXObject, and it will work when ActiveX is disabled.
- A Page Zoom feature. Sounds interesting, and it might help accessibility. Makes me wonder if it will support text resizing in the web browser on web pages where the fontsize is set in pixels, though.
- A Web Developer Toolbar. Can be really handy, I hope it’s something that matches the Web Developer extension to Firefox.
All this makes me happy, but also, unfortunately, I can’t stop thinking about for how many years we will still have to support IE 6 until version 7 takes over. Oh well, one day… 🙂
since IE7 will only be available to windows XP and Vista users and enthusiam for the latter being rather luke warm to say the least, I'm assuming we'll have to take IE6 into account for quite some time.
Robert de Mildt,
Yes, that'll be the case, even though <acronym title="Internet Explorer">IE</acronym> 7 seems to become a really good release.
But maybe no more <acronym title="Internet Explorer">IE</acronym> 6 support around 2010…? 🙂
Good news indeed. Though, about the web development toolbar, I hope it'll be better than the one currently available for Firefox. I must be the only designer/developer not using it — I've always used the PNHToolbar.
Less is more.
The webdeveloper toolbar for Firefox is, in my honest opinion, a cluttered bitch with the usability of a cactus used for hugging sessions.
2010 is the year I am aiming to drop support for IE6 as well. 🙂
2010… aren't we being a bit optimistic?!?!
If IE7 will be as good as they let us believe, i'd like to see a new IE for Mac as well.
Jeroen,
Well, let's agree then that we at least hope for some of the Web Developer toolbar features being implemented in <acronym title="Internet Explorer">IE</acronym>, while being more usable than a cactus… 🙂
Maarten,
You think we won't be done with supporting version 6 in 2010? Well, maybe not…
But let's hope, at least!
Personally, I wouldn't like to see a new version for <acronym title="Internet Explorer">IE</acronym> on Mac. I think Firefox and Safari suffice.
Kinda interesting they're not really introducing anything new, that has never been seen before – just trying to catch up with other browsers. I'm sure they will market it as something new though.
Will be interesting to see how well they'll implement some of those features, such as tabbed browsing and page zooming. Will they catch up Opera…?
Jere,
Interesting aspect.
I gather that they're so far behind that all their efforts go into catching up.
From what I've seen of the tabbed browsing in beta 1 of <acronym title="Internet Explorer">IE</acronym> 7, it seems just fine.
Also eager to see their zoom implementation, though! 🙂
<blockquote cite="Jeroen Mulder">Though, about the web development toolbar, I hope it’ll be better than the one currently available for Firefox. I must be the only designer/developer not using it…
You are not the only one. 🙂 I prefer Opera's built-in functions..
Vasil,
Thanks for being a frined of Jeroen's then. 🙂
Personally, I haven't used Opera at lot, since it isn't, how should we say, my kind of web browser. At all.
2010, it makes me feel like laughing, but I can't, because it's true, and that's what hurts…
DJ,
Yeah, that's exactly my reaction too…