couldnt agree more.

I second that...

@badnewz, glad to see some more Cannuck's on the forum

Sorry about the NHL season however

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:):):)Agreed:):):)
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I don't see them releasing a version of IE for versions of Windows less than XP SP2 (according to the article). This is a bad move, considering that most other browsers support multiple operating systems and MANY businesses are still using Windows 2000. According to the article the beta of IE7 won't be released until summer. Which means that Firefox/Mozilla/Opera usage will continue to grow.... I for one like to use the same browser across all of my OS's and for easier support.

Another concern is that their priority is security...with no mention of added compatibility/feature support. Security is a must but not even mentioning anything else says to me at least that the beta of IE7 will be nothing more than IE6 with an XPified interface and probably tons of new-user balloon popups....yay.

From what I've heard:

Microsoft may include some anti-spyware features in IE7.

Microsoft *might* improve CSS and PNG support. I highly doubt this since it will break compatibility with the "broken" IE centric sites, but I'm sure they'll implement a small amount of compatibility.

IE7 may be .NET based, which as we all know is *mostly* slower. I haven't seen any big MS .NET based applications from MS so I kind of doubt this.

Tabbed browsing will likely be included.
I think it's safe to say that Opera/Mozilla tabbed browsing will be better than IE7's.

Opera/Mozilla compatibilty will be better than IE7's (at least with standards based pages).

Opera at least will be faster than IE7. Mozilla/Firefox likely won't be since IE is built into the OS.

The only advantage Microsoft will have will be their included antispyware (if it's included). That is until Longhorn comes out and computers come with IE7. Which means...Mid-end of 2006. So Opera/Firefox/Mozilla will rule the internet for about 18-24 more months. It's hard to say how many XP users will use Windows Update to "upgrade" to IE7...or if autoupdate will do it automatically. If auto update doesn't do it then I'd say that Opera/FireFox/Mozilla will "rule the web", until the installed based of Longhorn computers with IE7 installed takes over. If autoupdate does install IE7 then Opera/Firefox/Mozilla will rule the web for about 8-12 more months.

Eeeek!
I admit, I may not have read all of the material here however my knee jerk reaction is not only "eeek" but this to:

MS keep adopting thier own standards especially where CSS is concerned. This does my head in since what with the Disability and Discrimation Act us web guys have to try and cater for everyone with most types of browser. Evolving CSS from MS usually means increased development cost. Also the W3C/WCAG followers will be a bit annoyed!

Personally I feel that user awareness and robust web applications are more of a security issue than the pesky browser.
For example, it doesn't matter what browser u have since I can still inject code into websites since this type of attack is on the server side, not really the client side. The only workaround I could foresee is if the browser itself filtered out POST HTTP traffic so that code (Vb/javascript/hex encodings/and SQL) never got to the server. This would no doubt cause all sorts of problems in so many ways.

Regarding the user awareness there's so many ways to dupe a user its scary!

A move in the right direction maybe but surely owners of web content should have a responsibility.

I'm all for spyware built in however there is a massive industry around spyware. MS surely can't blast that away. Personally I'm expecting MS's efforts to be much like thier so-called "firewall"... i.e. half a job that inspires user confidence incorrectly. Surely this is more dangerous?


Ok rant over

S