It has been rumored that IE7 was to be released today. Well, I have not seen anything official from Microsoft yet, but it appears to have hit some partner channels. Yahoo! has released their branded edtion of IE7, apparently optimized for the Yahoo! experience.
But who wants the Yahoo! experience. Fortunately, it is trival to unpack the executable and get the plain-vanilla version using WinRAR or WinZip. Just open the file in either of those utilities, pull the IE7-Setup.exe file, and surf away.
Note this requires a “genuine” edition of Windows XP Service Pack 2 or Windows 2003 Server 2003 Service Pack 1.
So, get the Yahoo! version here; get WinRAR here or WinZIP here.
Ok, so you are not probably the first on the block now. But microsoft has officially posted IE7, so you should probably get it from them now. Thanks to Matt for the update.
IE 7 sucks, its a CSS nightmare!
October 19th, 2006 at 8:15 am
So much for “end of the month”…
October 19th, 2006 at 8:26 am
Pffft IE 7 is far better then IE 6 worth the upgrade IMO.
October 19th, 2006 at 8:29 am
I’m loving IE7. It’s my preference over Firefox, but then I’ve never been one to delve into extensions and programs mods. Each one has its advantages. Love them or hate them, Microsoft do invest a lot of research into user interfaces and once you get over the “where on earth did this button go” feeling, its actually quite intuitive if you give it a go. Its funny to see the odd Microsoft-ism working its way into the Firefox interface too. Anyone else noticed the vista like styling on the tabs in FF2?
October 19th, 2006 at 8:31 am
Its less of a CSS nightmare than IE6.
And, irregardless, come November 1 or so, a fairly hefty chunck of your userbase is going to be using it. So you might as well start testing.
Also, one clairification: the critical update push will happen come November 1, but they are going to release the release version early so people like us can start testing.
October 19th, 2006 at 8:35 am
What was actually announced was IE7 would be out before the end of the month, and that the critical update would follow within a few weeks—not necessarily by November 1.
October 19th, 2006 at 9:06 am
if you were nice enough to develop for firefox then your sites should look good still on IE7, all of mine do.
October 19th, 2006 at 9:19 am
Thanks Wyatt, have installed IE7 and all good so far. Thanks for the tip!
October 19th, 2006 at 9:24 am
I love it!
its fast, doesnt use up all my laptops RAM like ff,
and the text looks very nice on an LCD monitor :)
so far im well impressed
October 19th, 2006 at 9:38 am
You can grab it from the source now too: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/downloads/default.mspx
October 19th, 2006 at 11:01 am
Thanks for the update Matt. Post edited to reflect said update.
@Kevin: many sources are stating that the IE7 critical update will be posted on 11/1. Well, more like 11/2 for you all on the other side of the dateline.
October 19th, 2006 at 11:16 am
It seems good from the beginning…,
But I already have a layout issue
the max-height property will cause the image not showing 100% width
This will not cause a problem for legacy ie …
‘D ie hard!!’
October 19th, 2006 at 12:06 pm
I don’t see the linux download for IE7, can anyone send me a link to the linux downloads please. Or better yet, send a link to the source code so I can build it myself. I’m extremely eager or hungry if you will, to get my hands on this new fresh release of internet exploder from Macrohard. What will they do next, I mean the company just has one surprise after the other.
October 19th, 2006 at 12:24 pm
Ah, Microsoft sarcasm humour. Never gets old.
October 19th, 2006 at 1:00 pm
has anyone seen border issues?
i have seen mysterious borders appearing and moving, when the browser is resized
and elements on the page moving
it’s good to see that groove and double border styles still aren’t supported >(
October 19th, 2006 at 3:23 pm
I will use FF2.0 when there is a stable version.
October 19th, 2006 at 8:54 pm
I’m already used with Firefox’s tab browsing though IE7 also supports the same already. Too bad my OS does not support IE’s requirement… so I really had to stick with Firefox since I preferred it more than IE regardless of its recent improvements.
October 20th, 2006 at 12:55 am
I was pretty stoked to see the IE7 download on the Y! homepage. Folks should be thanking them for that :)
October 20th, 2006 at 4:27 am
I am really liking IE7 so far. If I can get mouse gestures and adblock I’ll make the switch from FireFox.
October 20th, 2006 at 5:38 am
Some of the comments here are missing the point completely. As web developers, we don’t have the luxury of picking our favourite browser and ignoring the rest. I think it’s safe to say that Firefox and its kin will remain popular among developers, but IE7 is a new platform we must deal with, regardless of whether or not it has a Linux version or mouse gestures.
October 20th, 2006 at 7:51 am
I think this was a really good picture I found:
http://i86.photobucket.com/albums/k114/Frenziefrenz/Screenshots/2006-10-19_205221.png
Taken from:
http://frans.lowter.us/archives/2006/10/19/i-like-internet-explorer-7/
October 20th, 2006 at 8:43 am
Another garbage IE release. Horrible UI, STILL horrible CSS support, still the same slow response while browsing. You’d think with all the money MS has, they would be able to develop a good web browser that conforms to standards.
October 20th, 2006 at 10:36 am
Ah but its ok for firefox to get tens of millions $$$ from google.. and still ask for donations…
Listen! every developer should be happy, the more people use the newer browser the better, less quirks to worry about
and the new IE is nice as i said earlier it doesnt eat up all the RAM on my laptop
October 20th, 2006 at 6:03 pm
Just got prompted by Windows XP to install IE7 as part of Windows Update. So it begins. You had fair warning.
October 20th, 2006 at 7:48 pm
Before I go and install, is there any way to keep a (glitch free)IE6 running, as I would like to test in 7 but most people will still be using 6 for the time being, so tesing in both is important.
October 21st, 2006 at 12:42 am
Thanks for the heads up Matt.
The proper way to test IE7 or keep a copy of IE6 running would be to use MS Virtual PC to host one or both.
Our test suite consists of separate virtual PCs with:
Win2000/IE5.5
Win2000/IE6
XP SP 2/IE6
XP SP 2/IE7
October 21st, 2006 at 1:11 am
Yep, Virtual PC really is the best way to go.
Alex Russell recently wrote a very convincing piece on why the various hacks out there for running multiple versions of IE are fundamentally flawed. In short, even if you jump through all the hoops required to get things like conditional commments working as they should, you’re still only running different versions of the IE rendering engine. Things like the JavaScript engine or the
XMLHttpRequestobject are core parts of the Windows OS, and cannot be switched that way.October 21st, 2006 at 1:04 pm
Am I wrong or is IE 7 (and 6 as well as I remember) a lot faster after disabling the Windows Live Toolbar Extension (I left the browser helper object enabled). Doesn’t seem too bad to me…
orbitalgroup
October 21st, 2006 at 6:50 pm
Would have been quite nice apart from the positioning of the fwd, back, stop and refresh buttons. They are way too far apart meaning I have to make too much use of my mouse. I’m sticking with Firefox !
October 21st, 2006 at 9:46 pm
Compared to previous versions of Internet Explorere, IE7 is a substantial improvement, however
IE7 falls way short of expectations. It will probably take MS another 5 years to come out with an update. They just don’t get it.
Stick with Mozilla or Opera.
October 22nd, 2006 at 2:00 am
IS everyone missing the point??!!
you average JOHN DOE doesnt care about firefox or opera and they will be using IE untill hell freezes over
as developers we cant just tell them to use Firefox,
people dont like to be told what to do,
and are not all tech savvy enough or care about installing things on their PCs
October 22nd, 2006 at 2:11 am
Nah, people will stop using IE when their computers stop coming with it as the default browser.
Almost nobody buys windows…they buy new computers.
If every computer that Dell, HP, etc. sell with Vista on it has FF loaded, FF will suddenly have a 50+% market share.
Google & Yahoo have signed deals with dell & hp, respectively, to position their own tools in the browser. If they put more pressure, I’m sure they can get FF as the default browser.
People don’t use IE because they choose to, they use it because it happens to be there.
MS intentionally lets IE fall behind, not because they’re incompetent, but because they want to slow down the transition to web-based applications. They KNOW it’s inevitable, but they want to be sure that they’re ready for it. Right now MSN / Windows Live is basically in its infancy relative to their desktop market.
Rest assured, though, as soon as MS begins really focusing on web-enabled products, you’ll stop seeing them produce a crappy browser.
October 22nd, 2006 at 3:03 am
@Etnu
You are correct to say that the main reason for IE’s dominance is that it is the default browser on most computers. But you are reading way too much into Microsoft’s decision to allow IE to stagnate. I think it had alot more to do with the browser wars being effectively over in 2001 than with some grand nefarious scheme to stagnate web based applications.
MS is definitely not afraid of web-based applications. Look at the new line of MS Dynamics products and the upcoming office 2007, all of which essentially pivot on Sharepoint 2007 which is quite web-based. Nevermind the resources they put into ASP.NET to make it the awesome platform it is today.
Also, you forget about the corporate angle. I would love to push a firefox deployment out on our corporate network. But, even with the vast improvements seen in 1.5, it still pales compared to IE when you look at issues such as centralized management and patch control. Fortunately, the Mozilla Foundation seems to have made deployment a priority, so hopefully they will provide the necessary hooks and tools for centralized management in deployment in future versions.
October 23rd, 2006 at 6:49 am
I’m going to be the last kid on the block to get this one…
October 25th, 2006 at 1:48 pm
I downloaded it yeasterday, but it totally destroyed the font in windows.. So, I removed it and installed FF2 instead… Think it has something with ClearType to do.. the text become fuzzy/blur.
October 25th, 2006 at 4:55 pm
It’s best to test against as many browsers as possible. The more your pages perform the same across browsers the better and more thorough developer you are. A perfect browser is like absolute truth, many do not want to conform.
October 26th, 2006 at 5:50 pm
I resent having to change my OS to simply have the latest version of IE. For now I am sticking with Firefox. As a developer however, I don’t have the luxury of choosing which browser will occupy the vast real estate that is my computer. *Sigh*. I am still waiting for that new fangled OS to come out so I don’t have to do the upgrade twice.
October 26th, 2006 at 10:26 pm
hawkshango
U DONT HAVE TO CHANGE YOUR OS…
October 26th, 2006 at 10:28 pm
@mihd: you do if you are running, say, windows 2000. And there are alot of coroporate networks still on 2000. Hell, I know of several large corporate networks with significant amounts of 98 and NT4 clients floating around.
October 27th, 2006 at 12:05 am
wwb_99
true i agree with you but these are a small minority
From perosnal experience alot of big companies will not install firefox (hower superior it is, yes its an excellent browser no arguing there) for one simple reason
no activeX! there are tons of proprietary web apps running on intranets, also alot of companies with massive intranets force same version of a browser on all users to minimise support costs
SOME people here dont seem to grasp that there are alot of non-geeks out there using IE due to reasons outside of their coptrol…
as a developer IE7 is a welcome as it does have less quirks than IE6, we should be happy that things are at least progressing
why dont all the whingers put “this site is best supported in Firefox @ 1024x resolution” style messages on their sites? see how quickly they loose users…
October 27th, 2006 at 12:14 am
Well it’s a huge step in the right direction and hats off to the MS IE developers for listening to us when we’ve complained about lack of CSS support.
As has been already mentioned this isn’t a release for us. It’s a release for the bazillion Windows users who use the browser that came with the desktop. Mac comes with Safari (Used to come with IE 5.2) Windows comes with IE. IE7 won’t my main browser. FF will more than likely remain in that position but the CEO or marketing guy who’s site I’m building will more than likely be using Windows and IE.
Build your site based on standards and you’ve already done your work. Of course we still have to check back with IE6 to make sure it works right too.
I did notice that like FF, IE eats up RAM in huge chunks and doesn’t let it go until you close it.
Andrew
October 27th, 2006 at 9:36 am
Strong minusses to me.
It does not support OS’s other than WinXP or WinVista and it is not available in my language!
I can use FF 2.0 and Opera 9.02 without a glitch. So why would i install MS-stuff?
November 2nd, 2006 at 12:49 am
Hah and now there’s rumors that IE 8 ain’t far behind IE 7…wonderful! So far my testing of IE 8 indicates that it reads css far differently (and better than IE 7) but it still leaves a lot to be desired. Now more maunfacturers are signing deals with Firefox and stuff this could get interesting. Hopefully they’ll all work it out so that we as designers can just get our products out without worrying about what the browsers are going to do with our scripts…sigh
DougB
November 2nd, 2006 at 4:10 am
Internet Explorer 7 Terrific well thought out compiled and built by ‘experts in their field’!
Well done Microsoft very good work I like very much, my thanks to you all.
To all the “I don’t like it folk” I remember when XP was first released. The same ‘Dinosaur’ mentality abounded.
Remember the ‘Win ’98 for ever’ mob!
Now they are all relishing in the potential of XP and enjoying it to the max, they can see ‘the beauty/scope of it’! Don’t like it? Don’t use it; IE7 was put together by far greater minds then those of the ‘whiners’, if you are as good at criticizing ‘go build yer own browser’.
If you have the mental capability (Which judging from the comments ‘I doubt!)
I will happily use the latest technology available.
My head is not ‘stuck in the sand’
November 2nd, 2006 at 10:51 am