I agree that we have a duty to be impartial - but I think that means that we have to stand up and tell the world that IE _still_ sucks: even IE7 is the worst browser you can choose.

I am a proud user of Firefox … Just opening both browsers and visiting google you see a huge difference.

IE7 is slower, while Firefox is not just faster, but much easier to open new tabs and navigate…

I did upgrade though, cause at least IE7 might be more secure than previous versions.

Karl

As developers what do we do:
Do we upgrade to IE7 and keep a separate machine with IE6 installed on it? (I understand that you cannot have both versions installed side by side in the same PC)
Or do we stick to IE6 for the time being and wait until IE7 has been installed by enough users to justify the upgrade?

Ideally you should try and use a separate machines for IE6 and IE7. If this isn’t possible keep IE6 for a while. IE7’s improved standards support means its much more likely to render pages like Firefox than IE6. Plus IE6 is still by far the most popular web browser, so this is the most important browser to test with.

Firefox 2.0 still cannot handle CSS code and renders my website as terrible and unrecognizeable. Microsoft IE has been able to handle the CSS in my website since IE 5.5 !! So all this bashing of IE 7 comes from people who don’t know much about website design.

Let the flaming….. begin!

As developers what do we do:
Do we upgrade to IE7 and keep a separate machine with IE6 installed on it? (I understand that you cannot have both versions installed side by side in the same PC)

You can indeed have side by side installations of Internet explorer, and have been able to do so for some time now. However it’s only recently that the final kinks have been ironed out of the standalone versions. See my article on this topic for more info.

I suggest installing IE7 as your default install of IE, and using Tredosoft’s standalone installer to take care of older versions for testing and development purposes. Have fun!

On the topic of IE7 vs FF2: I for one am pleased that IE have jumped back on the horse. I hope that this doesn’t eat into Mozilla’s share of the browser market, but I do think that competition keeps everyone on their toes. So long as the browser war is fought on UI and software features (as Kevin predicts), I think it’s good for the development community. I’d rather see IE moving forward rather than not moving at all.

This garbage about how your choice is the right one is completely irrelevant… your choice is the right one for you in particular.

Face it, you won’t be able to convince the 75% of the people out there to switch, so instead of whining about it, deal with it.

This is a giant step in the right direction, and the developer community should be happy.

I agree completely with this post. The fact that FF, Opera or any other browser pushed standards, tabs, popup blockers or whatever first isn’t the point.

If other browsers had stopped their development there, I might agree. But they haven’t. Opera have continued to improve their product, with loads of new features in each release, which is pretty much every year.

They developed tabbed browsing years ago, and continue improving the system every time. Pop-up blockers appeared so long ago I’ve forgotten what life was like without them - and they have relentlessly worked to make them more effective. They developed “quick searching” years ago, and continue improving it - I can now search on up to 26 search engines or websites of my choice with just a single key stroke in the address bar. They beat IE to full support for CSS1 by years, and are already building in extensive support for CSS3 while IE are still working towards moderate support for CSS2!

The teams at Opera and Mozilla care deeply about the internet and the quality of experience for users and developers, that much is evident in their product. Microsoft, for all the work they have done playing catch-up (and credit to them for trying) don’t have the same vision, they don’t care, they are just trying to regain their market share. And that is why I will continue to use and evangelise Opera and, to a lesser extent, Firefox.

In terms of the work it’s doing today to support standards, Microsoft is right up there. Microsoft has plenty of ground to make up, and it remains to be seen whether these current efforts will be sustained, but if we consider which browser vendor is doing the work that will most benefit everyday web developers (as opposed to the more esoteric features appearing in Firefox 2), Microsoft is arguably doing the best work in browser development right now!

While IE7 is a step in the right direction, albeit 5 years too late, I think your comment is a bit too much into the MS worshipping zone. Yeah MS is right up there behind all other browser vendors, mate. Firefox, Opera, Safari, Konqueror, Camino, you-name-it are all better than IE7 in standards support and features. The only thing IE7 has over them is the market share and that’s only because IE comes as the default browser on new computers.