What’s New for CSS in Beta 2 Preview?

Article
02/02/2006

We have heard all your feedback asking us for full CSS compliance. With the now public available Beta 2 Preview build on XP, we get a big step closer to this goal. Chris talked about our priorities for IE7 before, but I want to give more detail on our work with CSS. We had 3 objectives, in priority:

Fix some really nasty bugs posted on sites like positioniseverything.net
Revise parts of our existing CSS implementation to be true to the spec
Add the most-requested new CSS functionality to IE

Fix some really nasty bugs:

In IE7 we’ve been working hard to address the bugs in our engine:

We fixed the most of the bugs reported on https://www.positioniseverything.net/explorer.html (click on the links for detailed explanation of the bugs)
We addressed several relative positioning issues (relative positioned elements do not have layout, an internal IE data structure, that sometimes caused calculation errors)
We made the HTML element truly independent of the Body (Scrollbars are now belonging to the Canvas and you can align absolute/fixed positioned elements next to them)
We addressed the auto alignment issue so you can more easily build 3 column layouts
Resolved issues with 1 px borders

Revise existing CSS implementation to be true to the spec:

Our second priority was to complete or adjust our implementation to be in accordance with the CSS spec.

We made major changes to our box model to support overflow correctly on non-replaced block level elements and inline-block elements.
We enabled :hover on all elements, not just on <a> tag
We make background-attachment:fixed work on all elements, not just body
We fixed a number of parser bugs like * html, _property and the /**/ comment bug

Add most-requested CSS functionality to IE

Finally, for IE7 we added:

Fixed positioning. This allows interesting layouts of sticky menus and sidebars.
Enhanced Selector support: first-child, adjacent, attribute, and child selectors
- As we were implementing attribute selectors we also added support for CSS 3 attribute selectors: prefix, suffix and substring.

Compatibility and our updated CSS behavior

Obviously, we have heard the feedback asking us to be more standards-compliant in our rendering behavior. We must balance this ask with the need of our customers (and end users) to have their pages not be broken. To find a balance we introduced a strict mode in IE6 that lets authors opt in into the more standards compliant rendering (and, if you’re putting in a modern DOCTYPE declaration, you’re being opted in automatically). Pages authored under non-strict mode (or “quirks mode”) will not change behavior in IE7 – so the fixes we’ve done to be more CSS compliant won’t appear under quirks mode. However, if your content is under “strict mode”, our behavior is more standards compliant, and your pages may break - for example, if you use some of the CSS hacks or rely on our old incorrect overflow behavior. We understand the pain this might cause in the short term but we believe a move to a more standard compliant implementation benefits everyone in the long run.

Last but not least, big thanks to the community: here on the blog (yes, we are paying attention to the comments), the WASP team and those out on the web reporting CSS issues with IE. We know we have a long road ahead but I am very excited with the progress we are making.

- Markus Mielke

Update: We now have a MSDN article that walks you through CSS compatibility issues: https://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/IETechCol/cols/dnexpie/ie7_css_compat.asp

Comments

Anonymous
February 02, 2006
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Anonymous
February 02, 2006
There appears to be a bug someone has documented on css rollovers:
http://locusoptimus.com/css-trickery/ie7-hover-bug.php
Will this be addressed before the final version?
Anonymous
February 02, 2006
I know this probably doesn't belong here, but have any developers noticed that Visual Web Developer Express will open pages in IE6, even if IE7 is installed?

Great for testing pages in both engines!
Anonymous
February 02, 2006
I noticed, while I was previewing IE7, that it doesn't currently support the display: none attribute on the option tag of select/combo boxes.

Are their any plans to add support for this?
Anonymous
February 02, 2006
Bravo! Sounds very good and this will be a huge treat for many web designers, especially in the future. Keep it up!
Anonymous
February 02, 2006
Ummmmmmm IE7 is the only browser in the world that doens't render my sites. Ergo, you aren't NEAR done.
Anonymous
February 02, 2006
The annolying min-height isn't fixed yet.
Anonymous
February 02, 2006
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Anonymous
February 02, 2006
Dear IE7 Team,

Great job so far on the new browser. It is a night and day difference from IE6 in terms of standards support and is truely going to make development so much easier!

In this post you talked about "Add most-requested CSS functionality to IE" but I think you're missing something HUGE! I've been reading every single post and comment in this blog so far and every time you make a post a few people ask about display:table / display:table-* yet we never hear an answer. The latest beta does not contain this support and I'm starting to get scared that the final will not support this feature either since it is never talked about by the IE team.

I think this is one of the make or break issues for IE since it holds the majority of the marketshare and being the only major browser to not support this feature holds back EVERY web designer that wants to truely break away from table-based layouts. It will make the difference between being the browser that developers love, or continuing to be the browser that developers hate. PLEASE add support for display:table-* we are all begging you!
Anonymous
February 02, 2006
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Anonymous
February 02, 2006
Great stuff!

What's the status of the following? I couldn't find anything specifically, and given the current state of bugs being reported I don't have a machine I can spare to test these on:

1. Left + right with scaling width on block elements. I.e. so that you can do borders with position: absolute and position: relative and have it scale to the page. Right now IE ignores the Right property entirely if the left property is set (ie 6). By fixing this bug, you'll allow developers to build sites with all of the power of frames without frames. Very important to fix.

2. The resize no scrollbar bug on overflow: auto; block type elements. Currently if you resize an IE browser window that has a block that will resize with the window, and you shrink it down enough that the content inside is larger than the block that contains it, the scrollbar will showup, but any elements that are relative to the size of the containing block will not get resized, thus causing a horizontal scrollbar to show up instead of maintaining the relative sizing between the parent and child blocks without scrollbars. This causes all kinds of issues for long navigation menus that are independant of the main content and are fixed relative to the size of the browser window (see #1)

If these two and the transparent PNG issue were fixed, I could live with absolutely nothing else being done.
Anonymous
February 02, 2006
Thanks for this info. Some progress is being made.
Have a look at this: http://css-discuss.incutio.com/?page=IE7. Still loads of problems with Absolute and relative positioning.

overflow:auto apparently still needs a width specified to work correctly (see http://emps.l-c-n.com/articles/97/notes-on-textpattern) the code blocks are way to wide.
Anonymous
February 02, 2006
We've documented a few bugs with test cases here: http://www.projectseven.com/csslab/ie7/ and will be adding more as time permits.
Anonymous
February 02, 2006
@ Philippe, Al and the rest

I love the links you guys sent out. Seeing the community chime in on bugs and wish lists is a great help. Keep them coming.

-- Markus
Anonymous
February 02, 2006
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Anonymous
February 02, 2006
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Anonymous
February 02, 2006
In today's entry: I take a look at the new Internet Explorer beta.
Anonymous
February 02, 2006
James - What's wrong with the rendering of the ebay painting list?
Anonymous
February 02, 2006
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Anonymous
February 02, 2006
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Anonymous
February 02, 2006
PingBack from http://ihower.idv.tw/blog/archives/1269
Anonymous
February 02, 2006
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Anonymous
February 02, 2006
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Anonymous
February 02, 2006
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Anonymous
February 02, 2006
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Anonymous
February 02, 2006
Congrats again... Keep up the good work!
Anonymous
February 02, 2006
Nice to see that MSIE team finally made steps towards improving CSS support. But still, in terms of CSS support, it stands behind Opera 5 and Mozilla 1.0 released several years ago. To be more constructive I am posting my wish list for future release:

1. Generated Content (:before, :after preudo-elements, counters)
2. Tables (display:table, table-row, table-cell, table-caption, inline-table)
3. Paged media properties
Anonymous
February 02, 2006
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Anonymous
February 02, 2006
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Anonymous
February 02, 2006
Thanks you for the good work.

"a move to a more standard compliant implementation benefits everyone in the long run." I fully agree even if it'll break my pages.

Please don't stop there and fix the min-height.
Anonymous
February 02, 2006
Recently released MSIE 7 beta 2 is <a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2006/02/02/523679.aspx" target="_blank">still very far</a> from having decent CSS support. Good news is that most of CSS2 selectors were finally
Anonymous
February 02, 2006
max- and min-width would be nice... But I presume that's a pretty code-heavy change to be coming in this late in the process.
Anonymous
February 02, 2006
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Anonymous
February 02, 2006
So far, so good. I was pleasantly surprised when I found that background-attachment: fixed is fixed (as seen with the complex spiral here: http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/css/edge/complexspiral/demo.html), as well as fixing a lot of old CSS bugs. However, I still have reservations on a couple things:
1. Floats still act strange as shown here: http://www.positioniseverything.net/explorer/floatmodel.html. And if you use the page zoom on this page for example: http://www.positioniseverything.net/explorer/dup-characters.html the text gets cut off by the the floating object.
2. Will :before and :after be supported, particularly with content? I hope this gets fixed before IE7 is finally released.
Anonymous
February 02, 2006
I have to add my weight to the requests for min-height. No :after and content: we might be able to live with, as I see IE7 follows the old IE Mac float-enclosing model (display: inline-block) and this doesn't require hiding from other browsers, AFAIK. But many, MANY fluid layouts will be unfixable in IE7 without min-height. In the words of Frank N Furter, you've removed the cure but not the symptom.
Anonymous
February 02, 2006
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Anonymous
February 02, 2006
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Anonymous
February 02, 2006
Properbly, there will be support for min/max-height/width.
Maybe this should be added to the blog entry.

http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2006/01/31/520883.aspx#522483
Anonymous
February 02, 2006
"I'm pretty angry about this; after you've been so open with the community (using blogs, releasing betas, etc), the fact that you're then going to betray us by not releasing a standards-compliant browser has really annoyed me."

We'll just have to hope for a swift 7.5 and 8.0.
Anonymous
February 02, 2006
PingBack from http://digitalfive.org/content/internet-explorer-7-preview-roundup-2.html
Anonymous
February 02, 2006
Trackback from dotnetkicks.com
Anonymous
February 02, 2006
I also wanna add once more that I am still waiting for a comment on :before/:after. An answer like "yes", "no" or "we don't know yet" can't be too much to ask for.
Anonymous
February 02, 2006
Did you ever try test IE with Acid2 Test? http://webstandards.org/act/acid2/

Opera 0.9 beta and Safari pass this test. Firefox and IE6 or IE7 - don't.
Anonymous
February 02, 2006
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Anonymous
February 02, 2006
Has border-spacing been addressed, at the moment i'm forced to use the cellspacing attribute?
Anonymous
February 02, 2006
border:outline is not supported either, this would have been very helpfull in creating wysiwyg editors where you do not want borders to change the layout (like floats).
Anonymous
February 02, 2006
border:outline does not exist anywhere, but the outline property is really missing:

http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/ui.html#propdef-outline
Anonymous
February 02, 2006
@M. Schopman,

The caching behaviour you describe would play havoc with some forms of Ajax.

If Internet Explorer doesn't support the Expires header properly, then that is a bug. But it seems you want Internet Explorer to ignore the Expires header and cache things for as long as the page is open. Given that every situation in which that is useful is fixed properly by setting a valid Expires header, I can't see how you justify hobbling Internet Explorer in this way.
Anonymous
February 02, 2006
Dear IE team,

What would be really useful now for a new posting is if you could list the problems with beta2 that you're aware of and are planning to fix for beta3.

Then we can all stop commenting on those issues you know are a problem while you are busy fixing them. I imagine the regression with #id a:hover is one of those.

And I echo the call for implementation of the desperately-needed min-/max- width/height.
Anonymous
February 02, 2006
Thomas Tallyce:

http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2006/01/31/520883.aspx#522483
Anonymous
February 02, 2006
What about :before and :after?
Anonymous
February 02, 2006
There is a graphical bug regarding the tooltip when you hover over text and images.

It does not happen every time but if you hover your mouse over the a link or an image with a title or alt tag, the tooltip will appear. If you look closely a some rogue "pixels" obstruct the text. If you move the mouse a little, they disappear. It seems to be a rendering problem with the tooltips.

P.S I would ALSO like to see the implementation of 'display:table'. This is a key feature if we want to move away from table based designed websites.
Anonymous
February 03, 2006
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Anonymous
February 03, 2006
> 1. Please please please please please please please please please please please please implement min-width, max-width, max-height and ESPECIALLY min-height since that last one could previously be simulated by using height and * html, but not anymore now.

http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2006/01/31/520883.aspx#522483

> 2. Wouldn’t it be trivial to add a default styling for <abbr> which makes it have a (dotted, dashed, whatever) underline? Maybe that’ll cause it to be used a little more often.

Would make sense. By the way, adding border[-bottom]-style:dotted or dashed results in a "nice" behaviour, as there is no default width in any direction. :)
Anonymous
February 03, 2006
MS is working on min/max height/width, for those of you who insist on mentioning it in every post!

"...min/max width/height properties, which are currently not supported. The change of the overflow behavior is the precursor to be able to support these properties. We are currently working on implementing these..."

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/ietechcol/cols/dnexpie/ie7_css_compat.asp
Anonymous
February 03, 2006
I too would like an answer for display: table-cell etc. I'm less concerned with whether it will be implemented or not, and more concerned with knowing. If you tell me that you aren't going to implement it, then I can get on with "fixing" the sites that use it. If you tell me that you are planning on implementing it, I can sit back and wait for the next beta. But not knowing puts me in the position of having to do the work and then finding out I didn't need to.
Anonymous
February 03, 2006
Display:table, row, cell etc. That is one of the things I was looking for IE7 to support but this is a nice start.
Anonymous
February 03, 2006
I agree that :before,:after, and min width/height MUST simply work in IE7...!
Anonymous
February 03, 2006
In view of the fact that a CSS bug has been found which depends on whether a stylesheet is @import-ed or linked, ("a:hover not rendered when declared in an imported style sheet" - http://www.projectseven.com/csslab/ie7/import.htm), this means that people reporting test cases may need to duplicate test cases to get full coverage; even perhaps testing linked, @imported and embedded.

Unfortunately, this adds a whole extra dimension of complexity to things when trying to replicating others' results.

So just be aware.
Anonymous
February 03, 2006
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Anonymous
February 03, 2006
Sigh.

And so my points from prior posts are proven.

No Central Bug Tracking = Bug reports/fixes spread across hundreds of sites /w no real organization (though perhaps its only 10s of sites for the moment)

Please do not leave things this way for the release version.
Anonymous
February 03, 2006
Oh. And looking back at some of the earlier posts, I think the "most" requested CSS upgrade was full CSS2/2.1 support. Not, please fix just a few bugs, but full support.

Halfway measures are just asking for further disgust with IE. Though maybe we'll get the CSS 2.1 support we desire in IE8 sometime in 2012, of course by then we'll all want CSS4 support.
Anonymous
February 03, 2006
PingBack from http://www.ckelly.net/journal/archives/2006/02/03/ie-7-rendering-improvements-hallelujah/
Anonymous
February 03, 2006
I can no longer FTP from IE. Is this a known issue?
Anonymous
February 03, 2006
PNG-24 support is excellent but unfortunatly the CSS3 opacity attribute is not yet supported and the fallback filter:progid..Alpha does work properly when PNG-24 are involved...
Anonymous
February 03, 2006
Hi,

Seems that IE7b2 is an improvement on IE6, however my most annoying issues with IE7b2 is the CSS :hover bug when using @import, this must be fixed for the final release, i saw the workaround, but who wants to put a redundent a:hover {} under their @import statement for the benefit of IE7? Nobody.

The other thing that needs to be addressed is the min-width, max-width, min-height and max-height CSS properties, these will make alot of web developers lives easier, im sure you want that. Please implement these in the next release.

Cheers.

Joey
Anonymous
February 03, 2006
Add my vote for min/max width/height, display table (cell, row, etc) and :before and :after.
Anonymous
February 03, 2006

still no min-width, max-width

- floats still do the wrong thing when lined up against eachother.

- no real changes to any of my STRICT doctype pages

i am still going to have to double my development time to make a version of the site that works for EVERYBODY ELSE and a version that works for ie.

thanks

Anonymous
February 03, 2006
min-width, max-width, min-height and max-height all needed.

Also, for any generated element, regardless of nesting, and positioning (fixed/absolute/relative)

DOM access to the ACTUAL
obj.style.offset[Top|Left|Width|Height] is MANDATORY!!!!!!!!!

Doing any serious DHTML without this is IMPOSSIBLE.
Anonymous
February 03, 2006
IE7 Beta 2 Scrollbar / Overflow bug test case

http://cooperx.netfirms.com/Ie7b2_vscrollbar.htm

This test case displays a scenario with no equivelent workaround: The dreaded horizonal scroll bar shows up whenever the vertical bar appears.
Anonymous
February 03, 2006

We currently parse :focus and then invalidate the selector since we don't have support for matching this pseudo-class at current.

2. No we don't currently support the double colon syntax.

3. Changing of attributes does a lot of work inside of the DOM. In general there are a class of attributes that trigger format recalculations and some that don't. If they trigger the proper recalculations we should reapply the style sheets no matter how the attribute is set. Use the blog feedback if you have specific scenarios you are interested in.

I'll leave the rest for our CSS PM Markus!

Anonymous
February 03, 2006
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Anonymous
February 03, 2006
check out my rollover buttons on my website... they dont' work correctly in IE7.. they disappear on rollover... had no problems in IE6 though... they are at

www.aerocet.com/mambo
Anonymous
February 03, 2006
I'm not impressed with IE7's rendering of webpages. It does do a good job of rendering what it does support. That is a big improvement over previous versions of IE.

Support for display:table,display:table-cell, and display:table-row are mandatory. This is needed to create websites without table layouts.

Other CSS things like min-height, max-height, etc. need to be supported. These are getting used more and more because most alternate browsers to IE support them.

IE7 still doesn't support PNG files correctly. It does transparency, yes, but color gamma is incorrect. Using a program like pngcrush to remove the gAMA chunk from PNG files are still required to view the colors correctly on IE 7.
Anonymous
February 03, 2006
The usage of underscores in the style="" attribute was an oversight that has been caught and remedied. Thanks for taking the time to test this out though as it helps us prioritize additional work.
Anonymous
February 03, 2006
IEBlog : What’s New for CSS in Beta 2 Preview? Compatibility and our updated CSS behavior Obviously, we have heard the feedback asking us to be more standards-compliant in our rendering behavior. We must balance this ask with the need of our customers
Anonymous
February 03, 2006
To add to what Dutin said above this post, at http://entropymine.com/jason/testbed/alphagamma/ there is a good example of the incorrect gamma display in IE7.
Anonymous
February 03, 2006
Great stuff.. I'm about to embark on a site redesign and its good to know that I can focus on creating valid CSS and not worry about workarounds :)
Anonymous
February 03, 2006
If you are only going to activate the bug fixes for strict mode, you are doing nothing for the vast majority of sites out there. We want the fixes in QUIRKS MODE!

In fact, because IE 6 uses a different default style sheet for strict mode than quirks mode, the majority of websites INTENTIONALLY INTRODUCE ERRORS to FORCE QUIRKS MODE to get the stylesheet most people are used to seeing.

So, this design decision you have made is VERY POOR. Please fix it and enable the more compliant behavior for quirks mode.
Anonymous
February 03, 2006
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_layout_engines_(CSS)

Please fully implement CSS 2.1 . pleassssssssssssssssssssssssssse
Anonymous
February 03, 2006
PingBack from http://www.kk-works.de/2006/02/03/ie-7-beta-2-zweiter-eindruck/
Anonymous
February 03, 2006
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Anonymous
February 03, 2006
Auxiron, your page worked in IE6 because it was getting thrown in to Quirks mode because of the XML prolog (<?xml...>).

-Chris Wilson [MS]
Anonymous
February 03, 2006
Anyone here, have the resources (server, bandwidth, good-heart) to open up a public bug-tracking system for IE7?

(and yes, I am hoping MS would, but I've been a Web Dev long enough to know I shouldn't hold my breath)

So, if anyone has the resources (I for one, would be willing to contribute (financially via paypal), and (technically, via bug reports/test cases/fix updates)) I would be very interested in getting this going.

The industry is in obvious need for this, but I'm really losing faith in this coming to fruition. (e.g. We don't even have a firm commitment to the cause from MS yet.)

I have about 1-200 test cases of HTML, JS, and CSS bugs for IE6 (25% or so are now fixed) to contribute for the record, I just need to be able to host them for all to share/search etc.

Thanks.
Wendal
Anonymous
February 03, 2006
PingBack from http://www.nousab.org/index.php/internet-explorer-7-beta-2
Anonymous
February 03, 2006
There should be an IE plugin(activeX) that would allow people to run FF extensions for IE with same functionality (or atleast close). Is there?? is there?? i know theres no such plugin... but that would have been so cool!
<wink>hint</wink>
Anonymous
February 03, 2006
oh hey. srry. wrong section.
Anonymous
February 03, 2006
Will pages we thrown in quick mode with an XML prolog in IE7?
Anonymous
February 03, 2006
Just wanted to say thank you to the IE team for the work you're doing. There's a lot of people on here who just moan, a lot more people on here who give constructive criticism, and those people know more about the various bugs than I do but I just wanted to say thanks. As a web developer I really appreciate all you're doing to improve things.
Anonymous
February 03, 2006
PingBack from http://tintafantasma.net/2006/02/03/%c2%bfque-hay-de-nuevo-de-css-en-la-beta-2-de-internet-explorer-7/
Anonymous
February 03, 2006
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Anonymous
February 03, 2006
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Anonymous
February 03, 2006
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Anonymous
February 03, 2006
@Ingo

We have fixed the !important bug in our recent builds (past B2P)

-- Markus
Anonymous
February 03, 2006
@Markus

Great!

Updated the now obsolete demo.

Thanks.
Anonymous
February 03, 2006
PingBack from http://www.martytdx.com/zealot/archives/2006/02/01/internet-explorer-7-beta-2-preview
Anonymous
February 03, 2006
To boghta, the xmlHttpRequest is a new request, and in the current situation such requests are always cached for 60 seconds, unless you add a new Date().getTime() function in the URL.

This is different from re-requesting images while loading a page. Gecko, Opera, Khtml, all do it correctly. Why wouldn't this be possible for IE 7?

There are better ways to handle such issues, than just reloading files from the server on each get request with such cache settings.
Anonymous
February 03, 2006
Wendal, we’re actually already working on this (a public bug-tracking system for IE bugs) – we’d hoped to have it set up before we shipped the Beta 2 Preview, but it didn’t quite clear in time. Stay tuned for more from Al Billings.

-Chris Wilson [MS]
Anonymous
February 03, 2006
Hi there,

I hadn't the chance to test yet, but I read the posts and thought about some points. First: No support for :before and :after isn't funny, because even if IE7 tries to behave like a CSS 2.1 compliant browser, it isn't. So many developers have to support 3 (!) different stylesheets in the future: One for IE 5-6 in quirks mode, one for IE 7 and one for the truly conformant browsers ...

One solution would be to force IE 7 into quirks mode (yes, I would like to do so so that I can spare an additional style sheet).

But the problem is: The one trick to force quirks mode is no longer available -- using the XML declaration with strict DOCTYPE.

What about a meta tag (like the one to hide the image toolbar) to force IE 7 into quirks mode if needed? This one could help developers to have modern, XML style XHTML and at the same time have IE7 behave like its predecessors (until IE 8 will arive and support such oldies like :before and :after ...).

And the horizontal scrollbar problem mentioned ... I hope it will be gone with the final release. This one was one of the main reasons I decided to force IE 6 into quirks mode by using the XML declaration ... (see above :-)

That's all for now. I would appreciate support for :before and :after ...

Kind regards
Christian Augustin (from Berlin, Germany)
Anonymous
February 03, 2006
I'd also like to add my request for min/max-height/width support, also the fixing of the current width/height functionality so that it doesn't behave like the min-* functionality.
Anonymous
February 03, 2006
I have to admit i am a little disappointed. I was hoping for :after and :before. How hard can this be to implement?

Although, i am over the moon to hear that min/max height/width will be implemented in IE7

I know i am probably being a moany old git, but would like to see :after and :before, also would like to see table-*
Anonymous
February 03, 2006
@Mystere

Our overflow fix mentioned in the blog exactly addresses that widht/height doesn't behave like the min-* functionality.

-- Markus
Anonymous
February 03, 2006
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Anonymous
February 03, 2006
Why have you slowed down the progression of the web by not fully implementing CSS2?

You double my workload as a web developer because I refuse to use table layouts, and am forced to work out the many bugs and incapabilities that are caused by IE. My website has conditional comments that contain table tags, which generates extra bandwidth and slower rendering speeds for even my site's visitors that use Firefox and Opera, browsers that have supported CSS2 for years.

If IE7 will not fully support CSS2, I beg you to please, please, please support display: table/table-row/table-cell by IE7's release. And on behalf of the entire standards-supporting community of web developers, I demand you to fully implement CSS2 as soon as possible!

PS. Please respond whether or not you plan to implement the CSS display properties by IE7's official release. Thanks.
Anonymous
February 03, 2006
PingBack from http://www.gablarski.com/2006/20culture-fad/
Anonymous
February 03, 2006
@Avis

We will not support display:table properties in IE7

Just to reiterate:
We never said we would have full CSS2.1 compliance by the time IE7 ships. We are committed to the standard and working hard to make progress.

For more info check out Chris blog post: http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/07/29/445242.aspx

-- Markus
Anonymous
February 03, 2006
Well, I'll mention one that IE partially supports but needs a bit of an update.

What about inline-block according to CSS2.1? IE6 only supports it on elements that are inline by default.
Anonymous
February 03, 2006
Hello,

I'm sorry that this is off topic, but I recently downloaded and installed Internet Explorer 7 beta 2 from the official Microsoft Internet Explorer website and noticed when I went to visit the Website of Carthage College (www.carthage.edu) Internet Explorer 7 was unable to compose many of the pages on the website properly where as it's preticessor could. Is there any information that could be made available to the webmaster of Carthage College in order to rectify this situation? Again, my most sincere apologies for this obviously miss-posted message.
Anonymous
February 03, 2006
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Anonymous
February 03, 2006
I extended my testcase and added screenshots:

http://design-noir.de/bugzilla/ie7-overflow.html
http://design-noir.de/bugzilla/ie7-overflow.png
http://design-noir.de/bugzilla/ie7-overflow-zoom.html
http://design-noir.de/bugzilla/ie7-overflow-zoom.png

As you can see, applying the proprietary zoom property somehow fixes the behaviour partially. I was told this would be because of the "hasLayout flag" -- maybe you know what this means, I don't.
Anonymous
February 03, 2006
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Anonymous
February 03, 2006
Markus,

I read in horror that you do not plan on supporting display:table, display:table-cell, display:table-row in IE7. This is completely unacceptable because it is a basic functionality required for web developers to stop designing pages the same way we've been doing since 1997!!!

PLEASE STOP HOLDING BACK THE WEB! You won't believe how angry this makes all of the developers who need to dumb down not only their HTML but the underlying Javascript, CSS, ASP / PHP just because IE is the only browser that can't break away from the ancient table-based layout. Do us all a favor and release a browser that is actually functional this time. We've only been waiting for the past 10 years...
Anonymous
February 03, 2006
Upset web developer,

As a web developer with several years of experience, I have to disagree. While display:table would be nice, it's certainly not a requirement to design table-less designs.

Your problem is that you can only envision your design as a table-design, and rather than rethink your design patterns, you simply want to try and make div's into tables using CSS.

While that will work (on any browser that supports display: table), even if IE7 supported it, you wouldn't be able to use it for years because legacy browsers that don't support it will take that long to go away.

Break outside the boundaries of table thinking. You might be surprised by what you can do.
Anonymous
February 03, 2006
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
February 03, 2006
@Christian Augustin:
If you really, really wish to use get IE7 into quirks mode, you can still do it with a comment before the DOCTYPE - at least in IE7B2.
A 'visual' testcase to confirm it: http://dev.skalske.dk/css/comment-before-doctype.html

@IE team:
I think it would be really nice if you could add support for activating focus on a form element, placed inside a label element, when clicking on the label. Right now this doesn't work, unless you've linked them together using the for-attribute and an id:
http://dev.skalske.dk/css/inputInsideLabel.html
Anonymous
February 03, 2006
Microsoft, when Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 is done, will it be publically released? I am anxious to see what has been done in response to the feedback from Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 Preview.
Anonymous
February 03, 2006
Hmm, I wonder why on earth I ever placed the last test-case is in the css-folder... Then this was the wrong thread to mention it in, sorry.
Nonetheless, it would still be really nice to get support for it though, and somehow I imagine it's not that hard to implement?! //End of spam.
Anonymous
February 03, 2006
when will the button element work? currently it doesnt work according to http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/interact/forms.html#edef-BUTTON

IE7b2 is sending the wrong value to the server -- the enclosed text that's supposed to be displayed instead of the value attribute.
Anonymous
February 03, 2006
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
February 03, 2006
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
February 03, 2006
min-width min-height min-width min-height min-width min-height min-width min-height min-width min-height min-width min-height min-width min-height min-width min-height min-width min-height min-width min-height min-width min-height min-width min-height min-width min-height min-width min-height min-width min-height min-width min-height min-width min-height min-width min-height min-width min-height min-width min-height min-width min-height min-width min-height min-width min-height min-width min-height
Anonymous
February 03, 2006
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
February 03, 2006
I'm delighted to see so many people here begging for "min-height" (et al.) to be supported. I'd like to add the weight of my (quite loud, as all my friends tell me) voice to this plea!

It's surely one of the most useful and essential properties in the entire CSS recommendation!

And regardless of that, my sites break in IE7, and as far as I can see the only thing that will fix them is min-height... I'd been getting round that in IE6 by taking advantage of properties that didn't render correctly, but now that they DO, we need min-height!

Please, please see sense, and make youselves a nice little spot in history by implementing this (and the rest of CSS2.1 for that matter, it can't be THAT hard;) )

I'm loving IE7b2 btw, impressed with lots of the new features and behaviour etc., and I'd like to see this improvement continue right up to (and beyond) the full release.
Anonymous
February 03, 2006
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
February 04, 2006
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
February 04, 2006
I too would be very disapointed if min-height and min-width weren't implemented. I use those a lot and keep stumbling on the IE-implementation.
Anonymous
February 04, 2006
Very pleased to see the support for fixed positioning. Unfortunately it appears to still have quite a few bugs. I caught one bug in my application, and while trying to make a simplified testcase, discovered two more as well!

The testcase is available at http://sab39.dev.netreach.com/fixed.html

The three bugs in short: the horizontal scrollbar isn't taken into account by fixed positioning; trying to position to the far right leaves a one-pixel gap instead; and the text in my fixed-position div overflows its borders.

The first one in particular is almost impossible to workaround (especially since it disappears when you resize the browser window) and I'd really like to see it fixed for IE7 final.
Anonymous
February 04, 2006
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Anonymous
February 04, 2006
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
February 04, 2006
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
February 04, 2006
PingBack from http://www.tsevdos.com/2006/02/04/internet-explorer-7-beta-2-2/
Anonymous
February 04, 2006
I haven't read everyone's comments yet, but I just wanted to know if the IE devs realize how much their work on IE7 matters to the community. The decisions they make, with regards as to what is and isn't supported in CSS affect every web devloper on the planet in a very large way.

People here are begging for min-height and such. It's in the spec, but if the IE guys decide not to put it in, then it effectively is not a usable attribute for web developers. I plead with the IE team to take several extra months and create a browser that can handle CSS as well as the Gecko based browsers do.

Nobody is going to remember it came out in June instead of September, but for years to come web developers will be stuck with whatever choices the IE devs made. I somehow doubt we're going to see new CSS support after IE7 is out until HTML 2 and CSS3 are ready -- and even then it will be years.

It's a tough position to be in, but please take the time to do it right. And please, let's see some min-height and content CSS support!
Anonymous
February 04, 2006
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Anonymous
February 04, 2006
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
February 04, 2006
I would be willing to host a IE7 bug/list repository.

If someone can get in contact with me (via IM or email), I can give a subdomain with FTP access + email account and we can start grouping these bugs instead of having them spread out all over the web.
Anonymous
February 04, 2006
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
February 04, 2006
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
February 04, 2006
@Mystere

I must agree with you, it seems a little bit weird idea to implement a table with divs and css just because of the trendy tableless designs...
Anonymous
February 04, 2006
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
February 05, 2006
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
February 05, 2006
Glad to see a lot of effort in improving CSS selector support, and to see that you're going to add the !important keyword to adhere the specs.

I'd like to report a quite strange behaviour related to attribute selector. The following css rule:

div[title="test"] em{background: #FF0}

will make the whole <code>div</code> in yellow instead of the single <code>em</code> element.

Keep up the good work.
Anonymous
February 05, 2006
Your site "Cascading Style Sheet Compatibility in Internet Explorer 7" is nice, but not enough. What about the redering differences between IE 7 and Opera, Firefox. I found some, but wont pick them all by try + error :-( To fix them there are only conditional comments, no "css conditional comments".

Please give us more information.
Anonymous
February 05, 2006
Seriously, IE dev people, look at this chart and make IE up to standard.

http://www.webdevout.net/browser_support_css.php
http://www.webdevout.net/browser_support.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_layout_engines_%28CSS%29

That's all we want. If IE7 was as up to standards as the current FF, Opera, Safari and Konqueror, we would be happy.
Anonymous
February 05, 2006
Good job (with the standards)! Now keep it up! The more standards-compliant the better.
Anonymous
February 05, 2006
To those mentioning that column is only for multi-column text, I disagree. Appropriate use of column-break attributes creates mulitple columns with specific formats. According to the latest specification, they can contain block level elements and act like table cells, block level elements, and inline-block.

there is no difference between multi-column text and multi-column layout in this regard.
Anonymous
February 05, 2006
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
February 05, 2006
PingBack from http://www.mengyan.org/blog/archives/2006/02/04/109.html
Anonymous
February 05, 2006
It's simply critical, that you add support for min/max width/height otherwise one won't be able to make proper use of the fixed float-property.

"height: auto" would also be deeply appriciated.

Can't bear the thought of having to wait for IE8 to get this fixed... It wouldn't be fair...
Anonymous
February 05, 2006
PingBack from http://db.rambleschmack.net/blog/2006/02/07/and-were-back/
Anonymous
February 05, 2006
>That's all we want. If IE7 was as up to standards as the current FF, Opera, Safari and Konqueror, we would be happy.

Or even just close to those standards. People won't care if the release is delayed as long as you make it worth the wait.

>To those mentioning that column is only for multi-column text, I disagree. Appropriate use of column-break attributes creates mulitple columns with specific formats. According to the latest specification, they can contain block level elements and act like table cells, block level elements, and inline-block.

Multi-column text is used via the column-count and column-gap properties. There's nothing for acting on a specific column. They are for making things like newspaper articles. It is not possible to layout a page with them.
Anonymous
February 05, 2006
Whoops, I forgot column-width.
Anonymous
February 06, 2006
PingBack from http://www.easy-reader.net/archives/2006/02/05/more-on-ie7-beta-2/
Anonymous
February 06, 2006
PingBack from http://tommaso.tessarolo.it/wordpress/index.php/archives/26
Anonymous
February 06, 2006
Tom, Yes, you can select a specific column, by using column breaks. You can force column breaks to send content to the next column. No, you can't randomly position code in columns from anywhere, but i'm not really sure if that's a good idea anyways.
Anonymous
February 06, 2006
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
February 06, 2006
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
February 06, 2006
PingBack from http://www.blog.robertkan.net/2006/02/07/internet-explorer-7-beta-2-quick-look/
Anonymous
February 06, 2006
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
February 07, 2006
This may or may not belong here, but I couldn't find a better place to ask...
Was it just me, or did IE7 take a huge toll on system resources? I specifically noticed this, not in IE itself, but in gaming (specifically World of Warcraft, among others).
I could play several games just fine when I had IE6 installed. After installing IE7 and rebooting, there was enough drag on the system that several games froze for about a half second every 4 or 5 seconds. Even without any IE windows open- merely having 7 installed seemed to drag me down significantly. I tried several things to optimize my system, but the only thing that worked was going back to IE6 (and I'm running an Athlon64 3400 with a gig of ram, so it's not like I'm playing on an antique or anything).
I'm afraid I don't have hard numbers to back anything up, as I was in a hurry when I decided to try removing 7, but when it was installed, several games were virtually unplayable, due to the slow frame rates and general system drag that IE apparently caused.
I realize that this was a beta, but any idea if the final release will exhibit the same behavior? If so, I'd imagine a lot of the gaming crowd won't be installing...
Anonymous
February 07, 2006
In retrospect, the above comment is indeed misplaced- somehow I missed that this particular thread deals exclusively with CSS. My apologies for taking up the unnecessary space (Mods feel free to delete both posts if possible)
Anonymous
February 07, 2006
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
February 07, 2006
I would rather that Microsoft just keep working on this until the product is finished. I don't care as much about the release date of ie7 as I do that it play nice.
Anonymous
February 07, 2006
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
February 07, 2006
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
February 08, 2006
Is there any simple way to determine if a page (not one that I controll and therefore not one that I can add a script to) is being rendered in quirks mode?
Anonymous
February 08, 2006
I'd also like to see display: table and friends implemented. (min|max)-(height|width) would be nice too.
Anonymous
February 08, 2006
New right-margin-bug? See http://msdazu.de/ie7/marginbug.html
Anonymous
February 08, 2006
PingBack from http://martin-english.com/whatsup/2006/02/download-ie7-beta-2/
Anonymous
February 08, 2006
PingBack from http://martin-english.com/whatsup/2006/02/download-ie7-beta-2/
Anonymous
February 08, 2006
I'm glad that the IE7 team has committed to implementing min/max-height.

But let me re-iterate this: under no circumstances should IE7 be released with the overflow bug fixed and no min/max-height implemented.

Doing so would result in a horrible, horrible mess for many standards compliant sites that rely on either IE6's non-standard rendering or support for min/max-height in better browsers.
Anonymous
February 09, 2006
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
February 09, 2006
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
February 09, 2006
Folder view for FTP sites doesn't appear to work anymore, still looking for the history button, and the new icons for favorites are annoying(I know I can turn them off).

otherwise looking good.
Anonymous
February 10, 2006
Markus [MSFT] said:
> Just to reiterate:
> We never said we would have full CSS2.1
> compliance by the time IE7 ships. We are
> committed to the standard and working hard to
> make progress.

I don't doubt you're working hard, but if you can't comply CSS2.1 atleast* at the same level that already existing browsers, why bother?

Please, consider delaying IE7 release until you can say "Maybe it will be just for a few days, but today IE7 is the browser with the best standards support".

I don't know your reasons, but leaving :after and :before out of IE7 is a BAD idea. It will make IE7 an old browser from day one.
Anonymous
February 10, 2006
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
February 10, 2006
PLEASE
CSS2

PLEASE
CSS2

PLEASE
CSS2
Anonymous
February 10, 2006
I'd like to report a bug that I've come across.
In IE 6 ,the "Find" dialog is present on a page, clicking a link on that page causes the dialog to close before the page unloads.

In IE 7 Beta, the "find" dialog does not close, when I try to close it after the next page has loaded, I get an error: "An error has occurred in this dialog" 385, Permission Denied.
Anonymous
February 10, 2006
Please think about introducing an -ie-, -msie- or -whatever- prefix for CSS features you're working on but that may not be ready for the final IE7 release.
After all, an alpha state feature is better than nothing. Even if not workable throughout, it could be useful in some cases.
Anonymous
February 10, 2006
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
February 12, 2006
Mystere,

It's not a viable layout method. We are forced to use inferior methods just because M$ doesn't want to update it. There have been very few CSS 2.1 support updates so far. It looks like you completely redid the UI to make it look like you're innovating to cover up the fact that you're not.
Anonymous
February 12, 2006
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Anonymous
February 13, 2006
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Anonymous
February 14, 2006
Target.com sued by blind student
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060213-6166.html

I read this article and thought, you know what... if IE supported all of the CSS2.1 features that would allow us to do everything we need tables for right now in CSS, we could easily make the internet a more accessible place for those with impairments. I truely believe that IE's current lack of support for standards is the main reason that the blind have a harder time navigating the web because developers right now need to jump through hoops and spend hours to achieve certain layouts without display:table that take only seconds if that support was there.

We need these basic CSS 2.1 features added so we can better support our blind and visually impaired users:

1. display: table
2. display: table-cell
3. display: table-row
4. display: table-*
5. min-width
6. max-width
7. min-height
8. max-height
9. :before
10. :after

Try browsing the web using a screen reader with your eyes closed and you'll quickly see how much of a mess IE's lack of CSS support has created. For the sake of humanity, please support at least these BASIC CSS 2.1 FEATURES!!!
Anonymous
February 15, 2006
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
February 15, 2006
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
February 16, 2006
Nice, hopefully CSS2 will be supported with some seriousness. The standards are there to be ignored by the likes of microsoft i often think. So at least some bugs are (theoretically) ironed out.
(YAY - Fixed Postioning)
Anonymous
February 16, 2006
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
February 16, 2006
PingBack from http://www.martytdx.com/zealot/archives/2006/02/16/ie7-firefoxs-evil-and-inferior-clone
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March 01, 2006
A designer’s review of Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2
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March 20, 2006
PingBack from http://www.w3masters.info/internet-explorer-7/
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PingBack from http://www.web2grow.com/web-design-australia/?p=70
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May 25, 2006
At the end of January, Microsoft released a public beta of the next version of Internet Explorer [download | readme | tour]. IE 7b2 offers more stringent security measures and other improvements including tabbed-browsing, updated CSS, RSS support and
Anonymous
July 28, 2006
PingBack from http://www.i-jeriko.de/2006/07/29/microsoft-propagiert-webstandards-oder-so-ahnlich/
Anonymous
October 07, 2006
Scott Graff writes at the IE7 Blog that the final release of Internet Explorer 7 is almost upon us -- as in, this month. He also reveals a little more about how its distribution through Windows Update will be handled:...
Anonymous
October 19, 2006
Nie, nie będę obiektywny. Nie napiszę, że to dobrze, że coś się zaczyna zmieniać (Polski, skrócony odpowiednik). Internet Explorer był, jest i będzie najgorszą przeglądarką na rynku- mam nadzieję, że określenie "najpopularniejsza" bardzo
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The comment has been removed
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PingBack from http://www.dgwaoo.com.ar/blog/?p=12
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PingBack from http://actors.247blogging.info/?p=4487
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January 21, 2008
In Dean’s recent Internet Explorer 8 and Acid2: A Milestone post, he highlighted our responsibility to
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PingBack from http://www.vicente-navarro.com/blog/2008/01/27/internet-explorer-8-y-el-nuevo-super-duper-standards-mode/
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PingBack from http://internetexplorer8.org/?p=15
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February 01, 2008
PingBack from http://www.careylive.cn/articles/compatibility-and-ie8.html
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March 21, 2008
PingBack from http://www.512megas.com/2006/02/%c2%bfque-hay-de-nuevo-de-css-en-la-beta-2-de-internet-explorer-7/
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April 21, 2008
PingBack from http://stylegrind.com/css/new-clearing-method-needed-for-ie7/
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PingBack from http://blog.idesign.in.th/archives/577
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PingBack from http://paidsurveyshub.info/story.php?title=ieblog-what-s-new-for-css-in-beta-2-preview
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At the end of January, Microsoft released a public beta of the next version of Internet Explorer [download | readme | tour]. IE 7b2 offers more stringent security measures and other improvements including tabbed-browsing, updated CSS, RSS support and
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