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Hello from LA!

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I’m here at the Microsoft Professional Developer Conference 2005 in Los Angeles, and I just finished giving my presentation entitled "What’s New in IE7?" to a pretty full house (for a late afternoon session). I’m still pretty pumped up from my talk, but I wanted to share the features we haven’t previously mentioned (and repeat a few we have) for everyone who didn’t make it to the PDC. Expect to see more detail on these features in the near future here on the IEBlog, and of course these features will show up in beta 2.

We’ve continued to develop our new User Experience - in addition to thetabbed browsing, integrated search, shrink-to-fit Web page printing, and redesigned user interface we announced and delivered in beta 1, in my talk today I demoed two new user interface features – first, a Quick Tabs feature, which enablesusers to view and manage tabs with a live thumbnail view of all tabs in a single window. Secondly, we’ve implemented a Page Zoom feature, which allows users to zoom the text and graphics of web pages with high visual quality, not only to make the web experience more accessible but also to better support high-resolution screens. Finally, in conjunction with A9.com, we’ve also announced OpenSearch 1.1 in order to allow users to easily populate their search engine of choice. We’re working together with A9.com to provide backward compatible extensions to OpenSearch 1.0 to allow the OpenSearch to define search engines that output HTML as well as RSS. These extensions are being provided under the same Creative Commons license we used for the RSS list extensions.

As promised, we are delivering a web subscriptions platform to provide the tools developers need to build innovative RSS-enabled applications, including the Common Feed List (a central repository for all Web Feed Subscriptions), and the Common Data Store (which provides a single store and download mechanism for subscription content). 

We’ve also continued to enhance our security: with a simplified architecture to defend against malware, system-level protection on Windows Vista, and new ways to protect against personal data theft from fraudulent websites, we’ve demonstrated our continued commitment to improving security. Building on the security features released at beta 1, upcoming new features will include ActiveX Opt-in: To reduce the attack surface and give users more control over the security of their PC, most ActiveX controls (even those already installed on the machine) will be disabled by default for users browsing the Internet. Users will have the option to enable controls as needed using the same Information Bar they have used to install new controls since Windows XP SP2, and we are proactively working with the largest ActiveX control vendors to make sure the experience is great. We’ve created a Protected Mode for IE when running on Windows Vista, which reduces the severity of threats to IE and add-ons running in the IE process by eliminating the silent install of malicious code through software vulnerabilities. We do this by automatically running IE in isolation from any other application or process in the operating system and preventing the IE process from writing to any location beyond Temporary Internet Files without explicit user consent. We’ve improved our cross domain barriers to help limit the potential for a malicious Web site to manipulate flaws in other Web sites and cause the user to download undesired content or software. We’ve provided a “One Click Cleanup” feature to clear out the history, cache, etc. (which can be disabled by Group Policy). Finally, we’ve integrated with the Windows Vista Parental Controls to help keep kids safe online by allowing parents to control browsing behavior.

We’ve also continued to add web developer platform features and fixes: we’ve continued to fix CSS and other web standards bugs, but we’ve also rebuilt the <select> element as a windowless control, so itcan be visually layered under other elements. IE 7 implements a native XMLHTTPRequest object for Javascript applications, instead of requiring an ActiveXObject to be created. This also means XMLHTTPRequest will function on machines that have ActiveX disabled. We’ve providing support for International Domain Names we’ve also done some thoughtful work to prevent spoofing of URLs by using similar characters from other languages.  

Finally, in recognition of the need for great web developer tools, we are just about to beta a Web Developer Toolbar that provides web developers with rich object model and visual tools which will help them design standards-based HTML and CSS web pages. This feature will be delivered as an add-on for IE6+.

Whew! Sorry for the long run-on post, but I wanted to share the same information we’re presenting at the PDC with everyone.

 - Chris Wilson

Comments

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    Having XMLHttpRequest natively is great, but how about the XSLTTransformer?

    PixelSlave

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    This sounds great. Keep up the good work. I am finally glad I will be able to put a z-index on the select control.

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
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  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    Yes, but, Kenneth, ol' pal, People Like You are the problem, since you effectively fork the Web into pages that are "compatible" with IE (that is, are nonstandard and custom-crafted to work only in IE) and standards-compliant pages. Saying you're happy with a noncompliant browser is a resounding support of the status quo, one that has been rejected by everyone else... including Microsoft.

    Hope you enjoy your voluntary exile on Noncompliance Island. Send us some coconuts.

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    I get annoyed by people who refuse to recognize/are oblivious to the fact that the web is a visual experience. Get over yourself and realize that the content of your blog is self-indulgent and pretty much worthless (as is the majority of the content on the web). When the content has no merit, what's left -- the delivery (delivery of content=design).

    IE's inconsistent CSS handling makes implenting a clever design nearly impossible. Really, it limits the potential of the web, and I don't like that. So, I'm going to back up Chasen on this one. Please, more CSS support.

    On an aside, I wouldn't argue that 90% of web users are happy with IE. It is more likely that they are simply unaware of better alternatives. Honestly, how can you say that you're happy with a browser that only now, in beta, has introduced tabbed browsing? Might I remind you, it's 2005 already.

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    Gideon seems to know a bit of Web browsing history ...

    I remember Microsoft's Internet Explorer 5 Macintosh and its Tasman engine delivered long before a stable Mozilla version.

    "Honestly, how can you say that you're happy with a browser that only now, in beta, has introduced tabbed browsing?"

    You should try to install one of those old AOL browsers made by Microsoft with tabbed browsing. After you do so, then you'll learn who's really late with that feature. :)

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    Joe Clark, ol' pal, have you browsed Yahoo! Groups using the latest version of Opera?

    If you haven't try this URL http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Costa-Rica-Real-Estate/

    It seems Yahoo! doesn't care either about Chase and his "standards" buddies.

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    Chris (and team),

    As a web developer, the above news about IE7 is great. You've reported, previously and now, that the most annoying bugs/features of IE (from my pov) have been addressed.

    Thanks for the ongoing updates in the IE blogs, there are very few companies/departments that are as frank about their product as you guys.

    I don't know if it's in the project plan, but when IE7 is released, a list of the changes would be very helpful. eg CSS rules (added/deleted/changed), Javascript changes etc.

    Terence Mackie

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    While there's lots of good news in that post, I find myself filled with childlike wonder and joy (OK I exaggerate slightly, but not much) by the prospect of a native XMLHTTPRequest object, and the "select" element (I didn't want to risk angle brackets) being rewritten as a windowless control.
    Very welcome news indeed.

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    Seems like you guys are on a role there Chris. Sure there is a lot more on our wishlist, but at least work is underway and you all sound enthousiastic about working on IE7. Can't wait for beta 2.

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
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  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    Native XMLHttpRequest? Nice!

    What about native XML DOM, getters/setters, Document, Node, etc class extensibility (especially for XML DOM)?

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    "...we’ve also rebuilt the <select> element as a windowless control, so it can be visually layered under other elements."

    Bless you!

    "IE 7 implements a native XMLHTTPRequest object for Javascript applications, instead of requiring an ActiveXObject to be created."

    Great to hear. Keep up the excellent work!

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    This blog doesn't validate W3C and never will...

    I also hate having to scroll all the way down to post a comment.

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    All this debate about standards and CSS is fine and dandy, but I am curious, from a graphics standpoint, when will IE support PNG natively? PNG is far superior to GIF when it comes to complex web design as it supports alpha channels and compresses better than GIF. Please let us know when we can finally use this wonderful format that has been around for years.

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    Please, tell us more about this "Parental Control".

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    @Teressa
    > when will IE support PNG natively? PNG is far superior to
    > GIF when it comes to complex web design as it supports
    > alpha channels and compresses better than GIF. Please
    > let us know when we can finally use this wonderful format that has been around for years.

    IE6 does support PNG already, albeit not alpha and gamma channels, and had you read this blog you'd have seen that IE7 does support PNG's alpha channels. This has been blogged multiple times by the IE team.

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    Fantastic news. Congratulations on all the good work.

    Will the newly rebuilt select element have support for option groups?

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    Will the new <select> include rebuilt <optgroup>s and <option>s as well?

    Will the <select>s support styles like overflow?
    Will the <optgroup>/<option>s support styles like margin, padding, borders, text-align, overflow, background and so on?

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    This is excellent Chris. Thanks for the update. All the updates you've posted in the last few months have been very encouraging.

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
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  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    Guys, personal attacks will get your commetns deleted. Please knock it off or take it elsewhere.

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    Please don't feed the trolls.

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    Hi IE Team,

    are smart client developer second class citizen? why don't you post any information for smart client developer ?

    As you know, the Webbrowser class in Whidbey seems to be a very bad wrapper for the com webbrowser control.

    Are there any usefull information to use IE7 as a control for smart client developement ?

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    > How easy is for inept people to blame others for their own faults.

    Yeah, you already said that, but repeating it won't make it true you know.

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    "...we’ve also rebuilt the <select> element as a windowless control..."

    Now I know I've died and gone to heaven. It's the little things that make all the difference. Thanks!

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    "Over the years IE has cost both me and my customers considerable sums ..."

    The real issue is some incompetent developers should be fired for wasting customers' moneys and for providing non-professional services.

    Worst of all are the terrorist-like tactics of deception [lies] always blaming others for their own mistakes.

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    "Over the years IE has cost both me and my customers considerable sums in time and money developing clean, standards based sites and apps, then hacking them to work in IE."

    Lies, lies and more lies.

    How easy is for inept people to blame others for their own faults.

    I'm sorry to tell you the truth, but you're just an inept developer.

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    The IEBlog lays out some of the new features we can expect with Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2. It looks like the beta releases aren&amp;rsquo;t just bug fixes but a whole slew of new features. Thanks to Firefox for waking...

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    Over the years IE has cost both me and my customers considerable sums in time and money developing clean, standards based sites and apps, then hacking them to work in IE. Anyone who has had to debug javascript in IE knows it can be a dog to work with.

    I am very pleased to see Microsoft and the IE team making what seems (even to a MS skeptic like me) an honest commitment to making IE a solid and enjoyable platform to develop on. I understand it must be hard to fix some of the mistakes of the past while still maintaining backwards compatibility.

    It seems MS have finally remembered it's all about "developers, developers, developers".

    Keep up the good work guys.

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    > Does Internet Explorer support displaying of pages that are sent as application/xhtml+xml yet?

    It has been stated that it won't, the IE devs have quite a lot of work in front of them before reaching the point of implementing application/xhtml+xml (the first one being the implementation of correct MIME types handlings and actually useable Accept headers).

    And even if they did implement it, you'd still have to - at best - use content negociation for IE6/W2k.

    With the IE7 codebase being worked on, they can just implement xhtml+xml when they reach that point and push it forward as a mere IE7 update, rapidly reaching 90 to 95% of the (future) installed IE7 user base.

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    Skipping the CSS rant I love the feature of only being able to write to the Temp Internet Files, this seems like a great idea!

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    Does Internet Explorer support displaying of pages that are sent as application/xhtml+xml yet?

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    It would be cool to have the 'Web Developer Toolbar' for IE.

    When can we expect to see it ... ?

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    &amp;#8222;Лошите&amp;#8220; Micro$oft все пак са решили да хвърлят нящолко трохи на уморените от проблеми уеб дизайнери. IE 7 ще съдържа и следните промени:


    Е

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    CSS improvements, windowless Select, non-ActiveX XmlHttpRequest: all wonderful news for web developers everywhere :-)

    @Alberto: I see no "windowed control" problem in Firefox using markup which demonstrates the bug/issue in IE. Selects have not always behaved like that on all browsers.

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    Fantastic news about removing the reliance on ActiveX for the XMLHTTPRequest object! I keep having to pinch myself every time I read this blog lately. ;-)

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    All of this look really good!

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    Excellent. The select element has been a problem for us when creating dynamic forms. Thanks for fixing it.

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    Really good news regarding the select element.

    I'm also very happy that you listened to feedback and realized that XMLHttpRequest without ActiveX is a requirement today.

    However I think it is important to know that you also plan to implement document.implementation.createDocument or we will still require MSXML for a lot of things. I'm also wondering whether this is a wrapping on top of MSXML so that XPath still works and so on. The following objects go hand in hand and are usually implemented in IE6 using the MSXML ActiveX: XMLHttpRequest, DOMParser, XMLSerializer, XSLTProcessor, document.implementation.createDocument and document.evaluate (DOM level 3 XPath). If these are not available to scripting with ActiveX then the work with XMLHttpRequest has been mostly in vain.

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    Ein Eintrag in dem IEBlog hat soben meinen Tag vers&#252;&#223;t. Nein, nicht die neuen Sicherheitsfeatures, wie z.B. der zweifelhafte Test auf Pishing-Seiten.Selectboxen&#160;werden jetzt als &amp;quot;windowless controls&amp;quot;&#160;gerendert, k&#246;nnen also nun endlich auch von E

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    Kenneth, what is your problem? Stop being such a fanboy.

    I welcome all improvements to the next IE, they are all necessary. Especially select obeying z-index makes some of my progress bars happier. Security improvements are of course important too.

    100% CSS support should be the goal for the team, I mean if it hurts now, what about next time when you have to catch up again...

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    "Yes, FireFox is a fantastic example of a Browser, and the brainchild of the open source community."

    It surely took the open source community a long, long time to release its brainchild browser.

    First, there was Mozilla.

    Then, the name and design switched to Phoenix. Then to Firebird.

    And lastly, to Firefox.

    980223 Netscape Announces mozilla.org
    981207 Netscape Delivers "Gecko" Browsing Engine.
    990319 Mozilla Milestone 3
    990401 Netscape Celebrates First Anniversary of Open Source Software.
    990415 Mozilla Milestone 4
    990505 Mozilla Milestone 5
    990529 Mozilla Milestone 6
    990622 Mozilla Milestone 7
    990716 Mozilla Milestone 8
    990726 Mozilla Milestone 8.5
    Note: Last Pre-Necko Builds (aka 8.5)
    990826 Mozilla Milestone 9
    991008 Mozilla Milestone 10
    991116   Mozilla Milestone 11
    991221 Mozilla Milestone 12
    000126 Mozilla Milestone 13
    000301 Mozilla Milestone 14
    000418 Mozilla Milestone 15
    000613 Mozilla Milestone 16
    000807 Mozilla Milestone 17
    001012 Mozilla Milestone 18
    001206 Mozilla 0.6
    010109 Mozilla 0.7
    010214 Mozilla 0.8
    010326 Mozilla 0.8.1
    010507 Mozilla 0.9
    010607 Mozilla 0.9.1
    010628 Mozilla 0.9.2
    010802 Mozilla 0.9.3
    010808 Mozilla 0.9.2.1
    010914   Mozilla 0.9.4
    011012 Mozilla 0.9.5
    011031 Mozilla 0.9.4.1
    011120 Mozilla 0.9.6
    011221 Mozilla 0.9.7
    020204 Mozilla 0.9.8
    020311 Mozilla 0.9.9
    020418   Mozilla 1.0 Release Candidate 1
    020510 Mozilla 1.0 Release Candidate 2
    020523 Mozilla 1.0 Release Candidate 3
    020605 Mozilla 1.0
    020924 Mozilla releases Phoenix 0.1
    030414 Mozilla Phoenix Renamed Firebird
    040209 Mozilla Firebird Renamed Firefox
    041109 Firefox 1.0

    Six years in the making ... [ and counting :) ]

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    Chris,

    Thanks for the update! Things are starting to sound really good now, can't wait to test the next beta.

    I raise one interesting question about fontsize and pixels in my reaction to this post, in <a href="http://www.robertnyman.com/2005/09/14/some-ie-7-news/">Some IE 7 news</a>.

    I'd be happy if you have the time to reply to that.

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    "Microsoft has to have the resources to bring IE into a decent level of compliancy."

    Considering the short amount of time the team clearly have, what 'level of compliance' would you like to see?

    And don't go on some open source rant. Yes, FireFox is a fantastic example of a Browser, and the brainchild of the open source community. But Microsoft is a business, with deadlines and targets. I personally think the progress they're making has been fantastic. Sure, it's not perfect - but it's a huge step.

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    Wow! Great News! I haven't read such great news from Microsoft untill I switched to Linux! I think MS wants me back on Windows. LOL. It's ok, I'll still need to use Windows sometimes, especially since I'm a web designer, and I have to test stuff in IE. Good to hear though, keep it up.

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    The VB guys have it working in vb 9 as part of xlinq. I hope jscript gets it soon. There were 3 MS folks on the ECMAScript somittee. It's in Gecko 1.8 now.

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    &lt;p&gt;Un interesante movimiento (menor, pero interesante) de Microsoft con respecto a su futuro Internet Explorer 7. Se trata del soporte de OpenSearch 1.1 en el navegador lo que permitir&#225; que elegir cualquier buscador que cumpla este est&#225;ndar como el usad

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    You obviously have never tried to develop a complex design for a webpage with CSS. I don't even care about what browser is standards compliant. I'm just not going to use CSS ChildHacks (I used to use them all the time) to help MSIE try and read my webpage.

    I've moved my website off of the text/html MIME type to application/xhtml+xml and MSIE (for Windows atleast) can't read my site and tries to download it due to its lack of support for standards.

    Without standards there isn't even plain text on the web, try to make a good argument next time. Don't just say, "How easy is for inept people to blame others for their own faults." explain why it is their faults. Thanks.

    -Alex, Middle School Student and Amateur Webdeveloper

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    Dear Chris,

    where can I read some detailed pieces of information about the IDN-implementation (e.g. spoofing prevention)?

    Greets Jean

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    May 17, 2006
    PingBack from http://www.arkitrave.com/log/index.php/archive/2005/09/17/browser-makers-this-time-lets-get-it-right/

  • Anonymous
    January 07, 2008
    PingBack from http://www.vistadownload.org/ie7/microsoft-learns-lesson-of-%e2%80%9cblog-wars%e2%80%9d.html

  • Anonymous
    August 30, 2008
    PingBack from http://www.nczonline.net/wpblog/2005/09/14/ie7-makes-developers-happy/

  • Anonymous
    January 22, 2009
    PingBack from http://www.hilpers.nl/151634-ie-6-en-css/2

  • Anonymous
    May 29, 2009
    PingBack from http://paidsurveyshub.info/story.php?title=ieblog-hello-from-la

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    June 02, 2009
    PingBack from http://woodtvstand.info/story.php?id=86341

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    June 15, 2009
    PingBack from http://einternetmarketingtools.info/story.php?id=7643