IE7 beta expected this summer amid speculation
The latest post on IEBlog has created a flurry of talk about the expected summer release of a beta of Internet Explorer 7. Microsoft recently reversed a decision to release IE7 with the new version of Windows, Windows Longhorn, which is still at least a year away. IE7 is now expected to be available for users of Windows XP SP2, and newer, systems.
The IEBlog posting has been filled with comments requesting particular features, some of which I will summarize below (in no particular order, but grouped):
CSS - support all of CSS1 correctly, and hopefully the same for CSS2. At the very least, add support for the :hover style on all elements, and not just links (this is what prevents the popular CSS-only dropdown menus from functioning in IE); selectors such as > and :first-child. Maybe add support for certain CSS3 features that other browsers have implemented (can’t think of any examples at this point).
(x)HTML - allow XHTML to be served as application/xhtml+XML; add support for certain elements such as q and abbr.
UI - tabbed browsing (extremely useful, one of my favorite features of Firefox); a download manager to let you track what files have been downloaded and which are still in progress; extensibility using themes and plugins (again, one of my favorite features of Firefox).
Other - improved security (ActiveX off by default); keep IE seperate from Windows; make IE a collection of modules such that they can be updated individually as needed, instead of one monolithic update; support for transparent PNGs; built-in RSS news aggregator.
This is only a gathering of all ideas presented, but these seem to be the most commonly requested ones, and the ones I would not mind seeing put into action.
Following are some links to related sites and discussions:
The Web Standard Project’s take on IE7
Microsoft challenged to pass the Acid2 Challenge - The Web Standards Project is going to put together a page that uses some of the more common features of CSS, and encourages the IE team to test IE7 using that page to see what works and what doesn’t. Hopefully this will encourage the team to fix the most visible problems, and maybe some others as well.
Unfortunately, it seems that Microsoft is uncertain what parts of CSS1/2 to add or fix, and that they may only repair a few bugs and not implement CSS1/2 fully and correctly:
Partner sources say Microsoft is wavering on the extent to which it plans to support CSS2 with IE 7.0. Developers have been clamoring for Microsoft to update its CSS support to support the latest W3C standards for years. But Microsoft is leaning toward adding some additional CSS2 support to IE 7.0, but not embracing the standard in its entirety, partners say.
An interesting aspect to the latest news is that IE7 is code-named “rincon”, which is Spanish for “corner”…Maybe that’s what Microsoft wants do to the market?