Microsoft has released Internet Explorer Version 7. It has been out for a couple of days and is available for download from Microsoft. I think you will probably get it via Updates if you have that set.
I have just installed it and had a quick play with it for about 15 minutes, so this is not an exhaustive review.
First a bit of history.
There are two types of people in the world. Those who love everything that Microsoft does, and those who hate everything that Microsoft does. Actually there are three types of people in the world. There are also those, like me, who don’t fall into either camp. But the point is that Microsoft creates a great deal of passion in the IT world. And this is especially so when it comes to Internet Explorer.
In the mid 1990s Netscape had the lion’s share of the browser market. The web was very young, Tim Berners-Lee had created the web in 1989 and 1990 and it has been evolving ever since. Unfortunately, Netscape seemed to lose their way and Microsoft, somewhat belatedly, entered the browser market.
Microsoft, of course, had an enormous marketing advantage. Not because of their size, but because Windows was the most popular PC operating system, and they bundled Internet Explorer into Windows, so everyone who bought or upgraded Windows, or bought a new PC with Windows pre-installed, got IE.
Netscape’s codebase eventually became the basis of Mozilla and Firefox browsers. These two browsers, even though they were free, did not overtake the market, although they did manage to attain significant market share, especially among web developers.
The problem that Microsoft has had is that Internet Explorer has been much less compliant with web standards, as laid down by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), of which Microsoft is a member, than the other browsers. Microsoft’s explanation for non compliance is that it wished to provide its users with a better internet experience. Translated, that means “We are big enough to do what we like! Bad luck to the rest of you.”
This was a nightmare for web developers who had to develop sites that would render properly according to the web standards and then insert hacks to make the sites render in IE.
However, despite the complaints you hear from web developers, and I have often complained long and loud about IE, by version 6 things were very much improved. There were still problems, but it was a vast improvement over versions 5 and 5.5. At this stage MS announced that no further development would take place on IE. Rather a new browser would be produced for the next version of Windows.
For a number of reasons MS changed its mind, and IE7 was announced, and now delivered.
Let me state that I have enormous respect for the developers at Microsoft who worked on IE7. I have often read bits from Chris Wilson’s blog, and it seems that given the constraints of time, budget, corporate philosophy, and a host of other issues, he has done what was humanly possible to improve IE. There are still some issues to do with compliance, but that is also true of every other browser.
So what do I think? I was going to write this aricle in IE, but there was a problem with the excerpt box, the place where you insert the summary. I don’t know if this is an IE7 problem or a WordPress problem. I assume that WordPress will have a fix for it. It may be something I did, but the nature of the problem makes me think otherwise.
I love tabbed browsing, and IE7′s implementation works well. I have also downloaded a developer toolbar. I have something similar in Firefox and it is invaluable for debugging web sites that you are building.
All in all, first looks are good. When I have played with it a bit more I will say a bit more about it. But I want to congratulate Microsoft in bringing out a more compliant browser.