Thursday (07/28/05)
IE7 Launched as Beta 1–sort of 11:46 am
EDIT: Looks like they might support the standards after all, see IE7 Finally Releases Plans for Compliance with Webstandards and Better CSS Support
IE7 just launched as beta 1–sort of. Here’s a blip from their blog:
The beta versions of Windows Vista and IE7 that have just released should be interesting to developers and IT professionals. For this reason, the beta is available to MSDN subscribers and a pretty small set of pre-enrolled beta test participants. Our goal is to get feedback from this group, do a bunch more work around quality (performance, security, reliability, etc.) and some features (e.g. additional standards support beyond what’s in beta 1, additional functionality around tabs and RSS, etc.), and release Beta 2 much more broadly.
I must say, I’m disapointed. Microsoft said they were releasing IE7 beta this summer, they never mentioned it was only to people who pay hundreds of dollars for a MSDN subscription. Though of course, they still could release a public beta before the end of the summer.
And from the feedback the article I linked to above is getting, I’m guessing I’m going to be pretty disapointed in the browser as well. Here’s a comment that was posted on the IE blog by José Jeria:
After playing around with IE 7 for a while, I can only say that I am truly disappointed.
First thing I did was to test it with some of Eric Meyers CSS edge demos. And to my surprise (well, not really) none of them that didn’t work in IE 6 worked fine in IE 7.
Not even
http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/css/edge/complexspiral/demo.html !!!
This means that IE 7 still doesn’t have full CSS1 support. Year 2005.I also tested out CSS2 selectors with no luck, :hover for example, still only works on links. This means no CSS menus in IE. I also tested other irritating bugs
….
So actually, what was really fixed in this release? I read about 2 CSS bugs being fixed. Wow, you work on this browser for years and you fix 2 CSS bugs? I don’t know if I should laugh or cry.
IE 7 feels like IE 6 but with a new GUI. While the tabs are nice (welcome to the new millennium IE), this beta is nothing more than a big disappointment. Actually this even beats the Netscape 6 disappointment, and I would never imagine that could be beaten.
Internet Explorer, R.I.P
José Jeria
I eat food. I listen to music. I sleep. Sometimes. I drink lots of coffee. I make pretty pictures. I talk to people. I believe in things. I write stuff. I take photographs. I have a laughing addiction. I am human. 
Now this has got people talking. Slashdot went beserk and the comments to the IEBlog posting were colourful too - but really, this doesn’t mean the end for IE. Even if they didn’t change too much before they released it it would take a while and probably another bad release for the status quo to be majorly affected.
“Internet Explorer, R.I.P” - just don’t see it myself.
I just took a look at the technical overview for IE7, they give a little bit of information on their “CSS improvements” as they call them. Not too impressed at all.
I also just took a look at What’s New in Internet Explorer 7 for Developers, it says
Hopefully that “and work on other issues is under way to provide web developers with reliable and robust CSS functionality” really does mean that, and hopefully they’ll at least get the .PNG support right.
I still crossing my fingers and praying
IE rocks, IE will never go down, it controls to much. Imagine the world without Microsoft? I just cant do that.
humm. they weren’t supposed to release the beta for a few days… maybe they are just giving a preview to members of MSDN