I needed IE7 as a site I built for someone a while back was not rendering properly in this browser. I was a bit surprised as I managed to get the site working in IE6 and all other major browsers and ‘thought’ that IE7 was more compliant than IE6. It took longer to download and install IE7 than it takes to install complete operating systems.
When I started using it I found it the least intuitive browser I have ever used, the layout of menu options is terrible, why MS departed from their more conventional layout / file menu etc. really is beyond me, that said comments left on this blog by users are favourable.
Sure enough, when I viewed the site in question it did not render my CSS properly, making IE7 the only browser I have found that did not work with this site. I was really surprised by this as the template I was using was (X)HTML strict, and, it renders properly in IE6.
My concern with IE7 is that I will now have to apply even more hacks for different browsers, and that balancing Firefox, IE6 and IE7 may prove difficult.
In my opinion I have not seen anything in IE7 that would make me want to switch from Firefox. If you are using IE7 I think you would be far better off with this instead:
Can you send me details of what you tried and what happened? Thanks! Dean
Yes Ill do that,
Jez
Hmm… I’ve heard that IE7 is magnitudes of improvement over IE6, though I haven’t had a chance to use it myself yet. I imagine that it’s somewhere in between IE6’s broken engine, and actual standards. I’m kind of curious as to what part of your CSS it breaks. There doesn’t seem to be much tricky stuff, beyond the * hack.
It was not on this site, I have probably gone a bit ott in this post anyway, it is sure to be better than IE6….
Ah, ok. I just the transitional state of IE7 breaking on existing IE6 hacks.
It’s cool that MSDN guys are picking up on your complaints this fast. There’s hope yet
I know I was pleasantly surprised by that, it is very encouraging!!
It almost made me feel guilty about the title of my post…
Sorry to hear IE7 is treating you badly. I’ve had it installed since it was in beta and I love it.
Hi Spud,
What do you like about it?
Im sure its a lot better than IE6, Ill perservere with it!
I never bothered with all the Firefox addons, so the two things that made Firefox great for me were tabbed browsing and rss feeds. With them in IE7, I’ve got all I need. I also like the zoom function, and printing is a doddle - especially now you can just drag the margins in or out. On top of that, it blends in beautifully with Vista whereas Firefox feels a bit alien.
I’m kind of the opposite of most webmasters. I build sites for IE because it’s the most used browser, and then test them in Firefox and co. When things don’t render in anything but IE, I scream a lot and curse Firefox!
Actually that’s a fallacy. I suppose it depends on what your site is about, but for those with technical audience, actual usage of IE is significantly less. Looking at my own stats over the last 30 days various versions of Firefox (each patch gets its own group) accounted for 37% of visitors. Closely followed by IE6 with 36% and IE7 with 20%.
And before anyone decides to point out “But Tony, IE6 and IE7 add up to a whooping 56% total!”, please recall the original topic of this discussion - IE7’s render is significantly different from IE6.
So I’m sorry Spud Oregon, but with a technically oriented traffic around, any particular version of IE is actually a minority browser
Sorry Tony, my bad. You’re spot on when talking about a technical audience. I have a bunch of sites about child education, and over 90% of my traffic uses IE, that’s why I build for IE. Back to rendering…
Thanks — FYI I don’t have mail from you yet. not sure if it’s caught in one of the n layers of junk mail protection that IT has in place…
Hi dean, I havent mailed it to you yet, will do so shortly,
Jez
I still prefer Firefox. I suppose that is because it was first into the tabbed browsing race and I am just sticking with out of habit. I do use IE7 at work for certain applications. It’s not too bad.
Yeah it isnt that bad, I think Ill edit the title of the post, it is’nt really fair, I was a bit annoyed when I wrote it
Actually Netcaptor, Mozilla, and Opera all had tabbed browsing before Firefox
Though I’d go with the latter for all the other extensions.
There’s no way to run IE6 on Vista!! I can’t even test it properly!
It is possible to run IE6 in Linux, so Im sure there is a way to run it in Vista, when you learn how be sure to let me know
re IE6 on Vista, please look at
http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2007/03/20/ie6-vpc-refresh-now-available.aspx
I’ve used IE7 on the a test machine at work and had no real complaints so far. It does seem to take an exhorbatant amount of time to install. I got the feeling it was like an OS service pack with all the file copies it was doing. On the compatibility front it seems to be much better than IE6 but I haven’t really put it through it’s paces.
Kudos to Dean though for an excellent follow up in this case. Well done.
I honestly can’t stand IE7..The font looks blury!!! grrr
That’s why I stick with FireFox
Can you try turning off ClearType? Tools / Internet Options / Advanced / Multimedia “Always use ClearType for HTML.”
IE7 defaults to using ClearType; there is an option in the first run page to turn it off.
I don’t know personally I think i.e. 7 is better the 6.. but maybe because I use firefox now
Honestly, Firefox is the best web browser…IE7 is good though, but its no match for Firefox