Internet Explorer 7.0/Outlook Express 7

P

Phil

Hi there,

Does anybody know when Microsoft will have Internet
Explorer 7.0 package finished and available on the IE
website to download and/or be able to order the IE7
Package on CD online from Microsoft?

Thanx. Phil
 
S

siljaline

Hi there,

Does anybody know when Microsoft will have Internet
Explorer 7.0 package finished and available on the IE
website to download and/or be able to order the IE7
Package on CD online from Microsoft?

Thanx. Phil
<snipped from Jim Eshelman's E-List News>

NO MORE NEW VERSIONS OF INTERNET EXPLORER
(New content 21 Jun 03)
If we’re correctly reading the handwriting on the tablet PC screen, Internet
Explorer 6 Service Pack 1 is the last new stand-alone version of IE that
Microsoft intends to release ever.

There will be improvements in the browser going forward, but apparently they
will rely on features only existing in forthcoming versions of the Windows
operating system. The added capabilities will be OS-specific, and evidently will
not ’port back to earlier OS versions — not even to Windows XP!

This information comes from a TechNet transcript of a Microsoft online chat held
May 7 with IE Program Manager Brian Countryman and IE team member Rob Franco.
When asked, “When will there be the next version of IE?” Brian answered, “As
part of the OS, IE will continue to evolve, but there will be no future
standalone installations. IE6 SP1 is the final standalone installation.”

Soon after, Microsoft punctuated this quiet announcement with a more overt one,
when they indicated that there will be no new versions of IE for the Macintosh.
This should’t be seen as anti-Mac. Rather, it’s just a special case of the
foregoing, no different than their saying that there will be no new versions of
IE for Windows 2000 or XP. For Mac OS X users, it’s now clear sailing for
Safari.

This is all way too bad for the simple reason that IE6 still needs work! It’s a
bad strategic move on Microsoft’s part. We can fully understand that Microsoft
has a new list of remarkable things they want to lay into the forthcoming
Longhorn version of Windows (more on that later), using the highly touted
overhaul of the Longhorn user interface. But that doesn’t address coding
improvements that everybody else will need. Just to name one: IE lacks
compliance with W3C standards such as position : fixed — the current versions of
every other major browser (all of which came out after IE6) support this and,
boy, if IE6 supported it as well, you’d really see some architectural revision
around the old Windows Support Center! There are many interface enhancements we
would like, such as a multi-tabbed form, but we can get these with IE overlays
such as MyIE2. This, however, doesn’t cover for IE’s few outstanding
shortcomings in standards implementation.

I’m a huge Internet Explorer fan and supporter. For quite a while now, it has
been the preeminent browser available to Windows users, and it accounts for 91%
of all traffic to this site. Until about a year ago, it was the only sane choice
for this platform among major browsers. However, now that Mozilla has reached
maturity, and its high quality engine been incorporated into Netscape 7, things
are changing. Only a few months ago, the number of Netscape 7 users finally
surpassed the number of Netscape 4 users, and the popularity of 4 is continuing
to drop off pretty rapidly — as it should! This has enormous importance because,
with Netscape 4 no longer a significant factor holding us captive, web designers
now can move forward implementing standardized coding methods that are browser
independent and simply ignore the minuscule percentage of users that can’t
follow along. Anyone can upgrade these antiques for free with a browser to their
practical, aesthetic, and political liking. (Of course, what’s the future of
Netscape? AOL owns it and doesn’t even use it, either in its software or its
internal corporate business. But we can expect the Mozilla project to keep
moving forward even if Netscape folds up once and for all, I think.)

Personally, I will likely be using each new consumer version of Windows before
it hits the street, so, for myself, Microsoft’s new approach won’t matter much —
if at all. But not everybody will be making that kind of OS upgrade. In fact, a
majority of Windows users stay behind for quite a while, often skipping a
generation or two before upgrading. I will have no responsible suggestion to
make to them other than to move away from Internet Explorer as new, more
compliant and more feature-rich versions of other browsers become available.
Microsoft’s new policy is probably going to cost Internet Explorer some serious
market share before this is over. In fact, it should.

http://www.aumha.org/elist.htm

HTH


--
siljaline

"Arguing with anonymous strangers on the Internet is a sucker's game
because they almost always turn out to be -- or to be indistinguishable from
-- self-righteous sixteen-year-olds possessing infinite amounts of free time."
- Neil Stephenson, _Cryptonomicon_
 
P

PA Bear

If and when IE/OE7 is released, it will most definitely be part of a new
Windows version and will *not* be available for most earlier OSs. In fact,
IE6-SP2 (if there is one) may only be available as part of a WinXP-SP2.

See this archived post from someone very much "in the know" at MS:
http://tinyurl.com/1hbd (third paragraph).
--
HTH...Please post back to this thread (and "don't blame the messenger")

~Robear Dyer (aka PA Bear)
MS MVP-Windows (IE/OE)
http://mvp.support.microsoft.com
 

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