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Microsoft IE7 beta 1, a cancer that does not impress

By Gearhead, NetworkWorld.com, 08/02/05

So far those who have had a look at Microsoft's IE7 beta 1 release have not been impressed. Described as "very beta" by Ken "Caesar" Fisher in a blog posting on arstechnica this release also shows that Microsoft is still less than committed to open industry standards. The big complaint is that IE7's CSS support, while CSS 2.0 complaint, won't pass the Acid 2 test, a "test page for web browsers published by The Web Standards Project (WaSP)." This will keep IE in catch-up mode compared to other browsers such as FireFox and make everyone's life just a little harder.

Paul Thurrott noted in a column that "Almost all the improvements are related to bugs in IE's implementation of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)" and goes on to note that "Microsoft blames backward-compatibility problems for the stalemate over true Web standards compatibility. Put succinctly, the company has gone its own way for so long and now has to support so many developers who use nonstandard Web technologies that it will be impossible to make IE Web-standards-compliant without breaking half the commercial Web sites on the planet."

Thurrott's solution? "Boycott IE. It's a cancer on the Web that must be stopped. IE isn't secure and isn't standards-compliant, which makes it unworkable both for end users and Web content creators."

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