IE6 isn’t going anywhere yet
He mostly talks up the new RSS features in IE7 (which should really push the standard into the big time), but the most interesting answer he gives is to the final question:
Is IE going to auto-update to IE7? I think that the first thing really is that we can’t really force it on users. That’s not our goal. We really do like to offer users choice. It is a different user interface, some people will be really jarred by that. I think that we certainly want to encourage everyone out there to, um, I do believe that we will offer it through Windows Update, but it won’t be an automatic silent update, certainly it won’t be like you come in one day and suddenly your computer’s running IE7 rather than IE6. Certainly we have to ask the user if they really want it. As nice as it would be to blast it onto everyone’s system I don’t think that can happen, so.
Which means that it will be offered as part of the Windows Update programme, but not downloaded automatically. Which means we’ll have to put up with IE6 for a long time yet, and full CSS3 implementation is a long way down the road.
Even if the update was automatic, the IE7 didn’t corrected his major quirks.
Internet Explorer, 6 or 7, still being a piece of crap.
I am not suprised to hear that it won’t be an automatic update.. and speaking long term, I don’t think it is realistic that the cross browser issue will -ever- be solved. As much as I wish it would be.
I vote the web takes the same stand as directX 10 - remove backwards compatibilty and just start over… it is painful, but its just going to get worse and worse otherwise.
While the IE7 update will not be automatic, I can’t imagine that the vast majority of users will not accept the upgrade. Therefore, I believe the IE7 penetration will much more rapid than previous browser versions. The only snag that I could really foresee is enterprise administrators not accepting the upgrade but because of the swiss cheese security holes of IE6, I would imagine most administrators want to get IE6 off their client systems ASAP.
But as Ransico states, IE7 still misses significant support CSS standards. Although some of the major CSS issues have been addressed and the rendering is much better compared to the previous versions. Boy, I can’t wait til the day that I can write one CSS file and not have to include a bunch of browser-specific hacks! I wonder if that day will ever come.
I’d like to put some faith into Microsoft to follow-through with their statement to never let this kind of extended lapse of release to occur again. I’d really like to see new versions every 12 to 18 months with minor updates as necessary. So bring on IE8 with full-CSS2 and possibly CSS3 support!
Have a great day everyone!
Chris,
I don’t think the upgrade will be nearly as rapid as you think. Most early adaptors are already long since off IE6 and using Firefox, Opera, or another modern browser.
Those still using IE6 today are largely going to be people who don’t know the difference between the “Big Blue E”, “Google”, and “Internet”, as it were, and simply won’t have the technical wherewithall to upgrade.