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Cool news from the IE Blog at MSDN. IE7 will support a native XMLHTTPRequest object without requiring a dip into ActiveX, which was necessary in IE 6.0.

http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2006/01/23/516393.aspx

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Eric Larsen * Senior Web Developer, Web Services Team Lead / Seattle University * SunGard Higher Education * www.sungardhe.com

The first public release of the new IE7 beta 2 Preview browser came out today.  Its billed as being targeted primarily at developers but its the first look a lot of people will have at the next version of the MSFT browser

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Charles Wesley | Web Developer | SunGard Higher Education / Seattle University | wesleyc (at) seattleu (dot) edu

I've been mostly impressed although both the favorites and RSS icons look awfully familiar.  Oh well, I guess the graphic design, tabbed browsing, and integrated RSS reader are just more examples of Microsoft "innovation."  At least it doesn't force me to use MSN search in the menubar.

Well the way I see it if they didn't include those things or if they tried to create their own graphic identity for RSS they would get bashed for not "being with the program" or trying to "redefine" RSS as part of their marketing strategy so its hard to see how they could ever win with certain audiences.

I'm glad to see that they're adopting the features and icons becaues they are good for consistency and usability.  I've read some commentary on other sites predicting that with the two-click process for subscribing to RSS feeds included in IE7 we can expect to see a much larger user base that is aware of and uses RSS.  Say what you will about the debate between power users over the number of features via extentions that Firefox has, most users never change their homepage, let alone install addons.  Having RSS integrated into the most widely distributed browser is a good thing no matter what.

I am disappointed that they are not fully supporting CSS standards, so I'm curious to see how things will render.  I would like to see something in the UserAgent that will differentiate between IE6 and IE7+ so that in the event that IE-specific styles still need to be included there will be a clear-cut way to identify exactly what browser is making a request so you can feed it the right styles.

Seeing as how this is only a preview of a beta, however, the real question is what kind of bugs/feedback are they going to get and what will they do with it.

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Charles Wesley | Web Developer | SunGard Higher Education / Seattle University | wesleyc (at) seattleu (dot) edu

I found this to be a really good read: http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/07/29/445242.aspx

As is this: http://tinyurl.com/b245h

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Charles Wesley | Web Developer | SunGard Higher Education / Seattle University | wesleyc (at) seattleu (dot) edu

Don't get me wrong, I'm happy Microsoft is listening to it's customers and providing them with the state of the art.  In the end, it will be helpful for Microsoft's many users.  I just have to roll my eyes when they tout these features as Microsoft innovations, as I'm sure they will.

I found this to be really cool, and there was an interesting anecdote about the IE7 team going to Mozilla and meeting with Firefox developers.  It was as a result of that meeting that they decided to use the RSS icon that is used in FF.  They blogged about it as well

I’m excited to announce that we’re adopting the icon used in Firefox. John and Chris were very enthusiastic about allowing us (and anyone in the community) to use their icon. This isn’t the first time that we’ve worked with the Mozilla team to exchange ideas and encourage consistency between browsers, and we’re sure it won’t be the last.

The more I read about the work they're doing, the more I like what I'm hearing.

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Charles Wesley | Web Developer | SunGard Higher Education / Seattle University | wesleyc (at) seattleu (dot) edu

Looks like Opera is "falling in line" with IE7 and Firefox by adopting the FF RSS icons as well

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Charles Wesley | Web Developer | SunGard Higher Education / Seattle University | wesleyc (at) seattleu (dot) edu