IE7–Still Some Big Problems

The latest public preview of IE7 was released this morning, and I stopped by the IEBlog to read the post, Please test your sites with IE7. A month or two ago, I read what seemed like dozens of posts in reaction to the request by the IE team to web developers to stop using IE hacks. The first voices were largely supportive of the request, commendable in their effort to issue some grace to the much-maligned IE programmers. As time went on though, reason found its way into the discussion as many questioned the practicality of the request, particularly since the hacks will continue to work on IE 6 and earlier–exactly what they're supposed to do. If the hacks, like Star-HTML or the Holly hack, don't work in IE7 and IE7 supports modern web standards then we'll be very pleased indeed.

With this latest release, it seems the voice of reason is being ignored once again by the IE team. There is some indication that the box model has been improved in this latest beta preview, but apparently it fails the Acid2 test. The most glaring issue I see, however, is that the installation of IE7 overwrites your existing IE app. Let's iterate some common sense here:

Public previews of beta software, especially business-critical applications (not to mention the app that is also tasked with finding and installing security updates), should never overwrite stable releases.

And that leads us back to IEBlog's plea: Test your sites with IE7. Really, it ought to read something more like: Shell out the cash to purchase another computer, for the sole reason of testing a public preview, or compromise your existing computer's security and sacrifice current client's websites' compatibility with IE6. Because we're really really excited. This excitement Chris Wilson mentions at the end of his post just reeks of the nineties–it's not from their success at meeting internationally-recognized web standards, or empowering developers to easily test the software. Rather it's from an internal standpoint of meeting the goals they have established for themselves. And that's great–they should be excited about that, but this isn't the time or place to share that enthusiasm. Keep that on the cubicle whiteboard. Instead, listen to the community and see if they're excited with what you're doing, or if there's still work to be done.

Finally, I feel it undermines the idea of a blog that the team is currently responding only to positive or mundane comments. Respond to the critics as well. Admit it when the beta fails. Own up to the inanity of IE7 overwriting IE6. If you're going to have a blog and give the appearance of an open mind, then you should follow through on that.