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IE7 Released As High-Priority Update

Posted by kdawson on Thu Nov 02, 2006 10:07 AM
from the meet-the-new-boss dept.
Internet Explorer The Internet Microsoft Upgrades
jimbojw writes, "Internet Explorer 7 was finally released this morning and is available via automatic update or download from Microsoft." And an anonymous reader notes stats on IE7 and FF2 downloads, adding: "Looks like FF2 is already outnumbering FF 1.5, while IE7 is having a hard time to find followers. Will today's release as a high-priority, force-fed update fix this issue?" The sans.org stats site will be updated throughout the day, so perhaps we'll get an indication.
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[+] Ask Slashdot: Helpful Stuff For IE7? 58 comments
Cycloid Torus asks: "IE7 is with us. It asked to be installed as a Critical Update this morning, so I decided to find out more about what was going on and if there are issues to this new and official piece of Windows XP. I found a site of known IE7 issues to be of use. Are there other sites with solid information which can help the wary from getting charred with this upgrade?"
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  • WGA (Score:5, Funny)

    by ColinPL (1001084) <michkol@gmail.com> on Thursday November 02 2006, @10:09AM (#16688685)
    Will today's release as a high-priority, force-fed update fix this issue?
    Only if Microsoft disables Windows Genuine Advantage on this update.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Apocalypse111 (597674)
      Look up a little utility called muBlinder. It doesn't work right now, as MS updated their WGA software just a few days ago, but give it a couple days and you can pretty much download whatever you want/need.
      • Dude, WGA is not required for high-priority updates.
        Hah, so even the evil pirate warez-mongers get to be counted as the MSIE faithful in the browser wars. Nice one, MS!
      • I'm not sure whether something has changed since yesterday but when I got the IE7 thing pop up asking me whether I wanted to install it, something other than WGA checked whether my windows install was valid. It was built into the installer itself.
  • Work that monopoly ... yeahhhhhh you like that dont you .. yeahhhhhhh whos your daddy

          • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

            by Sj0 (472011)
            Wow these principles are tasty! Filling too!

            (Oh wait... I'm DEAD. Because I lost my job because some guy on slashdot told me not to write compatible code, and I STARVED TO DEATH.)

  • Had this on my home comp (Score:3, Informative)

    by mapkinase (958129) on Thursday November 02 2006, @10:10AM (#16688697) Homepage Journal
    Installed smoothly, reassigned without giving a choice file types to IE, e.g. xml's

  • Internet Explorer 7 was finally released this morning and is available via automatic update

    If anyone has ever wondered how MS gets those fantastic browser numbers, here's your answer. Just you watch - here in a few months MS will be crowing about how there are more IE7 users than Firefox 2.0 users. As if anyone with a windows box has a choice in the matter.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Tim C (15259)
      As if anyone with a windows box has a choice in the matter.

      You'd rather people stayed with the old, proven-insecure IE6? Besides, what part of it being a high-priority download forces people to use it, rather than FF or Opera? Remember - total number of downloads and total number of users are not the same thing...
      • > You'd rather people stayed with the old, proven-insecure IE6?

        And that affects me how?

      • "total number of downloads and total number of users are not the same thing."

        You think they're going to honor this distinction when they crow about what 'the market' wants? This company allows dead people to speak out for them.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by gstoddart (321705)

      As if anyone with a windows box has a choice in the matter.

      You have a choice, you just have to know how to exercise it.

      My company has already said we should not take IE7 since it's not compatible with some of our stuff.

      You know how you do this? Instead of using the (stupid) Express Install for updates which says "install everything", and instead of setting up auto updates to grab and install everything, you use the Custom Install, and deselect the change for IE7.

      It aint that difficult. I won't be installi

  • Force "feeding"... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by garcia (6573) on Thursday November 02 2006, @10:11AM (#16688723) Homepage
    Will today's release as a high-priority, force-fed update fix this issue?

    Yes of course it will. Why would the majority of Windows users go out and manually download a web browser? For most of them IE works just fine. When IE7 comes in they will just consider it another one of Windows quirks and happily chug along with it.
    • Why would the majority of Windows users go out and manually download a web browser?

      Oh I don't know. Maybe the millions of people who went and downloaded Firefox did it to...be more secure?

      But seriously, every time I have to go and get rid of a virus off of a Windows machine, I tell the user to download firefox. Most of them do.

      Transporter_ii

      • Why would the majority of Windows users go out and manually download a web browser? Oh I don't know. Maybe the millions of people who went and downloaded Firefox did it to...be more secure?

        That's a small minority of users. Most users don't know Firefox exists, or that they can use something other than IE, or even what IE is. Most don't know that they could have fewer viruses, or even that they have viruses. In a classic capitalist system, this would not matter. Like evolution, capitalism lets money talk

  • Huh? I thought IE7 was already out and had already had over a million downloads... Have I been hallucinating?

  • I'm sure since MS says they're now complying with antitrust laws they'll also be allowing Firefox, Opera, and anyone else who wants to, to roll out their own browser as a high-priority update as well, right?

    • *shrug* Maybe when Firefox releases their own OS they can do the same.
    • On my Vista machine Firefox informs me when a new version is available. So does iTunes, and Photoshop, and Acrobat, and some other applications I am forgetting.

      So I think it is more a case of Microsoft never having prevented anyone from rolling out updates.
  • Clicked the checkbox off and told it not to remind me about it again.

  • Stupid questions (Score:3, Insightful)

    by PFI_Optix (936301) on Thursday November 02 2006, @10:19AM (#16688841) Journal
    Seriously. Of course the Firefox users jumped on the bandwagon and downloaded 2.0 (which is buggy and crash-prone, glad I'm still using 1.5 at work because my home browser is barely useable). If you've gone to the effort of getting a replacement browser you're obviously more up on what's available.

    So tens of millions of users didn't swarm to download IE7 as soon as it was available. Seeing as I never once saw a major news report on it, the majority of users don't read technology news, and even most of the users who do don't care what browser they use so long as it works, why is the summary written as if there's a problem that the masses didn't mindlessly rush out and downloaded the latest shiny package from Microsoft?

    I find the "forced" update (which isn't really forced) a little worrying, though. It should *at least* pop up a window saying that a new version of IE has been downloaded and is ready to install if the user wants it. It's a pretty major UI shift, people should be made aware of it. Blindsiding them with that isn't going to win MS any fans.
    • Of course the Firefox users jumped on the bandwagon and downloaded 2.0 (which is buggy and crash-prone, glad I'm still using 1.5 at work because my home browser is barely useable).

      Out of curiosity, what are you doing with it that is making it crash? Since I've switched, the only difference I've noticed is the spell checking in forms, and that it's significantly faster... Is it less stable on Windows or something?
  • I *want* people to upgrade to IE7. I don't care if they're using IE7 or Firefox. I just want to be able to write sane CSS.
  • Most people don't feel the need to update unless they see things they need. There is no way people would update to IE 7 unless forced- just like there is no way people will update to Vista until they are forced to.

    I did check IE 7 out yesterday- we use IE for internal browsing at work, and my boss wanted me to make sure the new version worked properly. (Web browsing, of course, is done with Firefox). It definitely looks and feels better than IE 6, and they have taken measures to improve security (whe

  • Hello chaos (Score:4, Insightful)

    by pilkul (667659) on Thursday November 02 2006, @10:20AM (#16688863)
    In my company we have at least two programs whose functionality is broken when IE7 is installed, due to menus written using IE6's renderer. Even some of Microsoft's own software -- e.g. the file transfer function in their Xbox 360 DDK -- breaks when IE7 is installed. Pushing this major upgrade as a forced update is irresponsible. This isn't what the Automatic Update system is supposed to be for.

    And even when nothing breaks, I suspect a lot of users are going to be pissed that their web browser interface has suddenly changed.
    • Our head of IT sent out a note to all staff saying DON'T download Internet Exploder 7. He wants to make sure 1) it's compatible with all our existing apps, and 2) it doesn't have huge exploitable weaknesses that MS missed. I asked him about FF, and he said they've upgraded individual users to FF when IE6 had problems, but some apps don't work with it. Nothing, it seems, is perfect.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Mr.Sharpy (472377)
      For corporate environments (using Active Directory), Microsoft released a set of tools and information you can use to block the installation of IE7 from Windows Update. This information was made widely available to administrators of Microsoft networks. If you were (too late now) anticipating problems with the update, your domain administrator(s) should have use the IE7 blocker toolkit.

      More blocker toolkit info here [microsoft.com]

  • There's a guy named zefrank who puts out a video blog which is pretty amusing. One recurring topic is a behavior he calls "Rocketbooming" (not to be confused with the company of the same name, wink wink), which he explains as using really bad metrics to make you look hyper-popular. Of course, this behavior has been used since the business deal leading to the first advertisement on a 2-page town newsletter, but what with the puffy egotistical company name, I kinda like zefrank's term.

    Anyway, by shifting

  • They hid the file menu for some reason, so you have to go change a setting to fix it. And then it doesn't work well: the tried-and-true menu motion for File-New to open a new window ends up going to the tabs instead. Why did they have to mess with the menus?
  • If not for slashdot, I wouldn't have known about the forced upgrade.
    I don't use IE except when forced by microsoft- which is about once every 18 months to download the new directx.
  • Microsoft says they've taken steps aimed at the root causes of IE security problems, as in doing a real redesign.

    It's not exactly sandboxed, but it has to ask permission from a "request broker" before changing anything in the rest of the system, and the request broker is smaller, more auditable, and not handling malicious input all the time. Troublesome features like installing Browser Help Objects are off by default.

    If we're lucky this could be like IIS 6. If we're not lucky, it should still be better than the malware installation engine [oreilly.com] everyone's running now.

    Don't expect your friends and relatives to report fewer malware installations, though. The bad guys will just shift to a different infection vector if IE7 lives up to its promises.
  • From the Slashdot post:
    Looks like FF2 is already outnumbering FF 1.5, while IE7 is having a hard time to find followers.

    From the linked article:
    For isc.sans.org (which is probably not your typical site), 50% of Firefox users already use Firefox 2.0, and 23% of Internet Explorer users use MSIE 7.0.

    The linked article is only talking about users of isc.sans.org, and that includes the table in the article (the data comes from Google Analytics, but it's only for isc.sans.org.

    Jeesh. Does anyone bother to read t
  • As a result of this massive upgrade, the whole Internet will be offloaded as all those Internet Exploder clients will be hindering the Microsoft users "internet experience"!

  • Nice out-of-context quote, there (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Control Group (105494) * on Thursday November 02 2006, @10:38AM (#16689125) Homepage
    For isc.sans.org (which is probably not your typical site), 50% of Firefox users already use Firefox 2.0, and 23% of Internet Explorer users use MSIE 7.0. Overall, we got about a 50/50 split between Firefox and Internet Explorer users.

    The stats on the site don't say much at all about the uptake of IE7 (or FF2, for that matter) among the general internet-using population. As you can see in the quote, the article doesn't make any pretensions that they do, either, noting that sans.org isn't a typical site.

    Which is obvious, given the breakdown of FF vs IE users. A 50/50 split is obviously not a representative sample.

    The second half of this blurb is blatantly misleading.

  • Will today's release as a high-priority, force-fed update fix this issue?

    Yes.

  • Web Search (Score:4, Funny)

    by RAMMS+EIN (578166) on Thursday November 02 2006, @11:09AM (#16689605) Homepage Journal
    In other news, Google's market share in the web search business has plummeted, while MSN search rose to be the most used search engine.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by ivan256 (17499)
      Now more than ever the browser is an application platform. Microsoft has had the vast majority of the market share in that department leading to a practically guaranteed torrent of revenue. If non-microsoft browsers gain enough market share, application developers will tend towards adding support for the new platform. That would force Microsoft to spend more money on development in order to stay competitive (no more 5 year release schedule). That would lead to a significant drop in Microsoft's profit margin

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by jsight (8987)
      Mozilla has not yet pushed 2.0 out via auto-update, and even when they do, it will ask permission.

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