Better Living Through Software

The other day, my wife explained that she has been telling her team to use IE6, since IE7 breaks her ASP.NET application.  She has been keeping this a secret from me, since obviously it is a grave violation of trust between mates.  She came to me only because IT is forcing upgrade of IE7 on […]

I whipped up a quick tool to allow Firefox to integrate with Vista’s Common RSS Feed List.  You can download and install it here. After installing, you need to select “Tools | Options” in Firefox, then click the “Subscribe … using” radio button, the “Choose Application” button. Browse to C:Program FilesMicrosoftCommon Feed ListCommon Feed List.exe.  […]

CNET recently wrote a review of Vista, where they complained that “IE7 RSS feeds get preferential treatment”.  They say: “… there’s a Gadget for subscribed RSS feeds. We downloaded and installed Firefox 2, made Firefox our default browser, and quickly set up a few RSS feed subscriptions. Guess what? The Windows Vista Gadget was unresponsive […]

Two cool articles on Ajaxian today.  One discussing ways that JSON is replacing XML as data transport for some web scenarios, and another showing how XML Data Islands can let you grab XML without needing to explicitly parse with MSXML.

If you’re using the code sample for launching a low integrity process in the protected mode for Internet Explorer whitepaper, you may be getting an error that complains about RtlLengthSid.  We’re working to update the code sample.  In the meantime, look at the code below.  You’ll have to add all of your own error checking, […]

Dare is on a roll, complaining about the RSS experience in IE7. He points to a bunch of people who say that IE7 isn’t an RSS aggregator, and then for good measure, posts again saying that IE7 isn’t like RSS Bandit (an RSS aggregator). In fact, a week earlier, Jane Kim (PM for RSS in […]

Get it at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/ie7. This release is primarily intended to help web site designers and extension developers prepare for the broad release of IE7 Beta and RTM in coming months. I have been using IE7 builds exclusively for several months, so it is possible to do this, but we are aware of a number of […]

We’ve announced that the RSS platform in Vista will permit only well-formed XML. Most people are celebrating, but there are some comments that indicate some people may be confused. To clear things up, this statement is ONLY about well-formed XML. It is NOT a statement about validity, or conformance to any other spec, including any […]

As has been reported, IE7 consolidates URI parsing code into a single library. I’ve been playing with this a bit. To IE6, the following 6 URIs are equivalent. To IE7, only 5 of the 6 are the same: file:/c:/foo bar/x.txt — IE6 Works, IE7 Works file:/c:/foo%20bar/x.txt — IE6 Works, IE7 Fails file://c:/foo bar/x.txt — IE6 […]

Wow, it’s nice to see the folks at positioniseverything endorsing the demise of CSS hacks in IE7. Second to useragent string detection issues, CSS hacks that used to work in IE6 but no longer work in IE7 (due to CSS fixes) will probably be the most common cause of compatibility issues for IE7, and will […]