IE7 CSS support finalised

I would love to know their justification for not including all current CSS2.1 properties, the display table omission is especially irritating as the table/table-cell display properties are most useful.

The big question on peoples minds (and more important than any other) is the question of overflow and height properties and on that score it seems MS have got it right in fixing the overflow property and including full support for min/max values the only question remains as to whether hasLayout still determines float clearing if it doesn't and IE7 does not support :after pseudo element then Tony's clearing technique is left high and dry but I suspect that they won't actually be able to reverse the hasLayout construct, so we should have one less problem to contend with in IE7 not that I could still care a jot .

Hugo.

From discussion I've seen about the net, it appears that hasLayout is alive and kicking in IE7, so Tony's hack should work on 7, based on the IEMac inline-block thingy.

Take a look at my enclosing float elements demo in IE7 to see what works and what doesn't.

It's a damned shame MSFT didn't show the guts that Netscape did when they saw that the direction they had gambled on was taking them the wrong way. MSFT should have dropped the IE6 engine completely and built a new one based on IEMac's or from scratch. Stacking hack upon hack is a Sisyphean[1] task with no hope of a robust result.

cheers,

gary

[1] For those of you who slept through Greek Mythology in middle school: relating to Sisyphus; being incessantly recurring, extremely effortful and futile.

Or why didn't they just follow the usual path of borrowing or buying someones elses code, MS don't actually have much of a history of writing code, Gecko is open source-ish why didn't they just reverse engineer that engine, change a couple of lines here or there write in a few deliberate bugs to throw everyone of the scent and be done with it.

Greek mythology, middle school, methinks Gary went to English Public school; How's your Latin and Algebra?

Naw, I'm the product of the fairly poor Texas public[1] schools. Greek mythology in seventh grade lit., and two years each of Latin (grades 10 and 11) and algebra (grades 9 and 10). Same as everyone.

cheers,

gary

[1] Public in the real sense, not private with charity status and "scholarship boys".

Or simply use it. And rely on their lawyers being more expensive than anyone else's. If they succeeded that would really blow open source out of the water ... :?

Or why not just give up entirely and concentrate on what they do semi-well, which is operating systems.

:?

Programming languages, word processors and spreadsheets. That's as far as I'd go. Dos was quite nice, but it wasn't theirs. Windows is serious bloatware. I think they can blame a lot of it on IBM too.

Sadly you can't really give them credit for either word processing or spread sheets the defacto wordprocessor of the day was Wordperfect and much of MS Word was just a copy of that In a desperate attempt to try and pinch market share. After Lotus 123 began to fall by the wayside an innovative programme came to prominence called Quatro Pro which introduced most of the wysiwyg features taken for granted, advanced chart generation, and also were the company that introduced the concept of Wizards for configuring tasks, a later version of Excel, which until then had run a poor third behind Lotus and Quatro Pro, suddenly had all the same features and of course proceeded to destroy the market share of Quartro Pro through bundling etc, one of the worst cases of blatant plagiarism I have known in this regard.

As for programming languages are they that good or even needed there has been a core of dedicated standalone programming languages since time immoral, MS only ever devise new things such as this to divide and conquer.

Dos was OK not as featured as unix but was a cut down version IBM PC Dos was probably better until Gates got his hands on it and mangled it rushing it out.

The OS known as windows TPH is generally considered by people that understand these things to be a truly awful piece of core coding , fix upon fix with many appalling concepts such as Dynamic Link librarys (root causes of many problems) and the absurd central registry design (the other core reason the system so often kicks over )

IBM are culpable in allowing Gates to sneak in through the back door it should never have happened, IBM did not understand what was happening or that Apple were ready to release a commercial product, IBM panicked released their blueprint for the design of the IBM PC as open source and the rest is history and what a truly sad history, IBM also managed to cock up OS2 which could have given Windows a run for it's money and initially looked as though it would, whatever happened to it?

Hugo.

Word and Excel managed the jump to a GUI OS better than any of the others. I always found Excel much easier to use than either 1-2-3 or QuatroPro.

Microsoft was primarily a language shop until IBM came buying. iirc its initial product was MS-Basic and back in days of yore its compilers were pretty much the standard, although for a while Borland did give them a run for their money.

again iirc, all PC DOS originated from Microsoft, the original of which came in some sort of deal from CP/M or whoever its owners were. Bill had talked big blue into getting the OS from him, then he had to go out and find one. CPM was pretty much defacto on the z80 back then. The Z80 was the chip too, until IBM kicked Intel to greatness (not that Intel was a nobody, but it wouldn't have stood out from the crowd the way it has done since).

I don't think it was an IBM panic. They always intended it to be open source. It was intended as a sop to some of their customers who were pestering them for one. So a small budget was given to a manager to put the thing together from off the shelf components. At the time the top managers didn't believe there could be serious money in something that only sold for a couple of thousand dollars. The rest as they say is history.

Some of you are showing your age.
Ah... memories, memories... sorry, had a bit of a mature moment there

Ah well.

My first experience with computers was at high school, using fortran on punched cards. The teacher would take our card stacks to WAIT (not an inappropriate name, but actually an acronym for Western Australian Institute of Technology, now known as Curtin University) and hand them in to be run and then collect them in time for the following week. Not quite the stone age, but not so far off it ... and a whole lot of bother to go to get a listing back which would be somewhat similar to today's PHP - "expected ; found blah".

Fortran on punched cards for me, too. But, I regret to say, that was in my first job after Uni.

God you two are really old makes me feel just like a youngster what's Fortran? and why were you angry with the cards, for that matter what are cards

The story I have always understood was that Big Blue being the behemoth that it was had been caught napping and were taken by surprise when Apple introduced their system to the public. As such IBM panicked realised that they needed to get something out there as well , easiest thing was to release the licence for IBM compatible PC's but needed an OS to complement it this they had in the form of an unfinished product which they gave to Gates on the promise that he returned it as a fully functioning package. PC Dos was in fact IBM's own version and now I come to think of it actually ran alongside MS-Dos but for IBM machines and was generally regarded as a superior product and naturally, as often seems to happen, fell by the wayside in favour of an inferior one (funny thing life).

As to the true story I'm not really sure except for one thing Gates was lucky, things should and could have panned out completely differently. If The chap who had developed a lot of work on Dos had not been out fishing the day Big Blue called at his house to ask if he would care to develope/licence his product to them and if his wife had not been so daft as to turn them away he would have had the recognition and wealth that Gates has.

Could be. I don't see IBM being panicked by Apple, not back then. Plenty of other companies had released PCs of one sort or another. Apple was little more than a garage company in those days and IBM was one of the largest companies in the world. The fishing story is probably true though .

IBM did do their own PC-Dos which you got if you bought an IBM PC. There were slight differences but not many. I always thought they came from the same initial code base, the MS-DOS one.

I think that they both came from an altogether separate code base sadly one developed by the fisherman (I wonder whether he ever fished after that?) I think I'm correct in saying that PC Dos didn't fork from MS-Dos but in all this there is a lot of confusion and apocryphal tales.

I do remember that PC-DOs was definitely considered far better than MS-Dos , more stable.

I mourn the debacle that was OS2, an opportunity to have a much more sophisticated OS mucked up by I guess Mr Gates essentially, just couldn't bear the thought of his beloved inferior Windows not gaining ground.

Hugo.

Fortron? They make power supplies!

And don't forget MS's brief fling with a Linux os, Minix was it?

No I think you will find that was actually 'Minging'!

Not Minix. Xenix was it?

EDIT: Yep, Xenix.

This is a version of the story pretty similar to the one I remember hearing. It doesn't mention Gary Kildall was fishing, it does mention his wife wouldn't sign an NDA.

http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa033099.htm

And wikipedia has a thing on MS-DOS that supports both our views. MS-DOS | PC-DOS

Both derived from a Microsoft derived (owned) code base until v4.0, when it came from the IBM codebase.

The legal issues section in the second link is particularly noteworthy. Of course, being the internet there is no guarantee either of these articles is actually true ...

PS. An early history of DOS by its author, Tim Paterson.

the moral of the story - don't get married

Well I might have made the bit up about fishing Chris, thought it sounded good, artistic licence But I'd forgotten it was a NDA that his faithful sharp minded astute wife refused to sign, still, like to think he was happily out in the middle of the lake fishing away not a care in the world whilst his trouble and strife set the seal on there futures :roll:

Or if you do make that error then try not to let them make any real decisions.

you mean, just like david and tessa

(for those of a non-UK residence, that's David Mills, Corporate Lawyer to Italian Presidents and Tessa Jowell, MP & Cabinet Minister to the UK Government)

Good old Tessa.

She soon ditched that mealy-mouthed piece of flotsam. Now she can make the "real decisions" - like who to conduct private "mortage" business with, how to keep on the right side of the law and the minor ones like keeping what's left of the family together, feeding and clothing them etc., etc. All the while holding down a full-time job. At least she won't have to pander to an in-house male ego. That will save a huge amount of time.

Now it's time for her to stop sullying herself by an association with that other err.. man. The one who likes to holiday with Italian Presidents - yeah the sainted Tony Blair - soon to be ex-Prime Minister of the UK and later Lord Tone of all he used to survey.

Well - all the other female forum members have gone quiet

Very, very soon with any luck before any further damage can be inflicted on this nation

I trust with the furore surrounding the buying of peerages, and the clamour once and for all that this practise of patronage is finally laid to rest and that we finally have a truly elected upper chamber, dear old Tone will find himself out on his ear after he resigns, he definitely has done nothing to deserve a seat in the lords and it would be absolutely abhorrent if he wound up there especially after the underhand way he tried to destroy it in the first place only to ensure that he could fill it with acolytes and cronies .

Sorry got all political, most inappropriate :oops:

What astounds me, is not that they are being sold (good honest tory business sense) but that people actually want to buy them.

Lorraine will now probably add some wry and insightful comment about the sex and ego of all those caught in the scam.

Well the practise goes way back to the scandal surrounding MacMillan? wasn't it ?
But somehow New Labour manage to take venal behavior to new heights whilst just denying there is ever a problem. What was that last select committee report that No 10 just decided to brush aside as irrelevant and they weren't at all interested in it's deliberations or recommendations hows that frigging work then ? in other words No 10 can do just as it pleases without regard to any higher authority

I'm just tickled pink that Gordon Brown has been drawn into the loans debacle, but of course he denys he has ever known or been part of this.

Yeah, bring it on Lorraine but lets bear in mind that the record of female cabinet ministers under Tony's leadership has been god awful
We missed the one true inspiration and someone who would have made a fantastic leader in Mo Mowlem, bless her and who was done the dirty on by Tony. May she rest in peace.

edit: my piccie has gorn walk about.
It said "phooey!" :mrgreen:

Aw go on, I was looking forward to some rye and infrightful insights

Hold on . . . weren't we talking about IE7? The lot of you should be reprimanded for derailing my beautiful topic

Sorry. I do not mock people who are politically challenged or err... gender challenged. [-(

You can be so cruel, true to your gender I suppose.

4WDForums
Typical of a man, the bigger the better eh? Then he expects the little woman to be able to manipulate it around town and city streets on the school run and at the same time deal with the screaming progeny of his loins.

4WD for the little lady?

Who are you kidding, we can't afford it, not with the repayments on my TVR Tuscan the way they are. She can take the bus and the little mites along with her - they don't all fit in the Tuscan anyhow

Need I say more? :roll:

An utterly commendable choice of car Chris, anything larger and you just end up back and forth to Ikea boot stuffed full of flat pack furniture which you didn't want in the first place.

And can't put together in the second place Mind you I expect Chris, being a man among men, can put Ikea stuff together. Doesn't seem to fit with the resplendent Tuscan sitting on the drive tho'.

Hope your clients aren't reading this Chris. Last year I had t' builder in, "oh woe is me, I can't possibly charge less than that". When he came back for his final 10% (cash of course) he showed me around his brand new Tuscan.

Still my new Audi (unbadged) Quattro, beat him hands down at traffic lights the next day. It goes quite well off-road too

Chris would cope as he would take a methodical object orientated approach to the task, on the other hand I dismiss the plans with contemptuous disdain at the affront to my macho DIY sensibilities and proceed at a breakneck speed re-drilling all the holes rather than dis-assemble and re-assemble according to the dictates of left and right back and front alignments.

Yeah come to think of it TVR Tuscan, I thought you were a coder not a plumber Chris.

Still after forcing my mechanic to tweak the torque on me Vauxhall Corsa I can drop into sports mode and blow many away at the lights, much to my amusement, vroom vroom!

my dream, my TVR.

Women drivers ......

Middle age crisis ??????

My car is a diesel 2CV, honest

Nah, he couldn't change gear quickly enough. Both hands were busy re-arranging his wind-blown hair :mrgreen:

Teenage, middle age, and inevitably old age, it's all just one long big crisis.

I just want one really fast car before I'm too old to carry it off


Didn't some dizzy bird just get fined for doing just that, have to admit it's why I have never desired a cabriolet, can't have my hair messed up. Vanity thy name is woman? oh no it ain't.


Lovely cars and a diesel you must get great MPG on that

And Gordon Brown, (Chancellor of ye UK Exchequer for the Atlantically challenged) would be soooo proud of you. Could get you on his first honours list.

You mean they haven't sold them all. Yipppeee!!

I was only being mean and nasty because I thought they'd all gone. How many Sainsbury's reward points to get a C(SS)BE?

(For those of a non-UK persuasion, Lord Sainsbury, owns a huge supermarket chain (in a blind trust of course) and donated huge sums of money to the labour party before become a peer of the realm).

((He's also a minister or the crown, iirc, for Science, where he hasn't done a too bad job))

So what exactly is the scandal? I thought all peerages were established by threat or bribe.

cheers,

gary

The supermarket chain came out of the blind trust of one of the other Barons Sainsbury years ago. The parent company, J Sainsbury plc is 35% owned by various members of the Sainsbury family. Sainsburys Supermarkets Ltd are my charity's landlord and we had to start paying VAT on the rent and service charges when they purchased the building back from a charitable trust. The good Baron resigned his chairmanship of Sainsburys Supermarkets and put his own holdings in related "Science" corporates into a blind trust when he became Science Minister. And quite right too.

Lord Sainsbury and the Sainsbury family have also endowed many grant making trusts that donate hundreds of millions of pounds a year to charitable causes. That munificence also had a little to do with his elevation to the peerage, I suspect

I wish I could dally longer. The conversation is so erudite and sophisticated. But, I have to launder the dinner, walk the kids, iron the dog and there's this idjit on another forum who wants to know "How do I 'do' a website?". No rest for the multi-tasker.

Yes, he's a good guy. And to be fair most of the people implicated in this mess are reasonable candidates for peerages. Its a shame that the positives of their candidacy will most likely now be overwhelmed by the scandal.

Unfortunately, there is no mileage in poking fun from the sober side of the argument.

Are you assuming I was sober when I wrote that?
An extremely rare flash of (very distant) family honour perhaps, but compus mentis at 9:30 on a Friday evening? I don't think so

Ok then to get back on topic (I can tell TPH is hopping up and down with indignation at the heinous hijacking of his thread)

IE7 beta2 preview; I am right in thinking this is essentially the finished product as far as CSS goes? if so then I'm deliberating downloading onto this spare XP box and sacrificing IE6 especially as I can still not confirm whether the final release will be available as standalone, and I do not intend on purchasing vista just to obtain IE7, so this may be the best I get to play with.

Hugo.

Yep, afaik this is the final version as far as CSS is concerned. So they still have a crap browser that we'll have to hack for.