I'm sure most people that have come across my lovely little blog here also read slashdot, in which case, some of what I've put here and will put here will most likely be, in a sense, repeats. Although, I will try to through a little bit of my opinion in as well. And with that said..

I saw a link to the IEBlog on slashdot last night. This specific blog deals with what they are planning to do with IE7 for launch (and also what they don't plan on...).

The link is here (yeah, yeah, i know, bad way to link and stuff...). Essentially, they are planning on getting proper CSS1 and CSS2 (possibly CSS2.1) support into IE7 by launch. As it sits right now, IE7 is essentially IE6 with some UI modifications and possibly some rendering changes, but nothing drastic yet (for Beta 1). For Beta 2, we should start seeing some rather drastic changes and important fixes, at least, according to the IEBlog.

This is all fine and dandy, but I find that they do not plan on getting IE7 to pass Acid2 by launch rather interesting:

In that vein, I’ve seen a lot of comments asking if we will pass the Acid2 browser test published by the Web Standards Project when IE7 ships. I’ll go ahead and relieve the suspense by saying we will not pass this test when IE7 ships. The original Acid Test tested only the CSS 1 box model, and actually became part of the W3C CSS1 Test Suite since it was a fairly narrow test – but the Acid 2 Test covers a wide set of functionality and standards, not just from CSS2.1 and HTML 4.01, selected by the authors as a “wish list” of features they’d like to have. It’s pointedly not a compliance test (from the Test Guide: “Acid2 does not guarantee conformance with any specification”). As a wish list, it is really important and useful to my team, but it isn’t even intended, in my understanding, as our priority list for IE7.

So, although Acid2 may not be a 'compliance' test or necessarily adhere to a specific specification, it still uses the open standards we all want support for. However, if they at least make it look better then this I think I could be satisfied. Well, as long as things such as alpha transparent PNG's and proper positioning is supported. Only time will tell what exactly happens, though.

And in addition, I have had a chance to play around with Vista a bit. Screenshots are here. I have to say, I'm beginning to get used to the new interface. I honestly have to say I do like a lot of the concepts that they implemented into Vista, although, I'm not all that impressed with the actual implementation. I suspect a lot of this to change in future beta's, but as it is now, its really not very polished or complete. Although, it is only the first beta, so I can't expect too much I suppose. (We do run into similar problems in the FL/OSS world as well).

Take a look, if you have anything else you want to see, let me know and I'll acquire more screenshots.

--nullpuppy(out)