The current IE7 B2 Preview is stable for website testing

The IE team announced that the IE7 B2 Preview build available online is ready for use in testing site rendering. The feature list frozen, and the rendering engine is solid and won't change between now and release anymore.

That means it's ready to use in testing site compatibilty. Star hack begone!

UPDATE: I tested running it in standalone mode using the IE7 Standalone Launch Script. It works, in that it allowed me to browse sites in IE7 without messing up IE6 or my default browser association. However, I noticed high CPU usage and had to close IE7 using the task manager - it didn't respond to that little red X thing. I believe these are minor inconveniences compared to running a separate virtual machine just to check how a site looks. Obviously, this build of IE7 just came out yesterday so I haven't put this through rigorous testing. Unfortunately, it appears that the standalone browser builds from Skyzyx have been pulled.

22 Comments

  • Stuart-



    Your test page looks fine to me. I don't see any of the bugs you describe. Have you tried the latest Beta refresh released yesterday?

  • Terrible build-98% of CPU usage everytime I run it,still dosen't respect content encoding of pages on localized version of windows-uninstalled.

  • Stuart, that site you linked to renders identically in both Firefox and the latest IE7... so no need for complaints?

  • I'm using the latest build of IE7 released yesterday and the last two bugs are fixed, but the first one - the last line of text being hidden behind the horizontal scrollbar until you resize the window - is still there.



    Fortunately, according to IEblog, "layout complete" doesn't mean they won't continue to fix bugs. Which IMO means that it's not *really* stable for testing website compatibility, but I'd rather have it this way... get the bugs fixed while we can :)

  • I tried the new beta with your standalone batch file and, like you reported, I experienced very high CPU usage. In fact, after a few seconds, the UI (i.e. browser chrome) would "lock up" and become almost completely unusable (but oddly enough, the actual web page content still seemed responsive and I could click links to navigate, etc.)

  • I got a crash on this new version when running the script...

  • At first, I also got crashes on some of my sites. Then it struck me: It was the fault of the png transparency code I added to some sites for IE 5.5+. After changing the conditional statement from [if gte IE 5.5000] to [if lt IE 7] the crashes were gone (IE 7 still crashes randomly though, but at least I can use it now to check the rendering of sites).

  • I found that IE7's chrome would not respond on my system either. I also discovered that I had two versions of the IE Developer bar installed. After removing both, IE7 standalone's chrome became responsive again and I did not have to use task manager to exit the program. Re-installing the latest version of the Dev bar did not cripple the program again (everything is still a-okay).

  • Running the standalone IE 7 on XP Prof. I have multiple problems, like pages that ought to open in '... target="_blank" ..' visibly not opening at all, but being present somewhere in the lurky catacombs of the browser. Closing the browser afterwards leaves the CLI open without finishing the script, importing it to the registry is denied. Then still starting IE 6.0.2900.2180, it shows a strange behaviour, too: Trying to open a "_blank"-target, one instance after another opens, none showing anything, browser crashes.

    Only way to get IE 6 fixed after that was to add *all* the changes to the ie7fix.reg-file. So, instead of one line here it must have all of the following lines:

    [-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{C90250F3-4D7D-4991-9B69-A5C5BC1C2AE6}]
    [-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Interface\{000214E5-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}]
    [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Version Vector]
    "IE"="6.0000"

    After that IE 6 reacts "normal" again.

  • Seems to work for me, really useful to have something like this out there!

    Many thanks!

  • [quote]This isn't working with IE7 Beta 3 yet. I'll have to test it out more and probably[/quote]

    Thanks :) It'll be much appreciated!

  • Hello Jon,

    I'v played with your script to get it to work with IE7 Beta3. I didn't get far but I thought you might be interested in what I found.

    IE7B3 started with no error message but then it shuts it self down. I tried tracing the reason and it appears to be a raised exception IE7 couldn't handle.

    Anyway, basically instead of creating just the Keys to the CLSID and Interface, you add values with the path to IEPROXY.DLL So the resulting Reg file would be:

    ----------------------BEGIN-------------

    [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{C90250F3-4D7D-4991-9B69-A5C5BC1C2AE6}]
    @="PSFactoryBuffer"

    [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{C90250F3-4D7D-4991-9B69-A5C5BC1C2AE6}\InProcServer32]
    @="C:\\Downloads\\IE7\\IEPROXY.DLL"
    "ThreadingModel"="Both"

    [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Interface\{000214E5-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}]
    @="IShellIcon"

    [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Interface\{000214E5-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}\NumMethods]
    @="4"

    [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Interface\{000214E5-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}\ProxyStubClsid32]
    @="{C90250F3-4D7D-4991-9B69-A5C5BC1C2AE6}"

    ------------------END------------------------

    I don't know if this is significant, but when you start IE7B3, it reads the CLSID that starts with {B8DA6310-E19B-11D0 . This one has the path to "ACTXPRXY.DLL" which is the Active X Marshalling Library from IE6 and not IE7! I tried changing it to the path to IEPROXY.DLL but that didn't help.

    ps. I have a feeling peeps at MS broke your script on purpose :D.

    Good luck
    --
    Yousif

  • Anything I type or copy/paste into IE6 now opens in Firefox, which would suit me as I use Firefox but screws me up because I need to use 6 to test my work. Responses to similar queries have been rather vague. Anyone want to tell me how to restore IE6 to its former 'glory'?

    Thanks.

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