Blog Standard Stuff

I can’t believe how useful and informative the IE blog has been since its launch. Once the topic of rumour, guesswork and conjecture, what’s happening with IE is more open than I could ever have imagined. There is some more news about IE that I wanted to pick through here (you can read about all of the new features previously not mentioned here).

• Firstly, there is news that IE7 will include a native XMLHTTPRequest object for Javascript applications – no ActiveXObject needs to be created, which is great news for developers. You all hate ActiveX, right? ;-)
• Secondly, the select element has been rebuilt as a "windowless control, so it can be visually layered under other elements". Comments on the thread point to the popularity of that move, but I would like to find out if in rebuilding it has the IE team also made it possible to style the select element better using CSS? Styling forms in CSS is all well and good, but this pesky little element always lets the side down. Borders? Nope, you’re having a laugh, mate! For me, it would be a missed opportunuity if they have re-worked the select element and not taken this golden opportunity to put that right (but maybe I’m misunderstanding the scope of the rebuild)
• IE is getting page zoom! I wonder if this will be an Opera-style page zoom whereby all elements scale up? And how will this impact font scaling (although I’ve had a dig around, I can’t see whether IE7 will change its font sizing beyond the current 5 levels)
• Finally, there’s news of a Web Developer Toolbar. Well, readers of this site will already be familiar with the excellent toolbar that’s available for Firefox/Mozilla. It’s one of the main reasons why I am so wedded to using Firefox, so it’s not difficult to see why the Microsoft team are looking into adding this in – a carrot to dangle in front of otherwise reticent developers. One request I’d like to make here though – please, Microsoft, play nice. Don’t do what Aevita did (and please don’t tell me that you bought the toolbar off Aevita, explaining why it’s no longer on their site!).

Posted on Web Standards Project Buzz