Concept 2.0

The 5th beta of phpBB 3 is now out and not only that but the news posting about it remarks that the next version will probably be a release candidate - meaning they have virtually finished. Importantly, there will be an upgrade path from the release candidates so while it's still very questionable to use it in a production environment, it's plausable and any development work and re-modding can start without fear of your work being undone by a new release.

First look for myself anyway. I installed Internet Explorer 7 RC1 last night to take a look at it. After all it's heading towards a release and with the rumour that it's going to be pushed as a forced updated on XP, it means that soon there will be a lot of users using a browser that I haven't tested compatability with on any of my sites.

The Browser
Ok, let's start off with the browser itself. It's been made a lot slicker. That's a code word for it looks a lot more like Forefox now. The file menu has actually been taken out and now the top of the browser consists of two rows. The first has your navigation buttons, address box and quick search that nobody is going to be using because of how much lock it has on Windows Live Search.

The second row consists of your tabs including a neat little quick tabs page which allows you to preview all of the tabs in little PowerPoint style boxes. Then on the right of that you have buttons for your homepage, RSS feeds, printing, and two drop downs called "page" and "tools" which basically make up the options you would have had on your file menu.

While this creates a lot of space it does reduce the amount of space you have for tabs when you don't have the browser full expanded on a large monitor.

Finally at the bottom you have your status bar which now includes a quick option to magnify the page. It also has a phishing alert icon which regularly incourages you to check if the website you are on is listed in anti-phishing databases. Unfortunatly, the icon that appears to encourage you to check the site actually looks like the site has been flagged and so many users will probably think most of the sites they go on are phishing scams.

How it renders
So far it's looking pretty good. I went down the massive list of my sites and opened them all so while I only saw the homepage they all seemed to look for the most part ok. IE7 seems to really for for the whole anti-alias text rendering as everything on the page seems to have it (or maybe I'm thinking of something else, point is, it looks pretty ;)).

There are still certain problems for example it still doesn't support transparent backgrounds for form lists. Also the only major issue I have found so far is that it seems to be incompatable with the default theme that comes with MediaWiki. It renders the top menu bar on the left and so is hidden behind the logo. MediaWiki have newer versions out which may have fixed that but given the new versions need PHP5 which few webmasters have it looks like it is time for some custom CSS hacking to get that fixed.

Conclusion
I'll need to do lots more testing and playing around before I can really give IE7 a thumbs up (or down) though so far it seems Microsoft have put some time into it. It will be interesting to see how the release of IE7 affects the browser market share.

Microsoft Office Live is of course Microsoft's online port of it's office suite to the web. They are currently offering the packages free for you to try while it's in beta though interestingly, once it launches they will be charging a subscription fee of $30 a month.

This will be interesting to see given how much of the web, especially the Web 2.0 offers are free. Some of them offer paid add-ons but most of them are running an advertising based business model and given the amount of them that are new start-ups but tech geeks who are doing it for the technology rather than the business, many of them don't have business models at all.

Of course when it comes to targetting businesses rather than individuals or webmasters, you have much more scope for charging for products. It's worth noting that Microsoft are offering a "Basics" package that will be free after beta which they will most likely use for individuals while their full blown packages will bring in the money from the businesses.

That said, whether they are interested in attractiving individuals at all is in question. After all, why would an individual need a web based office suite given most individuals only have one computer. Sure, you can also access your stuff at cybercafes and such but how many people are going to do that? The main use is going to be business and that is the angle Microsoft are pushing - the tour talks about small business with little regard for anything else.

If you think it will be of use, you can sign up for any of the packages for free during beta on Microsoft.com. So far though, it's not looking particuarly useful for most of us.