I've received reports from many Computerworld and "Scot's Newsletter" readers about compatibility problems between IE7 and, especially, Web-based ASP products and proprietary or customized enterprise apps. It's been a five-year run for IE6, and the Web developers who serve the business world appear to have moved in for the long haul.
My best advice at this point is to stick with IE6 for a while if you're a confirmed IE user, or switch at least temporarily to Firefox 2 or Opera 9. If you've made the switch to IE7 and don't want to go back (and I can't blame you -- I prefer IE7 too), the compatibility issues emphasize a key drawback of the new browser you should think through. By upgrading to IE7, you've lost a key safety net that Windows-based Firefox and Opera fans enjoy: They can always fire up IE6 when they hit a site or attempt to run a Web-based app that doesn't react well to their browser. But if you're using IE7, you're stuck.
I talked to Gary Schare, Microsoft's director of IE product management, about this issue. Microsoft has an answer that lets you keep IE6 at your beck and call while you run IE7. I've tested it, and it works fine.
Microsoft made its desktop virtualization tool, Virtual PC 2004 SP1, free for download earlier this year. It's not my favorite virtualization tool, but it works fine.
The key part of the equation is a virtual machine appliance supplied by the IE7 team that consists of Windows XP Service Pack 2 with IE6. It's a 495.8MB download that will work until April 1, 2007. Schare says the IE7 team hopes to renew the program with a new virtual image. There's no charge at all for the use of Windows XP, by the way. This is a pretty good deal.
For more information, check out the Microsoft IE development team's IEBlog: IE6 and IE7 Running on a Single Machine.
Problems uninstalling IE7?
So I'm recommending that people either grab this IE6 on XP/Virtual PC trick or uninstall IE7. Here's some straight talk about uninstalling IE7.
First, let me pass along that I have had excellent success uninstalling IE7 from my PCs -- both the betas and the final version. I'm also not hearing from readers and other sources about any problems with the process of removing IE7.
There is one thing I am hearing about, though: A dialog box pops up as part of the IE7 uninstall that warns you that some of your applications might in some vague way be affected by uninstalling IE7. People who frequently install new software on their systems are especially likely to encounter this dialog. I asked Schare whether this should be a concern right now to people looking to install IE7, and he quite honestly said no, IE7 users can ignore it.
The mysterious dialog is actually part of the Windows Package Installer, the tool that supports incremental installation of system files for Windows Update and many other Microsoft software-updating processes. Update.exe, the primary file behind the Windows Package Installer, exists in a version-control nightmare (once referred to as "DLL Hell"). A big part of what it does is identify and manage dependencies among different software elements and their versions.
Because Internet Explorer is installed directly into Windows' system files, the Windows Package Installer is the designated tool for managing IE7 install, update and uninstall processes. So, doing what it's supposed to do, Windows Package Installer fires up a dialog that shows you all the products that have been installed in Windows since you installed IE7. It's listing possible dependencies. For there to be any threat at all to the more recently installed programs, they would have to require a specific IE7 system file in order to operate properly. That's a pretty unlikely scenario no matter what -- and it's especially unlikely since IE7 hasn't been out very long. But even a year or two from now, Schare's belief is that you may safely ignore this dialog.
One thing I will warn you about is that some people who ran the betas of IE7 and who installed the final code over any of those betas are having trouble uninstalling IE7. I've probably written this piece of advice to Windows users more frequently than any other over the years since Windows 95 emerged: Don't install beta software over beta software. Don't install the final code over a beta installation. Always, always uninstall a previous beta version before you install any newer version.
Schare reports that all your important settings, Favorites, Links bar and so forth will be preserved when you uninstall IE7 and reinstall IE6. The only gotcha he could think of is that the default IE7 Favorites will remain in your Favorites, but you can easily delete them.
Back to Internet Explorer 7 -- if you're going the other way and are about to install it for the first time, this software does affect your Windows system files. I recommend taking a System Restore point, or better yet, making a backup of your Windows installation or entire drive prior to the installation.
All previous major iterations of Internet Explorer (6.0, 5.5, 5.0, 4.0 and 3.0) have presented significant problems for a percentage of the people installing them. Because so many people use Internet Explorer, even a problem that affects 4% of the people is a huge number of people. I would have to say that, so far, IE7 is less problematic than many of its predecessors. But don't underestimate the power of an altered browser to create problems for you.
In the end, a product that is an absolute standard that upgrades and then is no longer a standard can be a very frustrating product indeed. The only inherent problem with IE7 is that it's not IE6. Don't let that bite you. I hope I've offered a strategy that will help you deal with it while enjoying the browser you prefer.
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