What's New for CSS in Beta 2 Preview?
We have heard all your feedback asking us for full CSS compliance. With the now public available Beta 2 Preview build on XP, we get a big step closer to this goal. Chris talked about our priorities for IE7 before, but I want to give more detail on our work with CSS.
Context & Ripple Effects
Two days after a hands-on walkthrough of installing and uninstalling the IE7 beta 2 preview, the IEBlog is following up on the build's substance rather than its setup. The post answers accumulated developer feedback asking for full CSS compliance, and points back to what "Chris" laid out earlier about IE7's priorities while promising more detail on the CSS work specifically.
What matters here is that Microsoft put a publicly available Beta 2 Preview build on Windows XP into developers' hands at all — the confirmed release makes CSS behavior testable by anyone building sites, not just described in blog posts.
First-order effects
- Web developers can now run the public Beta 2 Preview on XP and test real pages against IE7's improved CSS handling before the browser ships, turning abstract compliance promises into checkable layout behavior.
- Microsoft explicitly frames CSS compliance as a response to user feedback, making standards support a stated priority for IE7 rather than an incidental fix.
Second-order effects
- Sites built around IE6-era quirks and hacks face retesting against the new build, shifting maintenance burden onto authors who long targeted one dominant renderer's non-standard behavior.
- A public beta that visibly narrows the CSS gap raises the bar for every subsequent IE7 build — each preview cycle now invites direct comparison against the compliance goal developers have been requesting.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds through IE7's release, browser competition shifts toward measurable standards compliance — a track that runs from this preview toward benchmarks like the Acid2 test Microsoft later engaged with in the Internet Explorer 8 Acid2 milestone.
- Reduced dependence on IE-specific workarounds changes how the web itself is authored, letting CSS written to spec become the default assumption instead of a best-effort target.
The trend: Browser makers are moving from proprietary rendering quirks toward verifiable standards compliance, using public beta builds as the proof mechanism developers demanded.