According to FeedDemon 2.1's "Popular Topics" feature, this week's big tech news is the release of Internet Explorer 7. I've tested both FeedDemon and TopStyle with the final release of IE7, and I'm glad to report that I didn't run into any problems.
Surprisingly (to me, anyway), I've read a number of negative posts about IE7. Personally, I like IE7 - a lot. I'm sure that my saying that will cause some readers to write me off as yet another Microsoft ass-kisser, but that ignores the fact that I switched to Firefox a couple of years ago. I still like Firefox - especially all the great extensions that are available for it - but I've switched back to IE, and I don't regret it.
However, like many developers, I'm still sore that Microsoft took such a long time to update IE. Windows users endured years of spyware and other vulnerabilities while Microsoft dragged their feet, slowing the progress of the web while they figured out their web service plans. IE7 is a nice piece of work, but it didn't have to take so long.
Anyway...
One of the biggest (and most welcome) changes in the new IE is in its CSS support. IE6 had a number of CSS bugs and omissions that have caused excessive hair loss in web authors over the past few years, but IE7 is a major step forward CSS-wise. My favorite CSS addition? We finally have support for fixed positioning. Once IE7 is more prevalent, you can bet I'll be using position:fixed in FeedDemon's newspapers (using TopStyle, of course).
PS: Apologies for not enabling comments, but I'm going offline this weekend and don't want to worry about the usual flood of comment spam.