Normally, I like Scoble’s posts (and from people I know who’ve met him, he sounds like a nice guy). But this time, he’s sounding shrill.

And how can you conclude that “many people” or “a large number of people” are seeing this? There are 100,000 technical beta testers, plus several millions eligible for the download via MSDN. Even a microscopic percentage running into a bug could be spun into “a large number.”

I know one reliable source of information that represents the technical beta-testing community, and I can say with confidence that this bug isn’t being widely reported.

Got to be a slow news day.

And, if you read Robert’s post, you’d get the impression that AO is simply lying, and there’s no such problem. Robert gives quotes from the IE team that state the they’re not deliberately blocking the toolbars, which is, of course, something that the story doesn’t accuse them of doing. That’s what stage magicians call “misdirection” and it’s common tactic amongst PR people.

Despite several people posting in his comments that they’re having problems, Robert doesn’t admit there’s ANY such issue in his response, because that would mean admitting that Orlowski actually got the story pretty much correct. And, for some reason – I suspect it’s personal – Robert wont’ admit that.

Meanwhile, the original story still has the headline “IE7 nukes Google, Yahoo! Search.” Anyone just skimming will read that only one way. And the story as posted still says, “There are sound compatibility reasons for Microsoft disabling third-party toolbars …” Do you honestly want us to believe that this does not say that Microsoft disabled these toolbars either deliberately or negligently?

You can parse Andrew’s words as finely as you want, but the reality is that he left exactly the impression that he wanted to leave. He can deny that he said X, while lots of sites link to him reporting that he said exactly that.

Hackery at its finest.

One of the links Robert points to, the one by Jeremy Mazner, states. “Fact: older versions of the Y! toolbar (I believe version 5.6 and earlier) do have issues that prevent them from working in IE 7 TechBeta. These issues were fixed in Y! toolbar versions 6 and above.”

That tells me that the IE testing team did find a bug with older Yahoo toolbars. Which doesn’t jive with the “All of the toolbars work with IE 7″ story that Robert is attempting to spin.

The Register article is still yellow journalism, but it does have a grain of truth.

If you have some evidence that a currently-shipping toolbar isn’t working, I’d like to see it. I have seen NO EVIDENCE that a currently-shipping toolbar doesn’t work.

NOW, we’re talking in truths. “Currently shipping” is very different. It’s not realistic since a lot of people out there never upgrade their toolbars, but at least it identifies the problem.

If Andrew says that people are reporting problems with the toolbars, can you admit that there is a possibility those people were running older versions of the Yahoo toolbar and did in fact have a problem?

The rest of his article is crap and you’re right to complain about the misleading headline, but you’re doing the IE team a disservice by painting their work as “only works with the current toolbars”. Are there plans to make IE7 work with older toolbars?

Yes.

>can you admit that there is a possibility those people were running older versions of the Yahoo toolbar and did in fact have a problem?

Yes. But that wasn’t the point of Orlowski’s article. Go and read it again. He didn’t print “they are having problems with XYZ old version of Yahoo’s toolbar.” No, he said they were having trouble with all of them. That’s not journalism. It’s a hatchet job.

Have no website only, since a short time, a photo gallery, that of my wife (link, which has nothing to do with this comment, but since there was a URL window I posted hers.
I am not a computer wizard was just curious to learn more about Vista in order to know more when it comes out in the stores.

Sergio Baumgartner, Zuerich, Switzerland

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