Wednesday, February 01, 2006

Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 Preview - My $0.02c

I know you'll find a million sites that give you the lowdown on Microsoft's latest and greatest. So I'm going to spare you all that. Instead, I'll list pros and cons (basically stuff that works well and stuff that doesn't quite cut the mustard) in comparison with Firefox 1.5.

The Good:
1. Seamless upgrade from IE 6 SP1 to IE 7 B2P (Beta 2 Preview). Existing toolbars (Google Toolbar 4.0 Beta installed on IE 6 SP1, works without a hitch on IE 7 B2P)
2. Tabbed browsing (yes, finally)
3. Shortcuts work just like Firefox (Ctrl+T opens a new tab, middle click on tab closes it, middle click on link opens in a new tab).
4. IE 7 uses Firefox's RSS icon (this was well publicized a few months ago on the IE Blog - http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/)
5. IE 7 Beta 2 Preview is uninstallable.
6. Anti-phishing built in (I still have to take this for a test-drive)
7. True full-screen (auto-hides the address bar / toolbars tabs etc). Only the status bar remains.
8. Delete Browsing history just like with Firefox 1.5
9. Native browser support for RSS feeds (I need to go further into this)

The not so Good:
1. No themes
2. Limited set of extensions (just the usual google / yahoo / msn toolbars)
3. Zooming works ok, but the corresponding % value does not get updated.
4. Some sites are broken (notably Microsoft's very own http://asp.net/ - the menu is navigation menu is messed up) Update: Looks like this has since been fixed
5. You still get the annoying "click" sound when you click on a link or a page is done loading.
6. When in full-screen mode, pressing Alt+d should ideally pull down the hidden address bar section and set focus on the current text in it, but it does not. You have to take your mouse up there and do the needful.
7. I felt the refresh button was weirdly placed (ofcourse, I know there's always F5)
8. Poor user feedback for being on a secure website (just one obscure, easy to miss lock icon set to the right of the address bar). Firefox makes this more apparent by changing the background color of the address bar.
9. No "Find as you type" - lets hope it makes the cut in future builds / RTM
10. Longer than necessary scrolling on some pages

Not Really Bugs, but Great to have Anyway:
1. No re-ordering of tabs

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