"The beta version of IE7 released today by Microsoft is meant for developers and tech enthusiasts, and it's a good thing. This is not (yet) a browser for the faint of heart; in fact, if you've become accustomed to the minimalist approach of alternative browsers like Firefox, IE7 might actually feel like a step backward. The product's proper name - which should tell you most everything you need to know - is Internet Explorer 7.0 for Windows XP SP2 Beta 2 Preview. We'll refer to it simply as IE7 beta, though."
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Member since:
2006-01-31
Member since:2005-07-06
I cannot find something new from other review I've already read on IE7 betas.
Not a word on W3C standards, only some words on tabbed browsing.
A useless article.
Go to IEBlog for more info on standards:
http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/
Also the IE Developer Center on MSDN:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/ie/
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2005-07-10
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The reason I asked is that previously Microsoft was considering charging for the update to IE 7.0 for those not upgrading to Windows Vista. The actual amount I recall was $99.00 per Windows XP/2000/NT installation which would be costly for businesses. Though I see no mention of this at least with the IE 7.0 Beta information provided on their website so I pressume they've changed their mind, at least for now.
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2005-11-09
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2006-01-02
Not to sound like a jerk, but seriously, how does Microsoft manage to make all their software look so ugly? They did a horrible job at modernizing the interface, i'm sorry but the two round, glossy forward and backward buttons don't make up for the boxiness and poor use of gradients. This may sound nit-picky, but I spend all day on my computer at work; mostly surfing the web. It's nice to have a browser that is easy on the eyes. Most other browsers have a simple yet elegant look to them, and they allow theming if you want something nice. Microsoft should take note of that for IE development.
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2005-07-18
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2005-09-08
I don't think they'll charge for IE7, especially as that would be to give away the opportunity to the free (no cost) opera and firefox to gain the rest of the windows browser marked, but I do think I read somewhere that they used to charge for it but made it free and included it in the OS to win over netscape in the browser wars... I can't remember where I read it, if I've gotten it wrong please put me back on track 
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2005-12-20
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2005-12-16
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2005-08-09
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2005-12-19
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2006-01-28
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I thin kit is a part of IE7. If you bring down the arrow next to the magnifying glass, and go to "Get search providers", you can add from a number of different search providers. The ones you select will be added to your list, and you can choose which one you want to be the default.
Member since:2006-01-28
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2005-07-06
To those of you who don't like the new UI, remember this is a beta and not the final release. Well now that I stated the obvious, you can help change this by giving Microsoft some feedback on the UI. Tell them you don't like it and exactly what you don't like about it. Tell them where you think the button should be placed. Now is your chance before the interface gets worse. Take advantage of this opportunity.
Member since:
2005-07-06
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2005-07-02
Well, not exactly. I'm posting this from Firefox because I don't give IE the ability to accept cookies. The only search engine installed by default is MSN search, I'm sure this will change by the premier, other's will pay to have their engines there (unless MS thinks it will make more ad revenue by keeping everyone using MSN). The new interface is very sparce, and the buttons are all put in one area, which is actually really annoying, it takes a bit to know where to press to find something. I'm sure with more usage this will become second nature though. There is an RSS feed button, a few of them actually. The favorites have gotten an overhaul, with separate places for RSS feeds and bookmarks. The feeds thing seems really ridiculous to me: you subscribe, and it puts a link in your RSS tab in your Toolbar, and you have to click on that, you then get a new tab with the feed inside of it. Why not just add a bookmark to the site itself? I'm not sure, but then I don't use feeds anyway. Ctrl - F brings up the old search diolague, which is dissapointing. With the way I run my web browser, there is only enough room to comfortably fit 4 or 5 tabs, because there is a bunch of other stuff on the tab bar. I even prefer Opera's way of the toolbar under the tabs (which I don't like that much). The Acid 2 test is completely butchered. Finally, it doesn't match XP's theme at all, which isn't the biggest deal ever, but makes it kind of hard to use. That's my observations from about 30 minutes of using it. Download is available here since there are no links in the article or on OSNews.
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/IE/ie7/ie7betaredirect.mspx
Member since:2005-07-02
Member since:2005-07-04
Too late to edit it, so one more thing:
As far as I can tell, the only way to "uninstal" and go back to IE 6 is through system restore. Be forewarned.
Yep, I Google'd for uninstall ie7 and read about a lot of people who have hosed their systems so that IE doesn't even work anymore (which means Windows/Microsoft Update no longer works). Since Microsoft Update is all I normally use IE for, I have decided to not risk it and leave it on there, since it works in IE7. At least the IE-Tab extension for Firefox still works (this allows you to render a page using IE inside of Firefox, which is the same as what Netscape does). I use IETab quite a bit, so I am happy about that.
I am very unimpressed with Microsoft for making it so unsafe/difficult to roll back to a previous version of IE, espescially when the new version they are distributing is a beta. Did they not even test something as critical as this? Did they have a brain lapse of some sort?
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Here's a good resource for running IE7 in "standalone" mode: http://weblogs.asp.net/jgalloway/archive/2005/08/12/422335.aspx
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2005-07-04
I used IE7 for a few hours and went back to Firefox due to some bugs that made it unusable for me.
My keyboard is very unresponsive in it. I wrote 3 sentences in a Slashdot post and there were about 10 missing letters. So I typed a few more sentences, very slowly, making sure I wasn't missing keys, and noticed that sometimes pressing a key doesn't mean it will actually display in IE7. It isn't my keyboard, because Firefox (before and after the install of IE7) doesn't have this problem. IE6 never exhibited this behaviour either.
IE7 won't save my cookies for some reason, even during a single session. I opened Slashdot in a new tab, logged in, left a couple of posts, and then closed the tab. About 20 minutes later, I went back to Slashdot and had to log in again. This problem was consistent, and occured on OSNews, Slashdot, Passport and numerous other sites. Google was the worst. Every time I opened the browser, I had to re-log into Gmail. Then, without even closing the tab, I would type www.google.com/ig into the address bar, and would have to sign in again. With Firefox, I can stay signed into Google for up to 2 weeks before having to re-enter my password.
I do know that this is a beta though, and left some comments on the page where Microsoft asks you to. Hopefully they are fixed before the final release.
Member since:
2006-01-11
Member since:2005-11-11
"Interesting... there's a zooming feature that expands images along with text."
Opera also has something like that. Not saying that IE sucks for implementing it later or that MS shouldn't put something like that in. As with tabs, good on them for adding it. I'm just saying there is another browser that does that if you are one of those who doesn't like the IE7 interface.
Speaking of zoomed images, I do wonder whether it's better to zoom images along with the text or not. I use Konqueror most of the time nowadays, with only text zooming, and sometimes miss that ability from back when I used Opera.
Zoomed text adds to readability for people with glasses, or people who lean way back when surfing (cough). Zoomed images don't do much expect look worse than at their native size. It also takes some processor time to resize them, especially with any sort of smoothing.
I can't come up with any concrete positives for zooming images as well as text, but I still kinda like it. Is it just because it's eye candy? Anyone else have any preferences there? *curious*
Edited 2006-02-01 07:03
Member since:2005-07-06
I can't come up with any concrete positives for zooming images as well as text, but I still kinda like it. Is it just because it's eye candy? Anyone else have any preferences there? *curious*
I think they could zoom SVGs and other vector image formats that doesn't degrade in quality when zoomed.
The downside of that is that it most likely will break websites that uses one pixel transparanct images to control layout.
The best solution would probably be to just zoom text but offer a zoom tool that could be applied to zoomable vector graphics images. E.g. when you moved the cursor over such an image it could change to a magnifying glass, and allow the user to zoom by holding the right mouse button down, and moving the mouse up or down.
Member since:
2005-10-20
First thing first, I mostly boot to Arch linux and use firefox as my default browser. However, I booted to WinXP SP2 to check this new browser after my friend ( working with MS) got all excited about IE7. Download and install were typical windows install ( including a reboot, I hardly reboot my Arch system). I was already feeling bad about this new browser. After reboot, I saw the changed IE icon and aprehensively clicked on it. It took me to some getting started page which gave me some ideas about the features. Further I opened gmail, distrowatch and osnews. Immidiately my perception changed. This looks similar to aqua theme of firefox and does every thing as firefox does, though tabs open a little slowly.
Never took any time to get adjusted to new placing of buttons, even feel that refresh/stop button are placed aptly. The search tool is easy to use and I configured it to use google as default. After this I just downloaded a matching windows theme and voila IE looks even better.
I relized after hours that this is the first time in 2 years that I a tinkering with XP UI, never felt like before IE7, as I always have fluxbox on Arch to fiddle with. If this can happen to a Arch user, then I presume many will like the new IE and hope that the final IE 7 will give be a strong cotender against Firefox.
Member since:
2005-09-04
Member since:
2006-01-28
Looks great, works great. The new UI takes a little bit of getting used to, but I think that many people will be better off for it. IE7 works much better than the IE6/MSN Toolbar combination that I've been using since the toolbar was released. The risk of a few bugs here and there is of course a factor with beta software, but the fact that this has been publicly released should assure enough people that it is stable enough for the average person to run. Highly recommended.
