text: IE7 Bugs and Reviews 851
  An anonymous reader wrote to mention a Register article in which the possibility is raised of the current build dumping Yahoo and Google toolbars. At the same time, GWBasic writes "I've posted a review on IE 7 Beta 1.." Flexbeta and ZDNet have looks at the new browser as well.
  I liked Internet Explorer 7 the first time... (Score:4, Funny)
  Re:I liked Internet Explorer 7 the first time... (Score:5, Funny)
  List of things borrowed:
  1) Search bar
  2) Tabs
  3) Tabs in context menus
  4) Not passing the acid test
  5) TINY REFRESH BUTTONS THAT ARE IMPOSSIBLE TO CLICK ON OMGZ?
  That is all.
  Re:I liked Internet Explorer 7 the first time... (Score:3, Informative)
  Re:I liked Internet Explorer 7 the first time... (Score:3, Informative)
  Correction:
  6. (copied from Safari, which copied it from Opera) 2 In 1 Cancel/Refresh button.
  Re:I liked Internet Explorer 7 the first time... (Score:3, Funny)
  Re:I liked Internet Explorer 7 the first time... (Score:5, Insightful)
  your point?
  Erm, so like I said the competition, not "just Firefox." Is Opera part of the competition? Why, yes, my dear man, I do believe so. Thank you.
  My point is that the thing the guy in the article said about not borrowing from the competition is wrong. That should have been clear if you read my post.
  Re:I liked Internet Explorer 7 the first time... (Score:5, Insightful)
  Or FireFox zealots. Think about what usually starts this convo.
  Re:I liked Internet Explorer 7 the first time... (Score:5, Funny)
  You forgot Protoss zealots.
  I'm a Zerg (Score:4, Funny)
  Re:I liked Internet Explorer 7 the first time... (Score:5, Informative)
  I'm not sure when they'll be available for public consumption, but the compliant Konqueror should be released with KDE 3.5.
  Re:I liked Internet Explorer 7 the first time... (Score:3, Interesting)
  M$--still ignoring standards whenever possible, despite all their talk about standards being important. They're obviously not doing this out of stupidity.
  Re:I liked Internet Explorer 7 the first time... (Score:3, Informative)
  Re:I liked Internet Explorer 7 the first time... (Score:4, Interesting)
  Re:I liked Internet Explorer 7 the first time... (Score:4, Informative)
  Tools/Options/Tabbed Browsing/Tab Focus/Select Load Middle-clicked URLs in New Tabs. FF 1.0.6
  Re:I liked Internet Explorer 7 the first time... (Score:5, Funny)
  Re:I liked Internet Explorer 7 the first time... (Score:5, Informative)
  Free Download (Score:4, Funny)
  Looks like firefox (Score:5, Insightful)
  But the next time someone says "OSS only copies from Microsoft", remind them of IE7.
  Something borrowed, nothing new (Score:5, Insightful)
  Tabbed browsing has been added, dropdown search, add-on manager. Now where have I seen those all before?
  Seems like a good effort by Microsoft to play catch up, but that's it. Aside from the anti-phising feature, I've yet to see one new feature of any importance.
  Re:Something borrowed, nothing new (Score:5, Insightful)
  All it NEEDS to do is catch-up. Microsoft is in the position of dominance, and all they need to do is produce something 'good enough.' It is the upstarts that need to aspire to 'great.'
  Because, being good enough, and coming installed on 90% of the computers sold is a very powerful combination.
  Not to mention the fact that it still has the IE specific features that people use. It is the only browser that runs a good percentage of the WYSIWYG editors out there. And people will keep using it because of things like that.
  Re:Something borrowed, nothing new (Score:5, Interesting)
  The only real disadvantage IE 7 has is that it will only be available for XP SP2. And IE 7 is not a big enough carrot to get people to upgrade when they can get the same functionality with Firefox/Mozilla/Netscape for free.
  Not really (Score:5, Insightful)
  Most businesses are still stuck on W2k. They only get XP when they get a new machine, and for many companies (especially the small ones), this only happens when the old one dies or can't run the software anymore. As more apps move to the internets, the incentive to upgrade will go down. Don't have the
  .NET runtimes,
  and can't install 'em on your Windows 98 box? Who cares? "Just fire
  up the internet icon and click on the accounting button on the
  intranet page" says the PHB.
  My experience says things are different. Most people DO have an old PC, because they aren't geeks and don't care about getting the latest ATI card so they can play GTA:XXX. How old is your microwave? Why don't you 'upgrade' it? That's the same feeling the average person has towards computers.
  Re:Something borrowed, nothing new (Score:5, Insightful)
  Mediocrity is the design goal for IE7.
  Re:Something borrowed, nothing new (Score:4, Insightful)
  1. Bundle software that supports new standard
  2. Wait for a critical mass of users to start using the software in their every day lives
  3. Release new version of the software that adds support for microsoft-propriatory enhancements
  4. Watch clueless users use the new "enhancements" without realising they're breaking compatability with every other piece of software out there
  5. Watch competition suffer as the user perception of the competing software is that it's crap and doesn't support sites that work fine in the industry standard (read: Microsoft) software, even though those sites aren't at all standards complient.
  And don't tell me you don't recognise the strategy...
  Now I See the Game Plan! (Score:5, Funny)
  2. Profit!
  3. Profit!
  4. Profit!
  5.
  6. Catch Up
  Re:Something borrowed, nothing new (Score:3, Interesting)
  Granted that MSIEv7 only needs to catch up with contemporary browsers. However it fails to do that.
  Since as I understand it MSIEv7 only works with WinXP, it is not a solution for enterprizes who are standardized on legacy Windows versions and cannot justify the costs of upgrading until the end of the service life of their present machines. This is a big market, and MSIEv7 as it is currently designed is only going to drive these IT departments toward Opera or Firefox.
  On a personal level, I wouldn't even tr
  Re:Something borrowed, nothing new (Score:3, Funny)
  You can't make a recommendation out of "when one program crashes, it doesn't make you have to reboot your whole system"? Or "you can now go weeks (months!) without ever seeing a BSOD"?
  At least let them use W2K if you're not going to give them XP. No one deserves the kind of pain you're continuing to inflict on these poor people.
  Re:Something borrowed, nothing new (Score:4, Insightful)
  I think the general computer-using public have soured on 'the latest and greatest' from Microsoft. The UI is basically unchanged since Windows 95 -- all that the consumer sees is less crashing. So I don't think that a ton of people will rush out to buy Vista or even try to get to XP SP2. They're happy with Windows 98, ME, 2000, XP, XP SP1, etc.
  Now, when IE 7 comes along, and those people start asking "How can I get that?" the answer will be "Spend money and upgrade, or get Firefox."
  Re:Something borrowed, nothing new (Score:4, Insightful)
  It was always really annoying that in the IT department no matter the problem one guy always suggested that "well, we have an old pentium box around here.. we could throw Linux and XXX package and hack together some Perl scripts and be finished with this project by tomorrow".
  No matter the problem it was always "well, Linux is better".
  And you know, it did hurt his career. He's an IT guy in an all MS shop. He knew it when he applied.
  The reason you see a lot of momentum towards any vendor - especially MS - is that it's just easier to stay with one vendor and yah deal with their crap. It makes no sense to have 200 Windows servers and then 2 Linux boxes.
  Yeah, you know, djdns is more secure and faster than Windows DNS, but you know what, not so much that it makes it worth having a seperate platform, and having those boxes able to be admin'd by one or two guys instead of the normal admin team of 15.
  I am happy for all (us) Linux/OSS geeks. But man, if you are place isn't an OSS friendly place, deal with it! Don't go around all the time (1) exaggerating how much easier some OSS solution would be and (2) bad mouthing everything and by proxy everyone up the chain. It's just career suicide!
  Finally, about blatant stealing.
  Remember when MS added the "infobar" to report blocked pop-ups and crap like that to IE6 with XP SP2?
  Odd how that's in FireFox now, pixel-per-pixel copied! It's a two way street.
  Re:Something borrowed, nothing new (Score:5, Funny)
  Well, sure, but can your great big so-called fire-thingy install spyware for you, automatically, without you even noticing, huh?
  Beat that, you Open Source geeks - only IE7 is fully compatible with spyware straight out of the box!
  Re:Something borrowed, nothing new (Score:4, Insightful)
  In the big picture, those are just tweaks. Microsoft engineers spent tens of thousands of hours working on IE, so adding tabbed browsing was likely relatively easy.
  Firefox advocates/users who have been acting as if things like tabbed browsing, ad blocking, and so on, are huge, difficult, quantum leaps...they've been deluding themselves. Firefox has always come across as IE + some extra niceties. That's why I use it.
  Re:Looks like firefox (Score:3, Interesting)
  I don't like the evil empire as much as the next guy, but sometimes they do something not to shabby.
  The Reason It's Poor (Score:4, Interesting)
  Re:Looks like firefox (Score:3, Insightful)
  Re:Looks like firefox (Score:4, Informative)
  Re:Looks like firefox (Score:5, Insightful)
  Opera is much more managed, and in many ways I like it because I just don't have to worry about if all those addins I installed will work with the next version of firefox, etc... I just want a browser that works.
  Oh and I love the session management in opera.
  But I wouldn't say Firefox is a poor implementation of opera. It's just another way of looking at the experience of the web browser, that is influenced by Opera heavily.
  Re:Looks like firefox (Score:5, Funny)
  Yup, and Opera is just a poor imitation of Greek Drama.
  Didn't follow Firefox? (Score:4, Insightful)
  Re:Didn't follow Firefox? (Score:5, Interesting)
  'We advise you not to click on that link to cracks.am, which is a well known phishing site.' Oops, or is it?
  Re:Didn't follow Firefox? (Score:3, Interesting)
  Since when do phishers set up dedicated domains?
  All URLs in the fake-bank-notices that are sent to me have the bare IP addresses of other site hosts, or even workstations, that have been compromised.
  Within a week, those machines will probably have been cleaned, but will they stay on MS's phishing blacklist forever? How do you identify where the phishers are when they're constantly moving? Heisenberg had something to say about this...
  Phishing (Score:3, Insightful)
  The key to anti-phishing is user education and keeping users informed of new cunning tricks spotted.
  This will just make people feel that the technology will protect them and disengage their grey matter.
  "evolution of user-centric design"? (Score:5, Insightful)
  The only thing that could be called truly new is the combined dropdown box for Back and Forward. Interesting idea, but it's certainly not "a clear step in the evolution of user-centric design."
  Re:"evolution of user-centric design"? (Score:3, Informative)
  I'm not a usability expert but... (Score:5, Insightful)
  Really, look at this:
  I mean, it's stupid. It "disassociates" tabs from the page, and it puts that menu in the middle. Why put in such relevant place a menu that it's so rarely used?
  It's clearly a huge usability mistake IMO. It looks like IE developers though: "saving screen space == good usability". It's not. Good usability is good usability, and seeing that "file edit" menu there hurts my eyes.
  Re:I'm not a usability expert but... (Score:3, Funny)
  Duuuuh.... Innovation!
  Re:I'm not a usability expert but... (Score:3, Informative)
  Of course, I couldn't stand the new colors and had to change the appearance to windows clasic. I'm not sure if I'll be able to use longhorn if it doesn't come with sane color themes or a "clasic" mode.
  Re:"evolution of user-centric design"? (Score:5, Interesting)
  Not to mention that only in the most perverted of senses was it a "review". Fawning overview is more like it. We get a good sense of the so-called reviewer's credentials when he says the following:
  "I stopped using non-Microsoft browsers over two years ago because I found them to be unpolished. "
  Of course tastes vary, but even amongst the most fanatical Microsoft apologists (including myself) it is pretty much universal that Firefox, or even Opera, is the primary daily browser. No one needs to suck on the Microsoft choad and pretend that everything they make must be the best in the market, especially when their flagship browser is going on half a decade old.
  Of course every now and then you come across the real dyed-in-the-wool Microsoft apologist, very seldomly a developer but more likely a "somewhat involved in the tech industry" kind of person (e.g. an @Home Computer virus removal technician) who'll swear that IE is the greatest thing now and forever. I suspect that's what we have here.
  The only feature of IE 7 that strikes me as a nice piece of user interface is the clear and graphical method of creating a new tab. Everything else is just a minor polishing of IE 6.
  Oh please, ignore the troll. (Score:4, Insightful)
  Boy, aren't we trollish today.
  1) IE finally got with it and threw in tabbed browsing. Not revolutionary, since Opera and Mozilla came up with it before, but evolutionary for sure.
  2) IE finally came up with a simpler navigational system. Until now IE needed two toolbars on the top of my screen compared to Firefox's one (not including the tab bar or the menu bar). They simplified their back and forward buttons, as well as combining the stop and refresh button, and combined two toolbars into one. Certainly evolutionary.
  And the best part...
  3) Microsoft included an Add-on manger with this version of IE 7. It allows BHOs to be turned on and off.
  What can I say? IT'S ABOUT FREAKIN' TIME!
  For those who don't know the acronym, BHO stands for "Browser Helper Objects," or as they've been described to me by other users, "Toolbars from hell." They're the adware-included toolbars littered with casino links and junk, as well as redirecting all your 404 and search inquiries to their sponsored pages. Finally, rather than having to dig through the registry to HKLM(and HKCU)/Software/Microsoft/CurrentVersion/Explorer/
  However, I do still have one complaint. Microsoft can piss off for making this XP-only. 50% of businesses are still using 2K. That's a lot of people to piss off.
  Manage Add Ons IS IN IE 6! (Score:5, Informative)
  Am I the only one that's ever done: Tools -> Internet Options -> Programs Tab -> Manage Add Ons Button in IE6?
  Even their evolutionary stuff has already been done, by them! The screens look exactly the same in IE6 as 7.
  Re:"evolution of user-centric design"? (Score:3, Informative)
  Re:"evolution of user-centric design"? (Score:5, Funny)
  You must be a barrel of laughs waiting for an elevator.
  Evolution of the user's response to poor design (Score:3, Interesting)
  What a sterling silver, perfect, museum-quality example of what bad UI does to a user. You learned to manually kill processes, constantly. If I designed a car and drivers trained themselves to kill the engine in drive every time, that would be some shoddy design on my part.
  (MS can't possibly outdo the dialog boxes from Excel when you try to save to a different format, though. For teaching the user to ignore what's b
  Classic method? (Score:3, Funny)
  What does this mean?
  Re:Classic method? (Score:5, Insightful)
  Re:Classic method? (Score:5, Informative)
  Re:Classic method? (Score:4, Funny)
  MS should use some of their other UI ideas to augment this:
  The "STOP" button spins while loading the page. Then, when the page is loaded, the button is disabled for five seconds and a popup appears that says "Your page has loaded. The refresh button will be available in five seconds. Click here to refresh now" and there will be a button to click for refresh and a progress bar. This window automatically closes and the user is returned to the browser after five seconds. There could also be a "Are you sure you want to refresh?" dialog box where the "Yes" and "Cancel" buttons randomly change position each time the dialog box appears.
  Re:Classic method? (Score:3, Insightful)
  Acid Test (Score:5, Informative)
  From TFA: OK...so IE7 fails the acid test...just like IE6. Are there any browsers out there (other than that patched-up Safari version) that have actually passed the Acid Test? Any of them available for use?
  Re:Acid Test (Score:5, Funny)
  No, because passing the acid test, breaks
  Re:Acid Test (Score:3, Funny)
  Wait, you mean IE isn't Atomic, Consistent, Isolated, and Durable? Oh wait, you're talking about a different Acid.
  Clippy for IE? (Score:3, Funny)
  IE Clippy: "It looks like you're trying to surf porn while avoiding spyware. Sorry, that just won't happen. Would you like to do it anyway?"
  Not ditching google and yahoo toolbar support ! (Score:5, Informative)
  Does it support W3C standards? (Score:5, Insightful)
  Microsoft wins if people allow IE7 to be a crippled browser in terms of web development.
  Re:Does it support W3C standards? (Score:5, Informative)
  Re:Does it support W3C standards? (Score:3, Interesting)
  I think IE have a problem.
  I think WE have a problem.
  Virtually no web developer can afford to produce sites that aren't compatible with Internet Explorer 5, 6 and 7. As far as end-users are concerned, it doesn't matter how crappy Internet Explorer 7's rendering engine is, websites will "just work" because us web developers must hide the problems in Internet Explorer 7.
  It's a vicious circle. They don't see problems because we hide them. We hide them because Internet Explorer is so popular. Interne
  Re:Does it support W3C standards? (Score:5, Informative)
  So IE7 will continue holding us back.
  Re:Does it support W3C standards? (Score:3, Insightful)
  Re:Another web developer here... (Score:3, Informative)
  Says only Alpha Channels have been added.
  CSS, HTML and JavaScript affect me more than PNG, but that's just me.
  Re:Does it support W3C standards? (Score:3, Informative)
  I hear this every time someone mentions web standards. The fact is that "Joe User" is not as stupid as we imagine, he just has other things on his plate, but he still wants all his web apps to work.
  Re:Does it support W3C standards? (Score:3, Insightful)
  In addition Joe Average User would care if he knew how much money companies, like his bank, spent on web developers writing work arounds because IE is broken.
  The Only Feature That Matters... (Score:5, Funny)
  Yes! (Score:5, Funny)
  Wow (Score:5, Interesting)
  First they violate their own guidelines by removing the menu from the top of the window. To boot, they made the UI a whacked around version of every other browser UI, with the back and forward buttons at the top next to the address and search bars, but the home button elsewhere and stop/reload mashed into one button at the other end of the address bar. They also don't have a dropdown menu on the back button, which is essential for getting away from sites that break that functionality.
  Suffice it to say, this is what we've got for "progress" thanks to microsoft's browser dominance. No true significant advancements in the technology because microsoft's held it stagnant for so long. Thankfully they've got competition now, so maybe things can improve.
  They've still got a long way to go.
  Why the menu is below the tabs (Score:3, Informative)
  To you or me, being able to use the menu at any time is a feature. To MS, however, it's a bug - it gives control to the user, which is basically anathema to the whole concept of a leveraged monopoly.
  My analysis may be a little paranoid, I'll admit.
  What a terrible "review" (Score:5, Insightful)
  "When only one tab is open, the tab bar is visible. At the right of all tabs is a small tab that immediately opens a new tab. This would make more sense as a button immediately to the right of the X to close a tab."
  Yeah, that's sensible, put the "open new" button right next to the "close" button, that'll make sense for 99% of the population who don't have perfectly precise mastery of the mouse pointer. He also talks about dropping non-IE browsers years ago because they were "unpolished" but then mentions he switched to CrazyBrowser, which is a cluttered mess in its default configuration! The entire article screams of unprofessionalism.
  Re:What a terrible "review" (Score:5, Informative)
  Yes, it is obviously a fanboy generated screed. I would like to see a real review of the browser by real web content developers who know about real UI design and what areas current browsers need improvement on. Wait there are a few reactions:
  A reaction by Molly Holzschlag of thewebstandards.org [webstandards.org], a reviewby Dave Shea [mezzoblue.com] of (CSS Zen Garden fame), or a review/reaction list on well known designer Shaun Inmans blog [shauninman.com]. But leave it to slashdot to link to some MS fanboy just to get a rise out of the flamthrower league.
  Weird Interface (Score:5, Insightful)
  "classic method of producing superior software"? (Score:5, Interesting)
  I'm not saying MS has never made a good peice of software, but in the past to dominate the market, price and vendor pressure seem to have been the preferred weapons. After they GET the market they have sometimes made a product that is amoung the best of breed (Excel would be my example here)
  Microsoft is slowly losing around here (Score:3, Informative)
  Totally inaccurate introduction (Score:5, Informative)
  I'm sorry but that is about as wrong as it can be. Every single "new" feature mentioned in the article is already present in every other browser that I know of as a built-in feature or an add-on. This refresh of IE is clearly borrowed from the competition. Unless IE7 includes more changes than what was mentioned in the article, it will still be behind the day it comes out in Vista/Longhorn.
  Oh the mirth! (Score:5, Insightful)
  Wow, that's the funniest and most completely bullshit sentence I have read all year. Nobody cares about the "evolution of user-centric design" (what the fuck is that supposed to mean, anyway? It's just 100% PR waffle, straight from the arse of a dihorettic bull), the general public variety of users don't know what they want, don't really care and shouldn't be given any say in the matter anyway.
  It's us DEVELOPERS who have to put up with the "nuances" (and that's being polite) of Microsoft's sub standard browser offering. It's our employers who pay us a fortune in man hours so that we can work round these "nuances". And it's our future careers that depend on browse consistency and the full implementation of standards like SVG and CSS3. I am absolutely gutted that Microsoft failed on every level to implement worthwhile technologies and bring their browser up to scratch, they insult us developers by implementing long-overdue PNG transparency which we can't use until everyone has switched away from IE5/6 anyway, and claim to have "improved" their abysmal CSS support.
  Who gets the real benefit from the new IE? The people who matter most. The mindless drones who will lap up any offering from MS, or get it installed on their PC automatically whether they like it or not. The people too stupid to have switched to a better browser already. The brain-dead end users have their silly tabs and phishing scam (read: user stupidity) filter, and we get nothing.
  Even if this is "just a beta" it demonstrates not days, not months, but YEARS... yes YEARS of freaking work and does not include any significant changes. It doesn't even deserve a new version number. We all know it already, but Windows is a joke, IE is a joke, and Microsoft are a joke who can't be bothered to do anything properly because as long as idiot uneducated users lap up their crappy products they have an enduring monopoly and there is not a damned thing we can do about it.
  I say us developers should lobby our employers to sue over lost profits. Microsofts failure to implement standards means we are still unable to deliver cutting edge software to our users, and we still have to put up with IE's goddamned quirks. Microsoft should be sued by every company on earth with its hand in web development and FORCED to bring their crap-pile browser up to scratch and keep it that way instead of pissing away their time making sure the browser interface is just the right degree of "fucking confusing" to send any sane persons hatrid of IE into critical mass.
  For lack of a better ending. GRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
  This may be off-topic (Score:3, Interesting)
  We already recommend Firefox to our customers as a superior alternative to IE. Our site is developed and tested primarily on Firefox, then IE for backwards compatibility. Even so, though, this issue has me concerned.
  Microsoft's "security" initiatives (Score:5, Insightful)
  It also seems that Microsoft is using all its "security initiatives" to intrude evermore into consumers' lives, get more data about them, sign them up for Microsoft services, and lock out competitors. With IE7, apparently there will be yet another layer of intrusion: phishing protection by sending all visited URLs to Microsoft. Do you really think the average user will think about the privacy implications of this?
  And let's not kid ourselves: Microsoft is not the only company doing this. Today I installed a Logitech mouse under Windows, and guess what -- it wanted to install a "Logitech messenger" to automatically get updates and deliver "product information". Spyware and adware, it seems, is becoming the norm, rather than the exception, even for "respectable" applications. Microsoft's interest in spyware maker Claria confirms this trend.
  Now, IE7 will offer some features which competitors have had for years to average users who would never try Firefox. This is a good thing, and as some have pointed out, the gigantic feature advantage that Firefox will retain (particularly its extensibility, but also upcoming improvements such as SVG support and super-fast back/forward) will hopefully drive more users to it. I can't help but wonder, though, whether we are witnessing the development of a massively polarized information society, where some will work and play in a maximally commercialized environment full of spyware and ads, and others will have free software, built by regular people in their own enlightened self-interest. And it seems that Microsoft, rather than AOL as was predicted in the early days of the Net, is the driving force behind this.
  Perhaps it is time to rethink the PC concept -- from what is preinstalled to service and support -- on the basis of free software. An "open PC" that comes with thousands of free applications and games as well as an Internet-based support and update contract could be an excellent deal. Lindows seems to have tried something like this, but they don't seem to be clued up enough to me to pull it off.
  When Microsoft Targeted Netscape (Score:3, Insightful)
  Classic method of producing superior software? As opposed to their classic method of spreading FUD, their classic method of "embrace, extend, extinguish", or their classic method of cutting off the competition's air supply?
  I'll grant that Microsoft did improve IE a great deal during the Netscape days, as one of the prongs in a multi-pronged attack on that company. Hell, history shows that the only motivation that Microsoft has for improving IE at all is competitive threat. The fact that they're starting to show some genuine improvement in IE again (after some years of stagnation) is testament to the fact that they're taking Firefox seriously.
  What distinguishes this from the Netscape days is that Microsoft already played their "integrate the browser into the OS" trump card, and their new competitor has no "air supply" revenue streams to constrict. On top of which, Google is demonstrating itself to be a damn clever producer of web-applications which are genuinely cross-platform, so the whole "embrace and extend" tactic is starting to show signs of fatigue.
  Microsoft might face a new challenge here: going feature-nuts on IE is one way to compete, but it's likely to open up new avenues of insecurity in a browser that already has the worst security track record. I don't think of Firefox as the be-all and end-all in secure browsing, but can Microsoft deliver the goods in security, even against a less-than-perfect competitor? I know they can bolt on features like there's no tomorrow, but it looks to me like security is the major root cause of Firefox migration at this point. Can Microsoft compete on security?
  Doesn't pass the acid test? (Score:3, Interesting)
  In some ways it's inferior to IE5 and IE6... (Score:3, Informative)
  Also, moving the tab bar away from the window makes it harder to immediately identify which tab you're on.
  Merged stop-and-reload is just plain daft. The only current browser I know that does this is Safari, and it's the biggest reason I use Shiira instead of Safari on Mac OS X. Is Microsoft copyng Apple's bad ideas again, like when they released the first version of Windows with cooperative multitasking despite having concurrent multitasking working first?
  Both these problems can be avoided by using the HTML control from another application, as you can see by the screen-shot of Crazy Browser.
  Merging the drop-downs into a single button is visually confusing and doesn't save any space. Putting some of your navigation controls on the opposite side of the address bar is also confusing.
  All in all, I'd say the user interface is significantly less consistent and more confusing than IE5 or IE6. This is almost a step back to the early days of the web when browsers seemed to be in a contest to see which could be weirder.
  PS: The search bar is just a copy of the search bar on every other browser out there, except the "select search engine" button is on the other side.
  PPS: Microsoft can't avoid the reboot when it installs IE, because it's replacing a component that it's using all over the system... they need to kill and restart every GUI program on the system to move the old control out of the way.
  How many CSS hacks will it break? (Score:3, Interesting)
  Will I ahve to remove them, so that IE7 renders properly? (But IE6 no longer does)
  Will I have to keep using the same hacks to get my pages to work?
  Will it ignore the IE6 Hacks, and render properly?
  Option #3 is by far the best, ignore the hacks like Firefox and Safari (and opera and the rest), and just render the page as intended.
  Microsoft getting old and slow? (Score:4, Insightful)
  Virtual Earth is nowhere near Google's offering, and IE7 really is just an attempt to prevent defections.
  It seems that Microsoft is trying to not look so bad, by offering something at least 'near' to what the competitors are offering.
  Also, if Microsoft finds an IT company that's doing very well for itself in a lucrative market, that's Microsoft's next venture. All of the good ideas don't come from Redmond.
  My eyes!!! The goggles, they do nothing (Score:3, Interesting)
  Please excuse my fixation on appearance and design as that is my line of work.
  This looks like garbage. Total fucking garbage.
  I realize it is a beta but I will assume Microsoft is using the standard def'n od 'beta' in that it is feature complete but with outstanding bugs.
  The entire interface is a bug. God, I don't even know where to start. The tabs are brutal, completely nonsensical placement between a menubar and the toolbar. Tiny, tiny refresh/stop button, one of the most used buttons in any browser and its about 10 pixels across. Tiny, tiny throbber - which is nothing new from old versions but again, is a vital part of the browser's user feedback. That sucker should be a lot more obvious (how much time have you spent staring at the stupid globe?). Also a second tiny icon toolbar, mixed with the menu... god damn, if they didn't set out to break every rule of good UI design, they have failed miserably in the interface department. I really can't believe how bad that is.
  And - where is the antialiased text? What year is it? My fuggin' PSP has antialiased browser text!
  I know it seems like I am freaking out a bit, but honestly, for one of the world's biggest software companies with more money than Satan to inflict this on such a huge proportion of the computing public is just kind of sick. This one app will deeply affect most computer users. And it sucks worse than practically anything else.
  Firefox devs, rejoice. You have handed the giant its own ass.
  Morons (Score:5, Insightful)
  From the review:
  The stop and refresh buttons are combined into a single button that is logically separate from back and forward. The button is "cancel" while a page is loading, and "refresh" when the page is done loading. There's no need to clutter the screen with more buttons.
  About the only feature of MSIE that I prefer over Mozilla/Firefox is the ability to click the stop button even after a page has fully loaded in order to stop those fscking animated GIFs.
  Morons!
  Official IE team's blog post on the toolbar topic (Score:3, Informative)
  Re:Its actually pretty good (Score:3, Insightful)
  fraudeliminator [mozilla.org] Shows a toolbar that indicates whether the site you are at is really the one you think it is. Utilizes constantly-updated blacklists and artificial intelligence. Helps prevent phishing.
  There you go. And the cool thing about FF is, that you can ADD to it. Without needing to wait until a big corp does it for you in a blackbox kindof way. (because the button is there it doesn't mean it's failproof or it actually works.)
  Re:Its actually pretty good (Score:5, Funny)
  "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Albert Einstein
  It has SFA to do with features (Score:4, Insightful)
  I haven't heard about any security enhancements to IE 7 but if we can assume any that have been added are on the same level of ability as "Genuine Advantage" then the Firefox developers have absolutely nothing to worry about.
  Re:Oh for god sake.... (Score:5, Insightful)
  While a review on a website probably doesn't accomplish this, the whole point to a beta is to get user input on bugs and other criticisms so that the end product is improved from what the engineers originally thought was a good idea.
  Re:Oh for god sake.... (Score:4, Funny)
  Re:Oh for god sake.... (Score:5, Insightful)
  Well to be fair IE 7 is a very important product release, whether it's a blazing success, or a tremendous dud. A beta 1 is usually fairly feature complete.
  Having said that, the so-called review was inane, poorly written, and obviously hacked together in no-time to try to get some namespace. The "reviewer" basically just shows a couple of screenshots, and hilariously claims that this is some great new paradigm, and it isn't IE 6 with some tweeks. No, my reviewing friend, IE 7 is IE 6 with some tweaks, and in some ways is inferior to some of the IE 6 "mods" (like MaxIE) released years ago. Perhaps there is something extraordinary hidden in there, but thus far it has been the most astounding is this it???? ever. That "reviewer" is yet another lame astroturfer praying that Bill Gates might read his gloating, tripping over himself "review" and hire him (which are pretty common, and universally pathetic).
  Re:Oh for god sake.... (Score:5, Informative)
  Waiting for the final release and then saying "this feature sucks" will, quite rightly, be met with the response, "Why didn't you try out the betas and tell us about it at that time?"
  Re:Man that Rocks (Score:5, Informative)
  You want IE7? Use Safari or Firefox.
  Re:tabbed browsing (Score:4, Insightful)
  Also, opening a fresh window instead of a tab is resource consuming.
  You can't middle click on link in IE and expect the page to be ready when you come to it.
  You can't pick up windows and rearrange them in the taskbar while you can do that with tabs (at least in many applications).
  The taskbar just doesn't suit as a tab bar replacement. It just doesn't.