Microsoft IE 7 Goes (More) Beta

Hans W. Smith writes "Microsoft has unveiled Internet Explorer 7, releasing the new "preview" version of its Web browser to the general public for testing. The latest version works only with Windows XP Service Pack 2 and includes many of the features Microsoft has been touting for months such as: privacy protection,tabbed browsing and a search box similar to Firefox. They tried to outdo Firefox tab browsing with a feature call Quick tab which shows thumbnail view of all open tabs in a single window." Yup, you saw it yesterday. Posting before coffee never works.

Ready for prime time?

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently it passes the Acid2 Test [webstandards.org].

It quick renders Digg.com [digg.com] (sometimes it takes ages on IE6), but I can barely click on the One Pixel Banner [onepixelbanner.com].

Re:"Quick Tab"

[masklinn]

Or the Tab Sidebar [blueprintit.co.uk] one which has more or less the same goal, but loads the thumbnails in the sidebar instead of creating a new tab with the thumbnails (it's basically a tab bar with thumbnails)

Say what you like about IE

[ninja_assault_kitten]

But if looking at the progress between Beta1 and Beta2 I'm thoroughly impressed. The UI concerns I had with Beta1 have all been addressed. I really like where they seem to be going.

Wandering

[Elixon]

It looks like it takes ages to implement few useful features in IE. The same features that are many times already available for the same or competing browsers as third-party plugging or extension that are developed by one or very few geeks.

Is it that Microsoft is short of geeks? Is it so complex software that third-party developers are more effective and progressive then in-house developers?!

Anyway, why are the browsers evolving so slowly? Look where is the 3D gaming industry! Look what progress they did. And now look what progress we (browser vendors) did on the WWW! I don't think that there is less money on the web then in the gaming industry...

So why is it?
(Is the main reason the insufficient cooperation ? Don't they see that competition in this area instead of cooperation hurts everybody? Look where IE ended up with thier individual and aggresive stance.)

Re:IE7 is a dupe!

[masklinn]

Not exactly, the copy of the omniweb feature would be Tab Sidebar [blueprintit.co.uk] (which is the exact duplicate of the Omniweb implementation)

Re:css fixes?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can "fool" it to run on other Microsoft Windows versions of the NT-family by:

1.) Unzipping/extracting the distro file's files to an IE7 folder

2.) Deleting the UPDATE subfolder that formed under it

3.) Deleting the shlwapi.dll in that IE7 folder you made & extracted the IE7 distro files to

4.) + lastly creating a BLANK FILE called IEXPLORE.exe.local with notepad.exe & putting it into the IE7 folder you made & extracted all the files from the Ie7 distro into.

* :)

(Fact is, in doing THAT above myself? Well, I am running/using it to post here in fact, right now, on Windows Server 2003 SP #1 fully hotfix patched as of this date).

APK

P.S.=> It runs SLOW, but works so far (not much testing). I still like Opera 8.51 better because it is SO much faster (noticeably so)... apk

Adblock

[edmicman]

Where's the adblock extension for IE? Thats a good chunk of the reason I use FF over IE, just so I can turn off all the crap that I can't in IE....I might be tempted to try out IE7 at work, though....heh, I feel "guilty" using FF for looking up things and whatnot :-P

Re:SP2?

[rwven]

MS does seem to think the answer to any and all security problems is enabling that danged firewall. Since when will a firewall protect you from an E-Mail virus? (Not that viruses have anything "directly" to do with security all the time...) But the thing is, dealing with the windows firewall is a hassle. If I want a firewall, i'll get a router and use IT as a firewall. (which i have by the way). Hardware firewalls don't completely get in the way like software ones do.

Microsofts stance on security would be best placed in tha area of finding and plugging holes. Part of me wonders: Does MS have any team of people that look for security holes in windows? Or do they just wait until some 3rd party comes out with a release about a newly discovered hole and THEN decide to fix it.

This isn't intended to bash MS, because i use and pretty much depend on their products, but it is meant to maybe gander at their priorities. As a USER of their software I probably care about MS security a lot more than the people who DON'T use it and just bash it on here. :-D I do feel secure in using windows for the most part, but due to past hiccups it's just that nagging feeling... It's just an awfuly big target and THAT makes all the difference.

IE7 Still has incomplete PNG support

[Kasracer]

If you open up a QuickTab page, PNGs do not show themselves correctly.

To check, look at my site in QuickTabs (www.binaryidiot.com)

Re:Thumbnail view

[Spad]

Seamonkey has the functionality built in - no need to piss about with endless extensions.