Looks like you can download a beta preview version of Internet Explorer 7.
My first impressions, typed as I’m using it
- Looks good. Has a built in search box like, well, pretty much every other browser.
- Gets the box model right.
- Tabs are controlled by the same keystrokes as in Firefox and Safari.
- Most sites look the same as before, not much should be needed to whip sites into shape.
- Ooh, the File, Edit, View menu has gone. Isn’t that bad from a UI familiarity point of view?
- ‘This site might required the following add on: ‘Microsoft (R) HTML Viewer from ‘Microsoft Corporation’. Click here to allow the control to run…’. Huh?
- Where’s the reload page button?
- Oh, it’s on the other side of the address bar, along with the ’stop loading page’ button.
- Those back/forward buttons are pretty ugly. Almost jagged around the edges.
- Hmm. You can only close a tab by first selecting it
- To change the default search engine in the browser, you have to go to Microsoft’s site to do it. That’s a little creepy.
- Ooh, support for the alpha channel in 24 bit PNG images. About fucking time.
- Coffee and feeds still doesn’t work. Must be my shitty code then.
- Pretty neat built in RSS reader. Lets you filter the feed you are currently reading.
- Uses the same RSS icon as Firefox. Good. It’s not as intuitive as it could be (looks like a wireless logo), but it’s better than the XML one.
- The status bar is on by default.
- A pop up blocker is on by default.
- It doesn’t offer to remember your usernames/passwords by default. This, I think, is a good thing.
- Hang on. The reload button turns into the ‘Go’ button when the contents of the address bar doesn’t match the URL of the page we are on, but doesn’t change back to reload if you change what’s in the address bar back. All this time, the stop button can still be clicked. That’s silly. Safari does this much better - when the page is loaded, the stop button turns into the refresh button. Why would you want to stop a page from loading that has already loaded. Considering they seem to have tried to minimise what’s outside the web page display area, it doesn’t look like they’ve thought that bit through.
- The quick tabs feature is pretty neat. It will show you selectable thumbnails of all the tabs currently open. Although having said that, I’ve just uninstalled an extension from Firefox that does the same thing because I never used it…
- Built in reference book search? Wha?
- Still a pain in the arse to disable Javascript
- Really don’t think much of the shiny gem type buttons and tab backgrounds. Makes the page titles a little hard to read.
- While we’re on the subject of buttons, there’s not much to distinguish between the ‘Favourites Centre’ and ‘Add/Subscribe’ button. Why not use the new RSS logo for ‘Add/Subscribe’.
- The dwarf ‘New Tab’ tab should always have it’s icon visible. Why am I clicking on a tab to open a new tab? I want to be clicking on a button.
Meh, back to work.
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