/misc/ramblings/techno/geek

Internet Explorer 7 Beta

I'm on a machine that has the IE7 beta installed on it. I've had a brief chance to play around with it and have already settled on a list of what they got right and what they got wrong. While I do realize that this is beta software, something tells me that this list of things, is here to stay.

Right:

1. The rendering engine. I've always found IE6 to render pages faster than any version of Firefox. IE7 doesn't disappoint there.
2. Tabbed browsing. Microsoft finally decided to make tabbed browsing part of IE7. However, it's not all peachy (see the Wrong list).
3. Anti phishing. I haven't had a chance to test it, but it looks like IE7 has a built-in anti-phishing component. It appears to want to check a Microsoft website against the URL.

Wrong:

1. Toolbars. Microsoft, why oh why do you insist on telling me YOU know best where to put my toolbars. In IE7, the menu bar has been moved below the address bar and the tab bar. You're stuck with the address bar and the tab bar where they are. You can't move them. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
2. Tabbed browsing. See #1 under Wrong.
3. Bookmarks. You still don't have the ability to highlight and move or delete more than one bookmark at a time. I have hundreds of bookmarks! Why is it that bookmarks seem like an afterthought to you?
4. The links toolbar. The buttons for the links toolbar don't auto resize depending on what the link says. For instance, if I have a button on my links bar to digg and I name it "digg", the toolbar button is just as long as if I'd named it, "digg - a very cool website that I visit often". Come on.
5. Mouse gestures. Don't exist.

As you can see, the list of wrongs is certainly longer than the list of rights. I could have made the list of wrongs even longer, but I decided that it boiled down to extensibility. IE7 just isn't extensible. Us Firefox users are spoiled. I've gotten to the point where Firefox does exactly what I want it to do. It handles bookmarks the way that I want it to, it handles toolbars the way I want it to. In short, it does what I want it to. I can live with a slower rendering speed.

Microsoft are you listening????