Tag: internet explorer

Internet Explorer 7 Beta 3 Released

Post ImageMicrosoft today released Beta 3 of Internet Explorer 7. The main changes are around the user interface, though there are also improvements to tabs, RSS feeds, and security. You’ll have to uninstall any previous versions of IE7 before installing the new beta. According to IE General Manager Dean Hachamovitch, this is the last beta version, meaning we’ll see only release candidates until IE7 goes gold.

There’s a great overview of the interface changes up at the IE Blog. The stop, refresh, and search buttons have all been lightened, which is good as they don’t clash as much now. There’s horizontal lines separating the links toolbar from the rest now too! I don’t remember if Beta 2 had it, but when you type a URL in the address bar, the refresh button changes to become a “Go” button with an arrow. They have finally made the awkward image zooming from IE6 much easier to use as well.

And my favorite change? You can now drag and drop tabs to reorder them! I wish Firefox had this feature too, it’s so useful when you’ve got a lot of tabs open at once. IE7 isn’t the first to have this feature though, Opera 9 has tab reordering as well.

Read: Internet Explorer 7 Beta 3

Browser Extensions

Post ImageAs I mentioned before, I have been testing Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2. As part of my testing, I have been using it almost exclusively. Turns out, some pages simply do not render in IE7! Sometimes this is because the rendering engine has changed so much, other times its because of crappy programming on the part of the web developer. In any case, I found that I needed to load these pages in Firefox (sounds eerily familiar to when I started using Firefox way back when and had to view pages in IE).

I have had the IEView extension for Firefox installed forever – it lets you right click on a page or link and display it in Internet Explorer. Today I came across FirefoxView, which as the name suggests, lets you right click a page or link in IE to display in Firefox. I love it! The only strange thing? It’s a Firefox extension that adds things to IE – go figure!

I am starting to think my friend Kevin was right. We chatted last week about the two browsers and he remarked that unless IE had extensions like Firefox, there was no reason for him to switch. I have to admit, I wish IE had extensions like Firefox.

Grow up Google!

Post ImageSometimes companies do things that just leave you baffled. There’s lots of commentary out there that suggests Google is taking the evil away from Microsoft, and the latest bit of news seems to support that. Apparently Google is not happy with Microsoft’s new browser and the way it features MSN Search:

“The market favors open choice for search, and companies should compete for users based on the quality of their search services,” said Marissa Mayer, the vice president for search products at Google. “We don’t think it’s right for Microsoft to just set the default to MSN. We believe users should choose.”

So now they are lobbying the government, expressing concern about competition in the search business. Are you kidding me? First of all, it’s dead easy to change the default search provider in IE7 to Google (or anything else for that matter). Secondly, are they totally forgetting that they made a deal with Firefox to be the default seach provider (and start page too) in that browser? Or that they pay a lot of Mozilla’s employees? I mean seriously.

If you’re going to complain about something, at least make sure you’re not doing the very thing you’re complaining about. All too often Microsoft’s competitors run to the government. It’s kind of sad, really.

UPDATE: As this post explains, MSN Search is not the default search provider after all!

Read: CNET News.com

IE7 Beta 2 Released

Post ImageMicrosoft has released the latest test version of the new Internet Explorer 7 browser, this one titled simply Beta 2 (what the heck was with that Preview anyway). From the official IE blog:

We acted on a lot of the feedback and bug reports from the previous public releases. In particular, I feel good about changes we made based on reports from web developers around some CSS behaviors, application compatibility feedback, reliability data (yes, we do analyze the information that comes when you click “Send Error Report”), and user experience feedback. People on the team will post additional details about changes over the next few days.

Unfortunately you have uninstall any previous IE7 releases before installing the new one, but this is the last release that you’ll need to do that for. Apparently the rendering engine is now complete, which means that the way pages look in this release is how they’ll look in the final release too.

Most of the UI is the same as older releases, but it’s funny how small things make a big difference. The tabs now have a gradient that I didn’t notice before, and when you open a new tab, there is a “help” page displayed which is great for new users. A couple other things I have noticed:

  • If you right click a link and choose “Open in New Tab”, the new tab opens right next to the current tab, even if you have a bunch of tabs. Makes it easier to organize them which is nice!
  • When you press CRTL-T to open a new tab, the address bar does not receive focus which is incredibly annoying. I want to open a new tab using the key combo and then immediately start typing the address!
  • I still don’t get the “multiple home pages” feature.
  • I really love that the menu bar and stuff auto-hides when you enter full screen mode (F11).

So far, I quite like IE7. This release still uses quite a bit of memory, but that’s not really an issue at the moment considering Firefox ALWAYS uses more.

Read: Internet Explorer

MSN Toolbar has tabs, not IE

Post ImageOkay, let’s get something straight. Internet Explorer 6 and earlier versions do not have tabbed browsing. The recently updated MSN Toolbar does have tabs, and works inside of IE. So, Internet Explorer did not gain tabs, it gained the MSN Toolbar which has tabs. Is that clear? If I read one more article about how Internet Explorer now has tabs and they suck I am going to go crazy.

Internet Explorer 7, which is supposed to go into beta this summer, will indeed have tabs built in. And you can bet they will work a lot more like the Firefox or Opera tabs than the MSN Toolbar. Why? Because it’s integrated into the browser, it’s part of the design! Expecting the tabs in the MSN Toolbar to work better than they do is unrealistic. The toolbar is an add-on, and can only make use of what IE already has, and it doesn’t have tabs.

Glad we cleared that up!

Read: IE Blog

IE7 has tabs

Well it’s about time:

Yes, IE7 has tabs. Some people have asked why we didn’t put tabs in IE sooner. Initially, we had some concerns around complexity and consistency… will it confuse users more than it benefits them? Is it confusing if IE has tabs, but other core parts of the Windows experience, like Windows Media Player or the shell, don’t have tabs? I think we made the wrong decision here initially, and we’re making the right one now.

Now, where is the damn screenshot?

Read: IEBlog