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IE 7.0 Beta 2 Available to the Public

Posted by Zonk on from the download-and-test-for-it-is-enjoyable dept.

spyrochaete writes "Microsoft has just made available their latest beta preview build of their Internet Explorer 7.0 web browser. New features such as tabbed browsing and RSS subscription are summarized in an animated tour. MS welcomes feedback at the Internet Explorer 7 newsgroup." There's also a Channel 9 interview available, as well as commentary on the IEBlog. Update: 01/31 19:58 GMT by Z : prostoalex wrote in with a link to a review of the release at PC Magazine.

18 of 422 comments (clear)

  1. first look - running dialogue by Tumbleweed · · Score: 5, Informative

    Okay, first start it up, and you get a web site with a broken image and 'errors on page'. Nice.

    Somewhat goofy interface, reminiscent of Opera. Oy. How do I turn off these cartoony buttons?

    Built-in phishing protection = good

    Okay, load the company's homepage:

            Layout seems perfect.

            Uhoh - dig the heavy main font; THAT ain't right. Something as basic as font weight is fucked up? Very bad. It looks like everything is bolded now. :( The fonts _look_ nice, though, unless they're italic, then they're hard to read. Definitely some font issues going on here.

            It's also slower with the menu changing background colours. Probably because of debugging code in the beta. I hope.

            Okay, quick check to see if IE6 is still on here...aaaannddd...of course not. Fuckers. Okay, let's check in Firefox, yep, what I thought. IE7 is messing up some of the menu's CSS effects - sometimes putting an underline under some of the items when it shouldn't. Still beta, so no biggie.

            Okay, load company site 2:

            More sophisticated layout, layout still fine. Good.

            Okay, load company site 3:

            Much more sophisticated layout, and front page layout looks fine, but visited link colour is wrong.

    Built-in close-tab X on each tab, but only when focused on that tab. Better than default FF behaviour, but they should take a look at Tab Mix Plus extension features.

    Okay, let's check the Options!

    Popup blocker defaults to off? Bleh.

    Prompt to save passwords on forms defaults to off? Bleh.

    AHA - font problem solved - installing IE7 turns on ClearType: MONDO STUPID. Turn of ClearType, restart, fonts are back to normal. Whew.

    Okay, so, it seems to load Slashdot well enough.

    It remembers many IE6 settings, but others (like preferred fonts) it does not. Not a biggie for a beta.

    So, all in all, not bad for the first public beta.

    Same ctrl-T to open new tab as in FF. Bueno.

  2. pre-install note: by Tumbleweed · · Score: 4, Informative

    You must do the 'Windows Genuine Advantage' thingy before it'll install.

    1. Re:pre-install note: by grcumb · · Score: 3, Funny

      "You must do the 'Windows Genuine Advantage' thingy before it'll install."

      Ok, that explains it. I figured the mirrors were just slow:

      user@ubuntu:~$ sudo apt-get install msie7
      Password:
      Reading package lists... Done
      Building dependency tree... Done
      E: Couldn't find package msie7
      user@ubuntu:~$
      --
      Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
  3. Re:Once again... by CastrTroy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Microsoft cannot survive developing new features at its current pace. 5 years between releases for SQL server and and 3 years for most other applications is too much. We haven't had a new IE since 2001. Meanwhile, new versions of the competing open source solutions are being released every year, sometimes more often, with tons of new features. At this rate, in 10 years, MS software will have a quarter of the features of the competing open source products.

    --

    Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
  4. FC4 by czarangelus · · Score: 4, Funny

    I'm going to beta test it right now... in Fedora Core 4. And I'm gonna send an error report if it doesn't work, too.

    --
    When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.
  5. Re:Ad blocker? Not true by Tumbleweed · · Score: 4, Informative

    No - I just loaded a site with google ads and they showed up just fine. At least, for their regular text ads, not the rumoured upcoming graphics/flash ads. I don't know if those are even out yet, though.

  6. Re:Once again... by bersl2 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's not the number of features that's important; it's whether you implement the important ones well.

  7. Preview tab is sweet by twbecker · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I like that you can preview all the tabs you have open in one spot, and either switch to them or close them from there. Honestly, I expect that IE7's tabbed browsing will be better than vanilla Firefox. Firefox gets several things wrong out of the box (which are being fixed for FF2.0, and are available in trunk builds now).

    --
    "The problem with internet quotations is that many are not genuine" -Abraham Lincoln
  8. Re:ACID2 test? Not even close. by Tumbleweed · · Score: 4, Informative

    IE7 ACID 2 test screenshot - I just loaded it, and did this screenshot. Not even close, though that shouldn't be a surprise - MS has already said it wouldn't pass the test. FF doesn't pass it either, mind.

  9. Just FYI by GillBates0 · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Just because I know a number of you n3rds here will try to see what the IP address that is reported as a "Phishing website" on the penultimate page of the tour is, I already checked. It belongs to MSFT itself.

    http://207.68.142.106/contoso/enroll_auth.html
    Search ARIN WHOIS for: 207.68.142.106
    OrgName: Microsoft Corp
    OrgID: MSFT
    Address: One Microsoft Way
    City: Redmond
    StateProv: WA
    PostalCode: 98052
    Country: US
    NetRange: 207.68.128.0 - 207.68.207.255
    CIDR: 207.68.128.0/18, 207.68.192.0/20
    NetName: MICROSOFT-CORP-MSN-BLK
    NetHandle: NET-207-68-128-0-1
    Parent: NET-207-0-0-0-0

    I always wanted to see Microsoft blacklist itself in one of it's intricate series of patch releases, security alerts, and spam filters. Now my life is complete.

    --
    An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
  10. Re:Once again... by robgamble · · Score: 5, Insightful

    They didn't need a new IE until Firefox started creating bona fide competition.

    --
    No sig for you!
  11. How to bypass the WGA (really) by acariquara · · Score: 4, Informative

    1. Get the hacked iecustom.dll (google for it)
    2. Download the beta. DO NOT RUN IT
    3. Using WinRAR or 7Zip, unpack the executable (right click it)
    4. Go to the "update" subfolder
    5. Replace iecustom.dll with hacked one
    6. Run UPDATE.EXE (not setup.exe)

    done.

    --
    Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all
  12. Fixed attribute by mla_anderson · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Still no concept of position: fixed in IE7. Ugh.

    --
    Sig is on vacation
    1. Re:Fixed attribute by eggz128 · · Score: 3, Informative

      Are you sure? The original Complex Spiral works for me.

  13. Re:ACID2 test? Not even close. by bahamat · · Score: 3, Informative

    For comparison purposes, here are also:

    The reference rendering.
    Safari rendering I captured with Grab.

  14. Re:IE Is Still an Alzheimer's Patient.... by Mr.+Underbridge · · Score: 4, Funny
    Firefox is using just 24.8MB of memory.

    Did you know that the abbreviation for gigabytes is GB, not MB?

  15. Re:ACID2 test? by SleeknStealthy · · Score: 3, Funny

    Haha...that is hilarious, I guess I should pay better attention. Thanks for pointing out my error. Joe

    --
    Math
  16. My take by astrosmash · · Score: 3, Interesting
    The Good:
    1. They haven't tried to reinvent the wheel with respect to tabbed browsing and search. They got it mostly right. As a Firefox and Safari user I generally feel at home using IE 7, which is a pleasent surprise.
    2. I like the placement of the new-tab button and close-tab buttons. (Better than Firefox)
    3. Clicking on a web page's orange XML icon brings up an RSS reader instead of dumping raw XML. (Better than Firefox, again)
    4. Real zoom. Try this: view this web page in IE7 and hit Ctrl-+ a few times, then do the same in Firefox. Huge difference; beats Firefox again.
    5. Although the old menu bar is gone, the old menu accelerators still work; e.g. Alt-F shows the old menu bar and displays the file menu as expected.

    The Bad:

    1. They *still* don't have smooth scrolling working correctly. In fact, mouse wheel scrolling in general is very slow and choppy. (Actually, it appears to be OK on some sites, crappy on others)
    2. It's a surprising rough release. It's quite slow at loading, scrolling, and resizing, and has crashed a couple of times for no apparent reason. I'm surprised they released it like this, beta or not.
    3. Lots of rendering errors, too. I don't know if that's because of actual bugs, or because IE is *now* rendering correctly and the IE5/6 specific web sites are wrong.
    4. IE *still* doesn't render large tables until the entire table has loaded.
    5. Unacceptably large memory usage (over 70 MB of VM after a few minutes of use)
    6. Draging links or text onto the tab bar or doesn't work as expected; Can't drag text at all onto the tab bar, which is one of may favorite features of both Safari and Firefox.
    7. I don't like the lack of menu bar. I'm dreading the thought of having to explain over the phone to my parents how to open the options dialog.

    Bottom line: There isn't enough here to get me to switch from Firefox (or Safari :p), and if they don't reign in the memory usage I doubt I'll even install it, but when I have to use IE on a friend or co-worker's machine, I'll be very glad if they have IE7 installed.

    --
    ENDUT! HOCH HECH!