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IE 7.0 Beta 2 Available to the Public
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.
Okay, first start it up, and you get a web site with a broken image and 'errors on page'. Nice.
:( The fonts _look_ nice, though, unless they're italic, then they're hard to read. Definitely some font issues going on here.
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.
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.
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.
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
They didn't need a new IE until Firefox started creating bona fide competition.
No sig for you!