Microsoft IE 7 Goes (More) Beta

Hans W. Smith writes "Microsoft has unveiled Internet Explorer 7, releasing the new "preview" version of its Web browser to the general public for testing. The latest version works only with Windows XP Service Pack 2 and includes many of the features Microsoft has been touting for months such as: privacy protection,tabbed browsing and a search box similar to Firefox. They tried to outdo Firefox tab browsing with a feature call Quick tab which shows thumbnail view of all open tabs in a single window." Yup, you saw it yesterday. Posting before coffee never works.

Comments

Re:IE7 is a dupe!

[Anonymous Coward]

. . .which in itself is still a copy of OmniWeb for Macintosh; which has had this feature for a while now. ;) (http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omniweb/)

Re:Thumbnail view

[sucker_muts]

So much for IE having features that FireFox does not.

How many regular browser users ever change a setting for that browser? How many firefox users install extensions?

Microsoft realises the mose people use software out of the box, and never touch settings. They don't expect the mainstream of people wil tweak into oblivion and so they choose to make a browser which has everything as it should as default.

(This is about the same way opera does their browser. Did you ever check how many extensions there are for firefox? Are they all the same quality/stability? Do you check all those extensions once a month to see for any new ones?)

Look, I'm not trying to be a flamebait here, but simplicity is key for the most Microsoft software users. It's just that simple...

MS flip flop

[NoSuchGuy]

Didn't Microsoft tell me about 2 years ago that their customers don't want tabbed browsing?

In 5 years they tell everyone they invented tabbed browsing years befor Opera and Firefox...

Its still not firefox

[jmazzi]

They seem to be just copying firefox, but it's still gonna be lacking in two major areas. Extensions and Security, in my opinion, are what makes firefox stand out.

Now, I am an Opera fan

[beforewisdom]

As I was reading this article I kept thinking how MS copied these features that already existed in firefox and being annoyed how MS would get the glory for them all.

I realized at that point, I had become one of the many Opera fans who have made similar posts about firefox and how Opera had x,y, & z first.

Re:"Quick Tab"

[zrenneh]

I know it's no trouble to the slashdot crowd, but if the average user doesn't know how to change their homepage, how will they install the many extensions required to bring Firefox initial functionality up to the standard of IE. Firefox has many benefits for nerds, but it isn't as functional out of the box.

Re:Thumbnail view

[Ubergrendle]

Mod parent up. I consider myself a bit of a software gear-head (love to try everything and the kitchen sink, tweak until the cows come home, etc) and I've stopped experimenting with the plug-ins. Most work -- by themselves! But once you get 20 or 30 plugins running, the often conflict in terms of user experience, and ultimately lead to browser instability.

Don't get me wrong...I won't be going back to IE. But I think a 'vanilla' version of Firefox or Opera is what most people will be considering, when moving away from IE. a better approach would be to 'adopt' plugins into the base code with each major release...gradually increase the featureset, that can be enabled/disabled via the default install.