A First Look at IE 7
Pages: 1, 2, 3
Built-In Search
IE 7 comes with built-in searching using popular search engines (see Figure 12). You can select the search engine you want to use--the default search engine will always be used unless you explicitly select others--or select Search Settings to set your favorite search engine as the default (see Figure 13).
Figure 12. Selecting a search engine to use
Figure 13. Setting the default search engine
Third-Party Toolbar Support
There have been some rumors on the Web concerning the blocking of third-party toolbars (most notably Google Toolbar and Yahoo Toolbar) in IE 7. However, I managed to install both of them on my Windows Vista version of IE 7; Figure 14 shows the Google Toolbar, and Figure 15 shows the Yahoo Toolbar.
Figure 14. Google Toolbar in IE 7 Beta 1
Figure 15. Yahoo Toolbar in IE 7 Beta 1
Note that Yahoo's version 5.6 may have an issue with IE 7 Beta 1, but the current release (version 6.1.1) should work.
Enhanced Security
In IE 7 Beta 1, secure sites now have the security padlock displayed next to the URL (see Figure 16). You can view the certificate information by clicking on the padlock icon.
Figure 16. The security padlock
IE 7 Beta 1 also includes the Phishing filter. Whenever you load an address, IE 7 will (in the background) check the address against a database of blacklisted URLs known to be phishing sites. When a site has been determined to be a phishing site (see Figure 17), you will have the option of blocking it or, if it looks suspicious, reporting it.
Figure 17. A known phishing site
Note that the Phishing filter is available only on the IE 7 Beta 1 for Windows XP. Support for IE 7 in Windows Vista will be available in Beta 2.
Summary
While the work on IE 7 is not yet done, Beta 1 does give a glimpse of the capability of the new and improved browser. The impending release of IE 7 will surely prompt other browser makers to improve on their offerings.
Wei-Meng Lee (Microsoft MVP) http://weimenglee.blogspot.com is a technologist and founder of Developer Learning Solutions http://www.developerlearningsolutions.com, a technology company specializing in hands-on training on the latest Microsoft technologies.
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Showing messages 1 through 6 of 6.
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copycat
2005-08-18 12:19:20 Oyku [Reply | View]
From what I have read here, it's a mediocre clone of Mac OS X Safari.
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Looks like Safari
2005-08-10 01:06:47 phreakout [Reply | View]
Is it just me, or does IE7 look remarkably similar to Safari browser.
Are they really that afraid of Apple?
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Disappointing article, average product...
2005-08-09 18:46:45 apocraphilia [Reply | View]
Pretty clear and well illustrated article, but failing to answer just about any question I had about IE 7. Sure it's a 'first look', but why 'first look' at the tabs? I've already got a tabbed browser - I'm not impressed by that. What's the CSS support like? Quirks mode rendering? JavaScript/AJAX support? The only thing people are saying about tabs in IE is 'finally'. The real discussion is (and has always been, for IE) standards support.
And not standards like RSS either - RSS in IE 7 looks faddish at best. Ignoring my personal preference - that RSS feeds belong in my messaging app not my browser (Thunderbird handles it quite well) - they better have a very slick tool to manage all the feeds people collect, or this 'feature' is going flop.
Oddly, the feature I actually thought was most interesting in the article is something I never actually do - print out web pages. But it still caught my eye because it suggests that Microsoft, in this case at least, is improving a feature that a lot of people actually need. But if improved printing, RSS 'support', some 'phishy' security features and tweaked back buttons is the limit if the innovation in IE 7, it's not going to win a lot of converts. -
Disappointing article, average product...
2005-08-10 07:02:06 trollll [Reply | View]
Agreed.
As far as standards go, they've made some progress (they should have after all this time...) but still have a long way to go. Basically it looks like, along with the tabs and RSS, they implemented a list of "IE can't even do this" and completely ignored the list of full standards that it should follow.
From IEBlog (http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/07/29/445242.aspx), they've fixed the following:
- Peekaboo bug
- Guillotine bug
- Duplicate Character bug
- Border Chaos
- No Scroll bug
- 3 Pixel Text Jog
- Magic Creeping Text bug
- Bottom Margin bug on Hover
- Losing the ability to highlight text under the top border
- IE/Win Line-height bug
- Double Float Margin Bug
- Quirky Percentages in IE
- Duplicate indent
- Moving viewport scrollbar outside HTML borders
- 1 px border style
- Disappearing List-background
- Fix width:auto
In addition we’ve added support for the following
- HTML 4.01 ABBR tag
- Improved (though not yet perfect) <object> fallback
- CSS 2.1 Selector support (child, adjacent, attribute, first-child etc.)
- CSS 2.1 Fixed positioning
- Alpha channel in PNG images
- Fix :hover on all elements
- Background-attachment: fixed on all elements not just body
From my perspective, they still have a lousy browser and will cause me many headaches for years to come.
But they have at least started trying, regardless of the motivation behind it. I have to give the IE developers major props for tackling this monstrosity head-on and taking every lump, criticism and outright flame that follows their posts to the community.
Molly has some intense posts (start here: http://www.molly.com/2005/07/28/thats-why-its-called-beta/ and check the following posts about how much flak she got just for posting it) about the work going on between the WaSPs and the IE team. Major props to her as well...
