My review of IE7 Beta 2.

[ServerMechanic]

I decided to bite the bullet and give the new version of IE a chance after I bashed it earlier. I think part of the reason I, and everyone else, bashes it is because it's way different than we are used to.

Just because my menu's were always one way doesn't mean I can't get used to something new. I hated how Windows XP's Start Menu was when it first came out. Now I like it.

I've been using IE 7 Beta 2 for just about 24 hours now and I am starting to like it. I can get used to the buttons on the right side (Home, Page, Tools, etc). I am also finding I prefer not to have the classic menu at all. Why do I need it?

At first I didn't like having the refresh and stop button over on the right. Now I do. I forgot how many times I used to accidentally click on refresh when I meant to hit forward or back. I still think the red X button should be turned into a stop sign so users don't get confused. Then again, why should we cater to the user. I remember when software was just for geeks like us. We know what that red X is for without having it be a stop sign shape. We're geeks. I kind of like it like that.

The tabbed browsing works very well. I really like the little button between the far left tab and the 'plus' symbol that looks like four square boxes. It give you a nice thumbnail view of what your tabs are. You can then click on one to view. This is nice when you have a ton of tabs open like I do on a daily basis. Some days I can have 10-12 tabs open at the same time.

Right now there are still somethings that don't work right but that's OK since it's a beta. For example:

-If you click on "Help" and then on "Send Feedback" either on the icon or the classic menu the help icon disapears until you resize the browser.

-If you leave your view set to the thumbnail view of the tabs and you minimize the browser, when you open the browser back up it's on the last tab you views and not on the thumbnails.

You can submit feedback here like most people are doing and also read what problems are being found.

http://www.microsoft.com/communities/newsg...xplorer.general

Another one of the cool things is the fact that you only have one drop down for the forward and back buttons. No need to click two different buttons to figure out what site you want to visit. Forward and Back history are now combined.

Right now you can choose from either Google or MSN for the search providers in the search box in the upper right hand corner. You also have the option just like in Firefox to add more search engines.

I think right now that more people are used to the way that IE has looked for the last 5 years and they don't want to accept a change this radical. I agree there are still things that need changed but for the most part it runs well.

I was quick in the beginning to bash it but I decided to keep and open mind and see how I liked it if I just used it for a while.

Here's a thumbnail of what it looks like. Click on the picture to view full size.

Thanks for reading. :)

[diablofan]

Good article man

[majortom1981]

I get popups like mad with ie explorer 7 beta 2. Also a lot of websites froze the browser on me and aim triton doesnt work with it.

IF they fix these problems when its released ill use it but its still to buggy for me.

[Scirwode]

Good article. I like IE6 and I like IE7 even better. But I am not so blind as to think that IE is the best browser as there are even better browsers out there such as Firefox, Opera, Safari and Flock. With IE7 however, Microsoft is doing something which I hope is an advantage for the web browsing community. One thing I like to see in IE7 is a download manager as I've lost the countless times downloads are cut off and I have to restart from scratch again. Again though, I keep my mind open on it ;) .

PSG22

[Sparticuz01]

I also am trying IE7 Beta2. I find it comes to a halt and freezes up when I have more than 10-15 tabs open. Firefox does the same, but around 20-25 tabs. I usually have around 12-15 tabs open.

[+Elі Subscriber²]

Good review, I'm also starting to like it more now after Im discovering all the new features it has, It still freezes up sometimes but well that's nothing to be surprised about, that's why its called a "Beta".

[FlibbyFlobby]

I quite like the IE7 2 beta preview, but there are a few changes I would personally like to see:

- XP Icons for the XP version of IE7.

- The new tab button should always show the picture of a new tab, not just on hover.

- The favourites centre should close only when you left mouse click a link, if you middle click to open in a new tab is should remain open so you can middle click more tabs.

- The find on page feature needs to cycle through the results like the Firefox find feature.

- When you pin the favourites centre to the side of the browser it should remain like this when its reopened, and there should be a button to unpin it again.

- The stop and refresh buttons should be a single button, like in previous betas, and the go button should be seperate button next to it.

- The feeds button needs to stay greyed out on websites that have no feeds, and if they're is multiple tabs its should only reflect the tab being viewed.

- The tab order should be rearrangable by dragging and dropping them on the tab bar.

- Tear off tabs would be nice.

- Single window mode would be really nice, when you click a link in MSN Messenger for example it opens a new window no matter how much I play with the tab options.

- Tabs should be rearrangable via the quick tabs pane.

- The icon in the title bar needs to change from the IE "E" logo, to the webpage with the "E" logo on it.

[andrewhaji]

Looks like it's finally starting to fall into place. That's the nicest the interface has ever looked.

[yuyingfenpiao]

good.

I found a bug or let's say a problem with IE 7 Beta2 on my Windows XP Sp2 ENG. this problem also occured when using Beta1.

when i shut down my computer normally and then next time start my computer, sometimes i find that IE is asking me whether to recover the active desktop and showing the white screen on my desktop. and if i click yes, it will give me a dialogue box saying that something wrong happened and unable to recover the active desktop, so everytime it happens, i have got to go to the display property to reset my desktop....

[MiamiGuy]

I get popups like mad with ie explorer 7 beta 2. Also a lot of websites froze the browser on me and aim triton doesnt work with it.

IF they fix these problems when its released ill use it but its still to buggy for me.

Note that the new Internet Explorer 7 does make mutli-client instant messaging programs like Trillian to crash along with some cases in stand alone instant messengers.

[smartbuddy_82]

Ya even i have remigrated from Firefox to IE7 Beta 2 after more than a year.

I am beginning to like it now. Good review Server Mechanic :)

[ServerMechanic]

Thanks guys for the nice comments. Appreciate it. :)

[BajiRav]

Does anyone else notice that you cant goto windows update thru the new Tools ribbon ? its available only in classic menu.

[chopyaedoff]

I'm using it now - It's great now that it can display transparent PNGs but it is still as bad as IE6 at ACID2.

[Kr0z]

Thanks guys for the nice comments. Appreciate it. :)

(Y)

Good writeup. Enjoyed reading it.

I now run IE7 Preview on my home pc and I have to admit that I haven't used Firefox since.

I'm happy with IE7.

[Phalesafe]

good review (Y)

The only real thing I have noticed and want fixed is that if a webpage has a close window command on a link it will close the whole thing including your tabs :pinch:

[osirisX]

IE7 Public Preview is a great improvment over IE6. I just dislike how the tabs bar doesn't just have tabs. Imagine having heaps of tabs open in the squashed up space.

[JRosenfeld]

This is stand alone PC, XP SP2 all updates, one user account with admin rights. Install of IE 7 went smoothly and the browser works fine (after a few hiccups as I was learning to use the new features and adjusted some new options in Internet tools), I like it much better than IE6 and it is on a par with the IE based tabbed browsers I have also been using. THe feed reader is particularly good and easy to use.

But, has anyone else got the following strange change, after installing IE7:

The cookies folder in C:\Documents and Settings\username\Cookies

does not show the cookies .txt files as it did with IE6, but instead has exactly the same content as the user's temporary internet folder, (so cookies show as name, internet address, etc in cookies folder as in Temp internet files folder, cookies folder also contains all the downloaded web page component files, which it certainly did not with IE6).

Furthermore, exactly the same contents appear in C:\Documents and Settings\LocalService\Cookies and in

C:\Documents and Settings\LocalService\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5, I don't recall that being so with IE6.

I used to inspect the cookies.txt files in the cookies folder using Notepad, but now they aren't there as such. However, copying a line from the cookies folder to, say temp folder, the copy is the cookie .txt file!

The index.dat files have becomne completely invisible to the user (I used to be able to see the index.dat file for my temporary internet folder, using disk clean up, highlight temporary internet files, click view files, even made a short cut from there to my desktop of my content.ie5 folder, which also showed the index.dat file; it no longer does so.

If I use index.dat suite, it does find the index.dat files and I can view their contents from there BUT if I set it to clear them on restart, it now also erases all the saved cookies!! Same happens if I use CCleaner. Clearing temp internet and offline content from Internet options does preserve the cookies, though.

If it's just my PC, I'll try uninstalling/reinstalling, so grateful for feed back on this.

Edited February 3, 2006 by JRosenfeld

[Winky]

Reply:JRosenfeld

No need to re-install.

I have the same cookie file handling feaures.

I'm sure someone can tell us how this plays into the OS file system

that this browser will be a part of...

[BigGiantHead]

How do I open a saved page into a new tab without IE opening a new windows as Opera does it. Another eg: If I access my Mail through MSN messenger it opens up a new IE window instead of opening a new tab in the existing window.

[gahbmwM5]

Thanks for the write-up, as I too am getting more comfortable with it, and think it will fine @[Release] Gold build to public...

This may have been mentioned (in one of many IE7 Beta 2 threads), but just in case I found this on the [temp] IE7 Newsgroups @microsoft.public.internetexplorer.general:

"Many people have asked about being able to move the menus to the top

in IE7. The below registry key will move the UI element that contains

the menu and 3rd party toolbars to the top of the window. It is

unsupported at this time, but if you are interested in trying the UI

configured in this way feel free to give it a shot and send us your

feedback.

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet

Explorer\Toolbar\WebBrowser]

"ITBar7Position"=dword:00000001

As always, use caution when editing the registry. This value can be

deleted or changed to 0 to put the menus and 3rd party toolbars back

in the default location."

[ServerMechanic]

Thanks for the write-up, as I too am getting more comfortable with it, and think it will fine @[Release] Gold build to public...

This may have been mentioned (in one of many IE7 Beta 2 threads), but just in case I found this on the [temp] IE7 Newsgroups @microsoft.public.internetexplorer.general:

"Many people have asked about being able to move the menus to the top

in IE7. The below registry key will move the UI element that contains

the menu and 3rd party toolbars to the top of the window. It is

unsupported at this time, but if you are interested in trying the UI

configured in this way feel free to give it a shot and send us your

feedback.

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet

Explorer\Toolbar\WebBrowser]

"ITBar7Position"=dword:00000001

As always, use caution when editing the registry. This value can be

deleted or changed to 0 to put the menus and 3rd party toolbars back

in the default location."

If anyone tries this I'd be interested in knowing how it works. I'm on a different PC now so I can't try it myself. I'll try later when I get home. :)

[JRosenfeld]

Reply:JRosenfeld

No need to re-install.

I have the same cookie file handling feaures.

I'm sure someone can tell us how this plays into the OS file system

that this browser will be a part of...

Thanks for confirming that it's not just me. I don't know if it's a bug or by design. I have sent a report by email to [email protected] (the address given in the IE team blog).

[curme]

So will IE7 make Maxthon obsolete? Or will Maxthon's plug-ins still make it a better tabbed-IE browser?

[Lare2]

For me the browser itself is ok. but i can't stand the looks of it, it doesn't fit with windos xp. ;)