July 28, 2005

Props to Jared Sutton for getting this out to the masses tonight. I installed the newest browser from Microsoft, Internet Explorer 7 beta 1, on my Windoze install this evening. I write this with mixed feelings, and I think to clear up those feelings I’m going to have to use it for a little while longer. But tonight I bring you the first look.

The install was clean and straightforward - the usual Microsoft install. I have to say that MS does most installs pretty well, and this is no different. It didn’t even hijack my settings of Firefox as default browser. And, compared to previous versions of IE, which took forever upon startup to finish installing, this version was fast on the restart.

The first thing I noticed was the interface. It’s pretty klunky, at least for me coming from Firefox where the tab is the bottom object. For some reason, this strikes me as a window in a window. I played around with the settings for a few minutes, but I didn’t hit on a way to put the File menu and all that stuff above the tab bar.

The next thing I saw as I was hunting through the toolbar was the “Phishing Filter.” This looks promising, and I’m tempted to open one of those “Your eBay account has been suspended” emails just to see what it’ll do.

Next I was eager to see what kind of RSS support they built in. It’s pretty bare, to be honest.

So what better way to test out this new feed thing than to go to my site and see what happens? But wait…mounty’s corner could be trying to phish you…

Sure enough, the feed discovery worked…sorta. I actually have three feeds - RSS 0.92, RSS 2, and Atom. Sadly only the RSS 2 feed came through here.

I think IE’s feed engine is also a little less forgiving that most. I’ve never had problems with my feed, but IE won’t render it.

So what happens when I hit a site that has a well-formed feed?

RSS feed support was one of the big selling points of IE 7. Tabbed browsing was another one. You’ll notice that in some of the shots I’m working with two tabs. I hit the idea - what about opening a link in a new tab? Just right-click…

Finally, since MS is a big security stickler, they got a little more noticable about bad site certificates:

So what’s the first impression? Well, truth be told, it’s okay. It’s a start, at least. There are things I still want to play around with - could it be that IE 7 supports 3rd-party plugins? - and there are plenty of hard sites to throw at it and see what it does or doesn’t do. But they’ve gotten themselves off to a good start. I just hope that further changes and updates include some cosmetic and usability issues, because right now it just looks plain yuck. Installer available upon request.