So, Microsoft have finally coughed out an update to Internet Exploder, eh? At least, they’ve released a public beta of it. This should be quite an exciting moment - the first update for Internet Explorer for around five years, and probably the first major update since Windows 98.
Well, the interface has been streamlined a bit. Your ability to modify it has certainly been “streamlined” as well; in fact, there are many aspects of the new interface that you can’t move around at all. Considering the flexibility you get in Internet Explorer 6, that’s a bit disappointing.
The two biggest additions to the interface are a search box in the top-right, exactly as you find in Firefox - although Microsoft’s naturally defaults to MSN Search rather than Google, a setting Microsoft are at least wise enough to allow you to change - and a neat little RSS button, almost exactly like, er, Firefox. This button allows you to subscribe to fine RSS feeds, keeping you up-to-date on your favourite sites - even without having Internet Explorer open. It updates its feeds as a Scheduled Task in Windows. What it does with them then is a mystery, I didn’t keep it around long enough to find out.
The other major addition is tabbed browsing. As anyone who’s converted to Firefox knows, tabbed browsing can revolutionise your browsing experience. Microsoft have augmented it with a neat little feature, which bears a remarkable resemblance to an aspect of Mac OS X. At the press of a button, you’re presented with miniature thumbnails of all your open tabs, allowing you to flick to the one you want with ease.
Let’s not forget the Phishing Filter (I’m surprised they didn’t go for “Phishing Philter”), which supposedly warns you if you end up at a dodgy web-site. Not stolen from NetCraft at all, then.
It’s an improvement on Internet Exploder 6, no doubt, but the interface is currently horrible. Not quite as ugly as the default Firefox theme, but getting there. It is also unusably slow on my clockwork computer, so it’s been exorcised. IE6 is all I need, really.
But IE7 is a good step in the right direction, and stealing successful ideas then improving on them has always been Microsoft’s forté.
