Engineers View

I had the opportunity to install IE7 beta 2 to test out some of the sites I am working on. I thought since I had the chance to use it I'd write a quick review. This is not a comprehensive review, just some of the things I noticed during my web application testing.

Executive Summary: If you've used nothing but IE6 for the past few years then you'll soon be getting some modern features in your browser. If you compare IE7 beta 2 to Firefox or Safari, you'll likely be rather disappointed.

Installing it was easy. I did have to uninstall IE7 beta 1 first which was uneventful save for the warning that all the patches that had been applied to the system (and Adobe Acrobat reader) might not work anymore. I uninstalled it anyway, and everything worked.

I also had to validate that XP was "Genuine" before it would let me install IE7 beta 2 (I find that offensive, but that's a whole other post).

As an added bonus you get the "Microsoft Malicious Software Removal Tool" along with IE7 beta 2 - you can opt out of the install if you'd like.

It seemed to render the same as IE6. I hit a few sites and they looked as they should. I also tried my photo gallery Ajax application, and it worked just fine. The main reason I was testing with IE7 was to test an Uber Ajax application I am working on, and it worked with that application without modification.

The IE7 UI has moved some of the standard controls around. Specifically it moved the stop and refresh to the right of the URL area. Why they did that is beyond me - seems kind of silly to throw away all that learned behavior.

There is a new RSS reader which is a photo copy of Safari's RSS reading mode, with the addition of instructions at the top that tell you what an RSS feed is and how to subscribe. If you don't already use an external reader, and only use IE, this might be nice for you.

Along with moving the standard controls around, they moved the menu bar way off to the right. It took me a minute to find it - not sure why they did that either.

I thought it was funny that the only search engine they had defined was MSN Search - it's only a beta, and I am sure they'll add more. I tried to add one and couldn't figure out how. Most of the buttons were disabled (It's beta though). Most of the other "Internet Options..." settings are the same as IE6. I could not find the equivalent of "hide the tab bar when there is only one tab", though I just quickly looked.

To make a new tab you click this little partial tab knob thing to the right of the other tabs - the way you figure this out is you hover over it and then it shows a new icon. When you make two tabs the "show all tabs" control appears to the left of the tabs and shifts the UI around.

Anyway enough about the UI.

I was saddened to see some of the little things that bothered me about IE back in the day were pretty much the same. For example, with Firefox or Safari if I type "slashdot" in the URL the browser is smart enough to figure out I want http://slashdot.org. IE on the other hand goes to MSN Search and searches for "slashdot". I hated that, and it's the same in IE7 beta 2.

Javascript errors are still horrid in IE7 beta 2. "Object Expected" with a bogus line number and file, and "Undefined value" with no other helpful information are still the same. I looked but couldn't find a Javascript Console like Firefox, Safari, and Opera have.

I also heard it could pass the Acid 2 test - it didn't.

I purposefully tried to find things I liked about IE7 beta 2, and here are a couple.

The favorites organizer is pretty nice. You get this quick popup where you can add and remove items. The delete is right there so hopefully people who have 20,000 bookmarks they never visit actually delete some. It's like the Firefox side bar, but doesn't take up the viewable page.

The Zoom feature is kind of nice (down on the lower right). You can zoom in and out of web pages in a Photoshop like way.

From just my quick testing it seems like IE7 is IE6 with tabs, an RSS feed reader, and the UI moved around (to confuse the heck out of people?). I also didn't test the anti-whatever features of the browser. If you only use IE, I am betting you'll be digging the new features, if you use Firefox or Opera right now... move along nothing to see here. As always I encourage you to check out the application for yourself though.