MS releases public IE 7 beta
- Thread starter volt
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There is something "spooky" about IE7. I can't quite put my finger on it, but I definitely get the feeling that people less familiar and comfortable with computers will freak when they see this and want their old IE6 back. Not bad though, once I got the ClearType disabled (CRT). I was a bit disappointed that IMDB.com is not yet listed as an add-in search engine, but you can't have it all, right?
It's going to be a toss-up between IE7 and Opera for me. I never really liked FireFox, but IE7 and Opera both have features that I consider real progress. I suppose Opera has more features, but that may change once IE7 matures a bit. I suppose the "whole new system" will mandate a 7.5 release soon after it goes final, as opposed to the small changes that have been made to IE6 over the years. It's going to be really tough to choose between them. I have Opera (and FireFox) installed, but I have a tendency to use IE6 (before). However, now that IE has changed and I can have Opera on both Windows and Linux, I get the feeling I might become a full-time Opera user unless I quickly fall into an IE7 habit, which would be slightly odd since it is much like Opera. Hmmm...there is just something about using Microsoft on a Microsoft OS though....decisions decisions...
And thanks for the heads up :smile:
It's going to be a toss-up between IE7 and Opera for me. I never really liked FireFox, but IE7 and Opera both have features that I consider real progress. I suppose Opera has more features, but that may change once IE7 matures a bit. I suppose the "whole new system" will mandate a 7.5 release soon after it goes final, as opposed to the small changes that have been made to IE6 over the years. It's going to be really tough to choose between them. I have Opera (and FireFox) installed, but I have a tendency to use IE6 (before). However, now that IE has changed and I can have Opera on both Windows and Linux, I get the feeling I might become a full-time Opera user unless I quickly fall into an IE7 habit, which would be slightly odd since it is much like Opera. Hmmm...there is just something about using Microsoft on a Microsoft OS though....decisions decisions...
And thanks for the heads up :smile:
Well, there are really only three options for Windows users so that's about the size of it.DemoCoder said:
I could really care less about this aspect of it. I have never encountered any problems when using IE6, it just works. I like the speed and it feels right. I don't need ten thousand options and features to use the Web. For me the usefulness of the Web is really only affected by the available bandwidth and the ease of the interface. Granted, the interface is something you learn so by simply using a product you will like it more in this regard, but I always found Firefox to be the least attractive of the three.
On that note, I am not sure I like the new look and feel of IE7. I'm using it in the default presentation mode and haven't really looked around to change it. I have a tendency not to customize programs too much. I find this helps when trying to relay information about a product to another person, as most people are likely to use the default configuration.
So,, I guess it's just progress compared to themselves. Even though IE was very alone at the top of the browser "market", I still remember the Netscape days and often compare it to that when looking at how it progresses. Given that Netscape was never able to catch up with IE I think goes to show that progress was made. Or was Netscape just that bad?
Don't read into this that I am overjoyed with the progress IE has shown. It's just that overall there has been so little progress on this front in my opinion. I think it's all pretty awful, but I am at the mercy of those who create these things so I can only try to enjoy what I am provided with.
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radeonic2 said:
Sure, but for me it was a 7 minute download, and that's on my broadband connection. Ahh the joys of 384/384. Not everyone has a 4 megabit connection, even though 7 minutes isnt that bad, its down right annoying since I cant even load a website during that time.
Dsl?Skrying said:
ya low speed "broadband" sucks these days when you've got lots of people like me with multi megabit connections who don't mind big downloads
Finally fired up IE7 (rebooted) and I agree it could scare people since the UI is much different.
Interesting phishing filter.
Anybody noticed blurry nav menus?
i.e http://techreport.com/reviews/2006q1/aiw-x1900/index.x?pg=9
The nav menu text is blurry.. anti aliased?
both browers at 100% zoom/ medium text, infact I can't change text size with ie7.
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Sigh...for some reason my entire 5 paragraphs of review just vanished. As it goes, here is my redone, cut-down less-than-stellar version. (arrr, I can't remember everything I typed )
I've ben using IE7 since the early Betas a long time ago. I love it. I used to use and love Firefox, but that was before it became a mainstream "i'm so 1337 I use Firefox. Look at my 'Spread Firefox' banner" Ego-stroker of a program. It may have superior qualities, but now it just pisses me off.
*edit* Duuur. Forgot to add my response to your post Radeonic. I can't see the fuzzt text on my end, but I think I know what you mean. In the past whenever i'v gone to enable AA for a game (such as 2xQ), ran the game than gone back to windows, all of my text seems blurry, as if it were Anti-Alaised...wierd.
I've always preferred IE's streamlined, simplified design. I've been absolutely enjoying these Betas of IE7. There are a couple of niggle issues I have with it, as to be expected. The first is with images...If you open an image that's larger than the window frame size, and hit the little "Display at full size' button, then,while the button is still visible, scroll down the page, it smears down in a tiled fashion. This happens every time and is a bit of an annoyance. The other is that the Broswer never actually closes for me...For instance, say I open two seperate IE7 browsers and use them for a short while. When I close them, if I fire up Task Manager later on, the two IEXPLORER.EXE processes are still running, and I have ti kill them manually. This isn't such a big issue when you've got loads of ram like me, but it's annoying seeing so many processes running at once.
While I understand new users who have been using IE4/5/6 previously may be a bit thrown off the new design, much like I was, I think they'll grow to love it quite fast. Within 20 minutes I wa absolutely loving it..it's fast, streamlined, secure, and fully customizable.
It's got my vote.
(note..after re-writing this it's came out more like me bashing Firefox. This isn't the case, and I just lost the will to put any effort into my post because it got wiped before...so lame.)
)I've ben using IE7 since the early Betas a long time ago. I love it. I used to use and love Firefox, but that was before it became a mainstream "i'm so 1337 I use Firefox. Look at my 'Spread Firefox' banner" Ego-stroker of a program. It may have superior qualities, but now it just pisses me off.
*edit* Duuur. Forgot to add my response to your post Radeonic. I can't see the fuzzt text on my end, but I think I know what you mean. In the past whenever i'v gone to enable AA for a game (such as 2xQ), ran the game than gone back to windows, all of my text seems blurry, as if it were Anti-Alaised...wierd.
I've always preferred IE's streamlined, simplified design. I've been absolutely enjoying these Betas of IE7. There are a couple of niggle issues I have with it, as to be expected. The first is with images...If you open an image that's larger than the window frame size, and hit the little "Display at full size' button, then,while the button is still visible, scroll down the page, it smears down in a tiled fashion. This happens every time and is a bit of an annoyance. The other is that the Broswer never actually closes for me...For instance, say I open two seperate IE7 browsers and use them for a short while. When I close them, if I fire up Task Manager later on, the two IEXPLORER.EXE processes are still running, and I have ti kill them manually. This isn't such a big issue when you've got loads of ram like me, but it's annoying seeing so many processes running at once.
While I understand new users who have been using IE4/5/6 previously may be a bit thrown off the new design, much like I was, I think they'll grow to love it quite fast. Within 20 minutes I wa absolutely loving it..it's fast, streamlined, secure, and fully customizable.
It's got my vote.
(note..after re-writing this it's came out more like me bashing Firefox. This isn't the case, and I just lost the will to put any effort into my post because it got wiped before...so lame.)
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IE negatives for me (dont have IE7 yet)
no tabbed browsing
no download manager
no quick access to manage privacy (clear forms, history, cookies, etc)
deleting cookies and cache in IE is really slow
IE doesn't resume downloads as good as Firefox
search bar sucks compared to Firefox plugins
IE security holes and stealth BHO (browser helper objects)
Plugins for Firefox more plentiful and useful
poor web developer support
non-compliant to standards/broken rendering
popup blocker difficult to use compared to Firefox
no RSS support
Frankly, given the spyware/security holes of IE, I'm apt to NEVER use it again.
IE6 is completely inferior to Firefox on all fronts, so the addition of new chrome and tabbed browsing to IE7 is not likely to be a big selling point to me. And I said that as an IE user from 1998-2004. (I avoided Mozilla/Netscape/Firefox back in the alpha/beta days)
But then again, I'm a developer, and IE's broken standards support also heavily influences me.
no tabbed browsing
no download manager
no quick access to manage privacy (clear forms, history, cookies, etc)
deleting cookies and cache in IE is really slow
IE doesn't resume downloads as good as Firefox
search bar sucks compared to Firefox plugins
IE security holes and stealth BHO (browser helper objects)
Plugins for Firefox more plentiful and useful
poor web developer support
non-compliant to standards/broken rendering
popup blocker difficult to use compared to Firefox
no RSS support
Frankly, given the spyware/security holes of IE, I'm apt to NEVER use it again.
IE6 is completely inferior to Firefox on all fronts, so the addition of new chrome and tabbed browsing to IE7 is not likely to be a big selling point to me. And I said that as an IE user from 1998-2004. (I avoided Mozilla/Netscape/Firefox back in the alpha/beta days)
But then again, I'm a developer, and IE's broken standards support also heavily influences me.
DemoCoder said:
no tabbed browsing - added in IE7
no download manager - erm, ok but I find download managers useless and more of an annoyance
no quick access to manage privacy (clear forms, history, cookies, etc) - tools > options > delete cookies, delete files, clear history. How much easier do you want it? I set the history to 0 days and check the box to empty cache on browser exit, works like a charm.
deleting cookies and cache in IE is really slow - not unless you haven't emptied it in a very long time, I like to set the size limit to around 1GB as well.
IE doesn't resume downloads as good as Firefox - true
search bar sucks compared to Firefox plugins - true
IE security holes and stealth BHO (browser helper objects) - true but fixed in IE7
Plugins for Firefox more plentiful and useful - true but IE7 has quite a few more features by default
poor web developer support - If you say so, I wasn't aware of this being an issue.
non-compliant to standards/broken rendering - Don't care, if every site displays fine I don't consider it a problem, and to be honest, the only sites that don't work with it are typically those coded specifically for Firefox using standards the web designers know IE doesn't support. I can't stand those sites that display a banner, or even worse don't even load in IE while displaying a link to download Firefox.
popup blocker difficult to use compared to Firefox - I disagree but I guess that's all based on opinion.
no RSS support - added in IE7
Btw, is this build stable enough to install on your primary machine or should I just wait for final?
Edit: Only installs on systems with SP2, fuck that.
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ANova said:
I've been running each beta 24/7 on my main machine with no critical,head-over-heals-os-annihilating-errors so to speak of. I'd give a thumbs up to use as on a primary OS in it's current state.
As for SP2...disable Security Center and a few other lame servics it adds...where's the problem?
ANova said:
You'll find them less of an annoyance when IE breaks a file download and progress and you're trying to search out where the damn partially downloaded file is, due to IE's stupid default behavior "let me dowload to a temp file called QXYZ in a hidden folder and then COPY it to the final file destination at the end"
Firefox: CTRL-SHIFT-DEL or Tools -> Clear Private Data.
Like what? You just acknowledged that IE6 was massively lacking in features behind Firefox and that it mostly caught up. So what was added in IE7 that Firefox doesn't have?
It's a massive issue for developers. Firefox is so much easier for debugging web pages.
You don't care, even though it is causing massive problems for web developers, leading to wasted $$$ and resources on sites, and increased bugs on websites. You don't care that Microsoft is deliberately fucking over everyone else but shipping a shoddy product, bifuricating the market. How did you feel when IHVs shipped GPUs which implemented broken features and held back progress?
Firefox doesn't care what OS or patch level you have. But then, I guess architecting a web browser so it doesn't need patches in the core of your OS doesn't count for much.
radeonic2 said:Dsl?
ya low speed "broadband" sucks these days when you've got lots of people like me with multi megabit connections who don't mind big downloads
Finally fired up IE7 (rebooted) and I agree it could scare people since the UI is much different.
Interesting phishing filter.
Anybody noticed blurry nav menus?
i.e http://techreport.com/reviews/2006q1/aiw-x1900/index.x?pg=9
The nav menu text is blurry.. anti aliased?
both browers at 100% zoom/ medium text, infact I can't change text size with ie7.
That's because IE7 uses ClearType fonts (antialiased). You can disable it under internet options -> advanced. Some sites won't allow you to change font size because that's how their CSS is structured -- but it works fine here on techreport.
DemoCoder said:
This doesn't happen that often, unless you're behind a slow connection. Most of the time the file will resume from where it left off as long as you save it to the same location.
One more button to push, I feel so sorry for you. As I said, you can configure it to be automatic as well.
Actually, Firefox alone has very few features built in, it's the plugins that give it added functionality. IE7 comes standard with alot of new features.
Not a very good counter argument. Broken features on GPUs led to those advertised features not being available to their paying owners. IE users (the vast majority for the past 6 years) did not experience any broken features or buggy sites, nor did they pay specifically for IE. This issue hasn't even come up until recently because of Firefox's relatively large adoption due to the insurge of malware and viruses using IE's vulnerabilities. Now that people find some sites display incorrectly in Firefox it's become a huge deal.
Don't try to push Firefox on me please, I get enough of that. In fact I already have it installed along with Opera and I'm well aware of all the browsers. I prefer Opera, it's much faster, has many more features and is very configurable. In fact I prefer IE over Firefox because it works well and it's fast, the only reason I stopped using it is because of its vulnerabilities.
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