View and vote on the article here: Software Review - Internet Explorer 7 Beta 1
Software Review - Internet Explorer 7 Beta 1| Category | | | Summary | | During October 2001, Internet Explorer 6 was released. Almost four years passed since then. Finally, the new version is presented to developers. Microsoft continues their policy "Security over Compatibility" and teaches their new browser how to |
| | Body | General Information & Installation:
On July 27th 2005, Microsoft made a first Beta of their new browser generation, Internet Explorer 7, which is also integrated into Beta 1 of Windows Vista (also known as Longhorn) available for developers and registered beta testers.
The beta will only install on Windows XP Service Pack 2. It has not been decided yet if there will be a Windows 2000 port, but it seems unlikely, considering that Service Pack 2 for IE 6 was only available along with SP 2 for Windows XP. On the contrary, the developers announced via their blog that there will be support for Windows 2003 Server as well as for XP x64.
Looks and Likes:
After the installation and reboot you would be positively surprised that after the first the system boots this (quite large) update does not mess up your system in any way (it seems). Secondly, IE 7 does not set itself as the default browser. Even with the first start there is no message whining about how IE 7 should be your first choice. There is another nice improvement, when you type a URL into the Windows Explorer address bar it actually opens the standard browser and not necessarily IE. This feature surprised me the most since I would have not even noticed it and stumbled on it by accident.
At the very moment the program starts the user notices the first optical changes. The top right corner is now displaying a search bar. Just like FireFox it can also search AOL, Ask Jeeves, Google, MSN and Yahoo. There is no way of easily adding new search engines to the list, but according to the IE developers blog this feature will be added. For the moment IE 7 does not remember the last search engine setting before a browser restart, but at least you can freely set the default.
The next thing to notice is tabbed browsing has been added. It also works the same way as FireFox. A click on any link opens the linked site in a new tab. However, there is an aesthetic issue with the feature. There is a very small "empty" tab visible at all the times (if clicked a new empty tab will be opened, but this seems quite senseless because a new tab can be opened with CTRL + T or right clicks in the area). It is more of a personal feeling whether you are annoyed by it or not.
The most major visible change is the arrangement of the entire interface. Right under the title bar there's now the address bar with back and forward buttons, as well as some adaptive button which work this way: When a page has been fully loaded it is set to reload, while it is on a site that is loading it is set to stop. This makes the user feel quite retarded because Microsoft obviously fears that someone is pushing stop even when a page has been already completely loaded. However, the developers unfortunately didn't think about that someone could halt annoying midi music or silly flashing gif-animations with the stop button in previous versions. It will be missed now and then.
Positioned under the address and search bars, there is the tab space. The arrangement of the address and tabs bars CAN NOT be changed for the moment. This is confusing and also disturbing. Corresponding to the unfinished feel of the interface, the development team mentions that it is in a rather early development state. It's quite likely that there will be massive improvements done to Beta 2.
Finally, there are the menu and standard button bars (like Home, E-Mail, Edit, and History). At least you can switch the position of these, but they can't be positioned like in IE 6 with the menu bar above the address bar. The last thing that remains is the links bar, which works just the same way as the favorites bar in FireFox. You can drag-and-drop single favorites as well as entire folders into it or manage them in the bookmark manager. This is very similar to the ones from previous IE versions. The links and the standard buttons bar can be removed by now, but no other part of the interface can.
Features and Jokes:
Enough of the cosmetic issues. Looking at the internals: IE 7 comes along with the already known pop-up blocker as well as the privacy advisor (to block cookies). The really new feature is the phishing filter. For those who are not knowledgeable with this terminology, phishing means tricking a user into revealing personal information (e.g. some "bank institute" needs your account number because of fatal system failure). The phishing filter first checks a list of a locally stored copy of legitimate sites, then searches the visited site for suspicious content and if found, gives out a warning on screen and you can look up the suspect on an online list of known phishing sites. This is frequently updated by Microsoft. This means giving away information about browsing behavior directly to Microsoft, but it seems to be not that bad of an idea. This may possibly be the most sensible new feature. Especially for computer newbies who would actually give away their account information on the net. For those who do not wish to be babysat the phishing filter is disabled by default and first asks for permission to do its work.
The next new feature is quite a joke. Microsoft calls it feed discovery. It basically consists of the possibility to enable a sound to be played whenever a rss feed is found on the currently viewed page. However, the detection system seems to be far from working. It neither detected zZine's or the Missions Network feed. It can't even find the rss feeds on microsoft.com (!). Even if it finally manages to find a feed, IE 7 simply generates an index of the news feed on its own site and offers to add this site to your favorites. The user now has a single page with an index of the current news. The interested reader may think about this for a moment. The user would have exactly the same content as when they accessed the original site that contained the rss feed. So why would anyone use that unless they want the Internet Explorerish look of the generated index? This is probably one of the most senseless "feature" ever to be implemented in a program.
File Transfer:
There is not much to say about downloading files: Nothing has changed. There is not an included download manager or a supported file resume. Even if you cancel a download and then re-download the same file again the transfer will start from the beginning of the file.
Like in earlier versions, you can still open FTP folders with IE. The handling of it seems to have been changed slightly. After typing in the URL, the FTP folder now opens in a new Windows Explorer(!) window. It seems a bit bugged since opening a folder needs a huge amount of system resources. The pro is that the possibility of accessing an FTP folder with user name and password typed into the URL (like ftp://user:pass@ftp.server.net) has returned. This feature was removed from IE 6 with a recent update, apparently for security reasons; since the URL was submitted in plain text it could be sniffed quite easily. The risk for a normal user to be spied on for FTP server passwords seems fairly low and the chances that someone could abuse the attained information for a malicious purpose (e.g. deleting files on the FTP server) is even more minimal.
Security and Standards:
At the current state, there is no information available about possible security holes in IE 7. For an up-to-date list of known security issues with IE 6, visit: http://secunia.com/product/11/
There are however some reported bugs of IE 7 to be found here: http://channel9.msdn.com/wiki/default.aspx/Channel9.InternetExplorer7Bugs
Apart from the above mentioned Phishing filter, IE 7 claims to contain a cross-domain barrier feature. In theory, it should prevent exchanging/redirecting content between different documents. After thinking a moment about the implications, it seems quite unlikely Microsoft would invent something like this. This would break multiple systems, e.g. Microsoft's own passport system. At this moment, it's impossible to say if this feature is already active and/or what it actually does.
What comes in quite handy is that SSL connections are now easier to recognize. While surfing on a SSL secured web site, an icon will show up next to the address bar. Clicking on it shows information about encryption strength, the certificate used for encryption and the authority which issued the certificate.
When it comes down to web standards, IE 7 invents support of png alpha channels. This enables web designers to come up with some impressive site designs, since they can now create overlaid graphics. Additionally, the handling of CSS has been improved and some bugs have been removed. According to Microsoft, further work on CSS is in progress.
As for stability, I have not encountered any problems during multiple hour testing. I have tried out close to everything I could think of (Flash, Multimedia Playback, Java, JavaScript and Active-X). The only error I encountered was when starting up ICQ, there are two cryptic error messages displayed, but after clicking them away everything would work fine (including ICQ ads).
How to uninstall it:
The Beta does come along with a nice uninstall mechanism which works just the way one would expect . In the add/remove software window with "show updates" enabled, IE 7 Beta is listed as one of the updates. One click on remove brings up a nifty notification with a list of programs that had been installed after IE 7, claiming that those programs may not work without IE 7. After ignoring this, IE 7 will be removed and after system reboot IE 6 will be back.
Conclusion:
On a personal note, I'm very disappointed with IE 7. The browser does by far not meet the high expectations set into it. This seems especially surprising considering the success of FireFox during the past year and the decreasing popularity of the IE series. However, compared to the previous version, IE 7 brings a few good inventions with it. First to note is the phishing filter, followed by improved CSS handling and alpha channel support for pngs. Tabbed browsing and the search bar cannot really be considered new, for you can get both features for older versions with the MSN Toolbar. The new interface may or may not attract you, but hopefully it can be altered in Beta 2 or the final version. What I personally like best about IE 7 is that it really starts to keep out of my way as long as I do not set it to default browser.
It also has to be mentioned that IE 7 uses a reasonable amount of system resources (about the same as FireFox) and generally runs stable (what you should not expect of an early Beta). All in all IE 7 compared to FireFox seems a bit faster in handling Flash content. However, while within the IE family, version 7 is with no doubt the best of them just yet in Beta stadium. I can not come up with a single good reason for FireFox users to switch back. On the contrary, I would advise any computer novice to go for IE 7, as it does a quite good job in babysitting. This is not a bad thing after all. On this occasion someone should acknowledge Microsoft's policy invented with Windows XP SP 2 "Security over Compatibility". It is the right way to head and is hopefully continued and improved with Windows Vista.
Resources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_explorer
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/workshop/essentials/whatsnew/whatsnew_70_sdk.asp
http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/
Secunia - Security issue list for IE 6: http://secunia.com/product/11/
Bug Reports for IE 7: http://channel9.msdn.com/wiki/default.aspx/Channel9.InternetExplorer7Bugs
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This article was imported from zZine. (original author: gmw)
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