Slighty off-topic IE7 review.

[Howard_Casto]

The beta 2 for internet explorer 7 has been out for a while and since I just made a fresh restore point I thought I'd give it a try.  I didn't really expect it to be much more than a bundle of glitches considering it's beta status, to my suprise it works well.  It actually seems to work better than ie6 already. 

The interface is cleaned up and supports those nifty tabs everybody likes. Middle clicking on a link automatically opens it up in a new tab.  I thought that was a nice feature.  Also nice is the integarated search bar just to the right of the address bar.  By default it uses msn search, which is of course useless,  luckily it has plugins for more useful search engines like google and yahoo.  After changing it I found it to be quite a time saver.  The favorites bar automatically closes itself now oe you navigate to your site, which is quite an improvment to the toggled behavior it used before.  If you liked it the other way though, you can optionally revert to the old functionality.  What I don't like, however, it the slightly muted favorites icon that represents that toolbox.  It's a tiny, tiny star icon.  I'm sorry, but I liked the heart, it was apparent that they were favorites that way, now you have to think about it.  The home icon is also muted in color as is the print and other icons.  I think that's my only complaint visually, they tried so hard to give it a clean look (assumingly for vista) that the icons are less self-explainatory.  One thing I'm glad they did was to get rid of the menus and those gi-normous navigation buttons.  All menu selections are consolidated into a tiny "tools" icon that opens up a start-menu like drop-down box.  Your two useful navigation buttons (forward and back) are in the upper left, next to the address bar, while refresh and stop are on the other side, which makes sense when you think about it. 


In additon to favorites you also have the option to add favorite rss feeds, which are now supported natively.  Also new is a hotlink row just below the address bar, which puts you in the mind of the quick launch feature from xp's start menu.  I found it quite useless and turned it off, but I suppose those who have very few favorites might find it useful. 



When I tested the thing I expect half of the fancier pages not to load to my suprise they all did.  Now because this version of ie has more security checks you'll go through a lot more of those "click here to install activeX applet" thingys but it's worth it.  I can honestly say that I've noticed a difference in security.  I went to some shady sites known to have nasty viruses and exploit code in them and ie7 caught em all.  Something new in the security options that I noted was the option to turn off any applets or code that attempt to maipulate local files.  This will prove to be VERY useful in the future for fighting viri.  Also something to note is that pop-up windows are now forced to show their url. This is quite useful for blacklisting sites and for getting direct urls to newgrounds games. 


Speed seemed to be improved overall, with most sites loading slighty faster than ie6 save a few of the fancier ones, which loaded at a speed comparable to ie6.  One thing to note is that upon the very first launch (just after install) the dang thing is sloow to load... and I mean slow. I mean you'll think it locked up slow.  I mean go get a sandwich and watch some tv cause this is gonna take a while slow.  After that first time, though, all is well.

That is my ONLY real complaint though.  I'm running the ie7 beta right now and barring some major breakage of functionality I haven't found yet my guess is it'll stay that way. 

I suggest everyone give it a try and comment on their results.  Just remember that it's a beta though and thus you should backup your ie stuff just in case. 

[sWampy]

I always hate to see Microsoft come out with new versions of their software,  almost instantally people will start adding ie7 only crap to their web pages just to try to prove they require the latest and greatest, causing great pain to people using unix/linus/apples/etc.

[headkaze]

Interesting Howard, thanks for the brief review.

I'd rather not try it right now, so perhaps you can answer a few of my questions on it. I'm not new to the tabbed browsing in IE, I've used a modified version of IE called MyIE2. But it's nice to see native IE finally catch up.

First of all I'm very dissapointed that it takes so long to load. That's a real bummer. Even tabbed browsing dosn't really make up for that. I don't like having IE running all the time, but I do want quick access to IE.

I've heard that IE7 is a memory hog. Can you comment on the memory usage compared to IE6?

Also, my major gripe with IE6 has to be it's history function. It's really a horrible tring to find that site "I saw about two days ago about so and so". The search is horrible, going through a tree view of every site is plain crap. Have they fixed this in any way. I mean a fully featured search with sorting etc. If not it's a real shame.

Also, does IE7 have a function to restore all your currently open pages if it crashes? Or say, a quick bookmark of everything you have open? Really a feature that would be handy when IE crashes or you need free RAM so you have to quit IE, but wan't to go straight back to all the pages you were browsing. Something like "Bookmark currently open tabs". Kinda like a short term favourites or something. If not, M$ should pay more attention to functionality.

Also, better organization options in Favourites would be nice, like "Check all sites", to check if all pages are still up. They really need full screen views for these types of things, so you can go in and manage your favourites, removing the old ones and sort and organise the new ones. Pretty obvious stuff I know, but M$ seem to really like missing the obvious.

[Howard_Casto]

I always hate to see Microsoft come out with new versions of their software,  almost instantally people will start adding ie7 only crap to their web pages just to try to prove they require the latest and greatest, causing great pain to people using unix/linus/apples/etc.

 
And thus they should as like it or not, ie is by far the most widely used browser period simply because there are more pcs than any other type of computer and there are more pcs running windows than any other os.  With that being said, ie has went to some lengths to get back to html standard, but you've gotta ask yourself, should it even be considered the standard when the majority of intenet users use a browser that expands that standard.  Shouldn't in fact whatever m$ decides to add to new versions of ie become the standard and other browsers/oses should just quit complaining and try to keep up?

[Howard_Casto]

Interesting Howard, thanks for the brief review.

I'd rather not try it right now, so perhaps you can answer a few of my questions on it. I'm not new to the tabbed browsing in IE, I've used a modified version of IE called MyIE2. But it's nice to see native IE finally catch up.

First of all I'm very dissapointed that it takes so long to load. That's a real bummer. Even tabbed browsing dosn't really make up for that. I don't like having IE running all the time, but I do want quick access to IE.

I've heard that IE7 is a memory hog. Can you comment on the memory usage compared to IE6?

Also, my major gripe with IE6 has to be it's history function. It's really a horrible tring to find that site "I saw about two days ago about so and so". The search is horrible, going through a tree view of every site is plain crap. Have they fixed this in any way. I mean a fully featured search with sorting etc. If not it's a real shame.

Also, does IE7 have a function to restore all your currently open pages if it crashes? Or say, a quick bookmark of everything you have open? Really a feature that would be handy when IE crashes or you need free RAM so you have to quit IE, but wan't to go straight back to all the pages you were browsing. Something like "Bookmark currently open tabs". Kinda like a short term favourites or something. If not, M$ should pay more attention to functionality.

Also, better organization options in Favourites would be nice, like "Check all sites", to check if all pages are still up. They really need full screen views for these types of things, so you can go in and manage your favourites, removing the old ones and sort and organise the new ones. Pretty obvious stuff I know, but M$ seem to really like missing the obvious.

Go back and read, it's only slow to load after the initial install.  I think it goes in a rewrites half of the frikkin os to plug internet security holes, which is a good thing.  I only complained about it because it took so long, and didn't give me a "please wait" screen or anything.  I thought it had broken xp.  I will say that atm it could be slightly slower to load that ie 6, but it's still much faster to load than any of the third party browsers out there. 


Memory useage does go up, but it appears to be more of an overhead than anything else.  Running ie7 with a single tab (showing this page) takes a whopping 57 megs of memory.  But I need to point out that the same ie7 with 10 -20 tabs open takes roughly the same amount.  Also opening a second, dedicated ie window only takes up 10-20 megs.  Something I've noticed, which is quite odd is that the amount of resources it takes up varies greatly depending upon the site you have opened.  Google adds nothing to the overhead, byoac adds around 15 megs.  It seems to really eat up the memory for messageboards, but almost nothing else.  Since a blank ie 6 window takes up 16 megs and ie 7 takes up around 20 I'd say on average it'll take up slightly more memory, but not as much as everyone is exaggerating to.  Gotta remember too, the current ie7 beta have some emulated vista functions in them (cause a xp version of ie7 was a last minute thing) so it might be best to wait a while for final judgment on that one. 

Long story short, yes it uses more memory.... not a whole lot, but more. 





They have thought of everything with the tabs.  Right-clicking on a tab gives you all kinds of options on what you can do to it.  You can favorite a whole row of tabs or open all your favorites into tabs at once.  Tabs are automactially cached by the browser, so if it crashes (which I haven't had happen yet, as I said, suprisingly stable.)  you can use the "restore last tab group" in the tools menu.  Again, I'm not big on tabs though, so I might not be the best to judge on that, but everything I would need to do with tabs they allow. 



History is part of the favorites pane now, as is the new rss favorites.  All on that dinky little star icon (which I hate).  You click on the star and you are presented with the three menus, seperated by (what else) tabs.  I'm glad to say that you cna now dynamically organize your favorites.  Having to go into the tools menu to manage some of the stuff was always lame.  History hasn't changed that much.  By default you are presented with the usual "today, yesterday, last week, last month, last year" deal, which now is sub-divided when you go into the larger groups (which is helpful).  You can filter and sort this list much better now.  You cansort by date, by site, by most visited, by order visited today and apparenlty more are on the way. There is a history search function.  It's slow but quite powerful.  You see history now includes any site you've navigated to, not just any site you typed the url to.   So while an article I found by searching google (with a string I can't remember) won't show up in the traditional history pane, if I rmember what the article was on, and search for it in my history it'll find both the google search, and the actual url I clicked on.  This is amazingly useful, the best search function I've seen for any browser on any os.  Unfortunately, like most m$ search functions, it's a tad on the slow side.  If what you are searching for happened a few days ago, expect it to take a while. 

The rss feature is nice as well, although I'm not sure how useful rss feeds are on a non-portable device.  Ie 7 is fully xmlhtml complaint, meaning that not only do xml links display what they are supposed to, but when you navigate to a website that has an rss feed you hear a little chime and a rss icon blinks on your toolbar, which of course you have the option of either viewing or dragging to your favorites star, which is smart enough to put it in yoru rss list and not your true favorites.  The rss stuff still needs work though as it tends to fudge up any feed with fancy graphics included. M$ says they are "on it" in their release notes though. 



Since I'm responding, there are a few mini features I thought I might talk about.  There is a new "phishing filter" in the security options.  I don't fully understand it but from what I do understands its like this:  You know the whole "this active x component is not digitally signed" deal?  Well now m$ does it for entire websites.  It doesn't prompt you by default, but if you navigate to a site that m$ has listed as "shady" or you've personally blacklisted, it prompts you before navigating.  Again, haven't really seen it in use to know what it's about, but it sounds like a good idea.  On the bottom of the window, where the page loading status is, you'll always see a check, and x or a few other icons, shwoing what "internet zone" the page is.  Basically they visualized the invisible options you could set all the way back in ie 5. 

There are some fancier internet options now in the advanced setup including making pages "printer frendly" automatically when you print.  From the sub-options it gives you on that one I'd say it turns all backgrounds/frames white and all text black and doesn't print buttons.  Again, seems like a good idea, but I haven't seen a reason to try it yet. 

Finally there is a zoom function for all pages.  I'm not talking about the lame font adjusting you can do now (although it's still in there) I'm talking about honest to god zooming of EVERYTHING.  My guess is this is where a lot of the overhead comes from as the original page would have to be turned into some sort of direct-x layer to do this.  The zoom works really well.  I need to restress to you that it zooms everything though, or else you won't understand how cool it is.  Flash games?  yes  Videos?  yes Yes, I literally mean everything.  Finally I don't have to pull out a pair of glasses when some idgit decides to design their webpage for 640x480 browsers.  Finally I can enjoy those cute little flash games at a playable size.  The only downside... well it zooms everything... so if a flash game had a tiny border, by the time it zooms up to full screen it has a large border.  Of course the solution is to zoom even more, until all you can see is the game, but that leads to scroll bars everytime.  I think this is the feature that'll make it the browser to use, but it'd be nice if you could right click on a single object and have just it grow in size.

[sWampy]

I always hate to see Microsoft come out with new versions of their software,  almost instantally people will start adding ie7 only crap to their web pages just to try to prove they require the latest and greatest, causing great pain to people using unix/linus/apples/etc.

 
And thus they should as like it or not, ie is by far the most widely used browser period simply because there are more pcs than any other type of computer and there are more pcs running windows than any other os.  With that being said, ie has went to some lengths to get back to html standard, but you've gotta ask yourself, should it even be considered the standard when the majority of intenet users use a browser that expands that standard.  Shouldn't in fact whatever m$ decides to add to new versions of ie become the standard and other browsers/oses should just quit complaining and try to keep up?

Hell no, they don't add to standards, they always take open standards and bastardize them,  leave security holes in them, copyright them, patent them, call them their own, and leave the rest of the world hanging, trying to figure out how to redo stuff they invented so it will work with ie. 

Look what they did to java, they took a very secure concept, opened it up major security holes in it, and set the language back 10 years.   A web browser shouldn't be able to change system files period, yet microsoft is always adding "features" that give people that ability.  Active-X is a security nightmare, yet microsoft will not let it die.   

Hell they have even taken something as straight forward as XML and put a microsoft spin on it leaving the world scratching it's head wondering what it really is.

[Grasshopper]

It must be very lonely being the only member of the M$ fanclub.

My attitude to IE7 is simply what's the point? Honestly, what is it going to do that Firefox doesn't?

[Howard_Casto]

Run 50-75% faster?  Actually work on all webpages (like it or not some are ie specific)?  Either automatically install with windows update or come pre-installed with windows vista?


I'm by no means a member of the m$ fanclub, I'm a fan of things that work the best.  It just so happens that 75% of the time the m$ solution is the best solution. 


Not even gonna respond to swampys. 

Unfortunately either you "get it" or you don't about m$ products.  Some people automatically bash anything that m$ comes out with.  The thing is they seldom come out with bad stuff.  Sure it's often expensive, and yes they are a big giant evil empire.  But hey I'm not willing to only use stuff made by nice people, and neither should you.. afterall, I don't see walmart losing any money. 

And just for the record, active X is the best thing to ever happen to the internet.  Does it cause security issues, of course, but it also allows things to run on the web that simply can't be done any other way.  It's real easy to say there are alternatives after m$ actually made the concept of a plugin-laden webpage a reality and now everbody is copying the framework that m$ laid down. 

And this is the final word I expect to hear from anyone on this matter as far as comments from the peanut gallery are concerned. I've humored this "philosophical discussion" long enough.

I started this thread to review ie 7.  When you guys actually try ie7 THEN you can write your own frikkin review. 


However questions and comments are appreciated and I'm more than willing to look into features for anyone who can't risk trying it right now.

[darthbane2k]

I installed this yesterday and was inpressed - until I discovered that HOTMAIL doesnt work on it. Everytime I attempt to log into hotmail I get a blank white page and script error window.

[Howard_Casto]

It must be something on your end because hotmail works fine for me.  I just tried it again to double check. 

When you install ie7 I believe t recycles your ie6 cache.  That might be causing the error so removing your temporary internet files and trying again might solve the problem. 

[jhanson]

And just for the record, active X is the best thing to ever happen to the internet.

I like you.  You're funny.

[darthbane2k]

It must be something on your end because hotmail works fine for me.  I just tried it again to double check. 

When you install ie7 I believe t recycles your ie6 cache.  That might be causing the error so removing your temporary internet files and trying again might solve the problem. 

well I know others who have reporeted the problem, and I tried deleting cookies and temp internet files - still does not work, so its now off my system.
In my opinion, while functionality is improved, if the browser cannot even open hotmail.com then it isnt fit to be called a beta version.

[Howard_Casto]

Well like I said, it DOES open hotmail, so it must be something that your system has on it that is interacting with the hotmail website.  Remember, ie also has an option or 3 java engines and a few other external plugins that it has no control over.  A bad combination of them could be causing the issues, thus making it hard to detect on their end. 

The reason it is beta is for that very reason, to resolve compatability issues. 


And remember above where I said that I got with m$ because it's stuff is the best 75% of the time?  Well hotmail would fall into the other 25%.  Hotmail may be free, but it's limited caching abilities, flurry of ads and over-use of unnecessary scripting (probably what is causing your issue) make it totally worthless.  Gmail is also free, uses little to no scripting, lacks ads, and allows for nearly unlimited transfer sizes and caching storage.  I only keep my hotmail account open to use when email activation is required (in other words it's a spam trap) I suggest you do the same.