My IE7 Experience vs. Firefox
I was able to download and install the latest version of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 7 last night and play with it a little.
It’s definitely quite Firefox like. I’ve been using Firefox now for awhile, mainly due to functionality of tabs. I believe Firefox does a little bit better job with the tab interface functionality on the toolbars itself. In this beta version at least, Microsoft has a blank tab you can click to open a new tab.
Unlike in Firefox, the tab bar in Internet Explorer also contains other toolbar buttons like home, settings, tools, controls, etc. Some of these items can be customized to be removed, but I think it would be better to house them in the main toolbar.
Microsoft does a better job with use of screen real estate though, which seems weird. One of the ways they’ve done this is by removing the “File” menu system that Firefox still uses. It’s not much but it helps.
I’ve lost a little too much control over the layout of the various toolbars. In my other browsers I normally shrink the address box fairly small and line it up with the standard navigation buttons. I can’t do this at all (at least that I’ve figured out yet) with IE7.
The security features did seem to be a great improvement. Plenty of options in the setup and management to fine tune everything as well. I didn’t surf too much last night on random sites that may have flagged some items. I stayed on mainstream sites the entire time.
I quickly checked out the RSS feed functionality as well and it worked great. I think an interesting feature is that the feed updated the interface to automatically include the specific category listings from my blog. I thought that was nice. The only thing that I’m not sure about in the RSS reader is that I’d really like something web-based.
Maybe some of the developments in Microsoft Live and Office Live would include a web-based interface for storing Favorites and managing RSS feeds from any computer. Does anyone know if IE7 could be installed and run from a USB thumbdrive?
Check-out the IE7 beta preview for yourself
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POSTED IN: Internet Explorer, New Products, Security
1 opinion for My IE7 Experience vs. Firefox
Emerging Earth » My IE7 Review
Feb 2, 2006 at 3:59 pm
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