Boringest IE7 Preview

IE Sucks? Let's see what Microsoft has in store for us. It's a 10MB installation file which is quite big compared to Firefox (4.8MB)/Opera (3.8MB) but once installed everything seems to run quite smoothly and it seems faster too (not too sure about this, but could be b'cos I haven't used IE for so long after meeting Opera). Immediately, you'll be able to see a few new features - most notably the:

• Anti-phishing tool (see below)
• Tabbed browsing
• New button layout - 2 distinct buttons - back/forward, address bar's all the way to the top!
• RSS reader (only RSS 0.9-2.0 supported, ATOM not supported) which can be added to "Favourites"
• MSN Search box on the top right

I think the main issue Microsoft is trying to tackle here is 'phishing' and security, where secure websites are marked with a blue padlock icon as follows: and non-certified websites like this: So, in order to see how far they have gone in the Beta version, I went through my collection of spam mail and tested a phishing email as shown below: And it works! A yellow icon that says "Suspicious Website" will pop up next to the address bar: Not too sure about the numerous security holes but all in all, the beta version of IE7 looks promising, but more work has to be done, especially to allow support for ATOM feeds, a new button for "New Tab" should be included as well (see top picture) and an option to remove one of the toolbars, leaving just the address bar and tabs to allow more viewing space would be good as well. On the other hand, a quick look in MSN Sandbox shows a few interesting developments, notably "Start" - a personalised homepage very similar to Google's which I think could be the new Start page for IE7. Looks pretty cool though and it uses AJAX.