This is a review of Internet Explorer 7 Beta 1. If you are interested in more stable release I’d recommend you read reviews of Internet Explorer 6.
OK, so it’s very tricky to speak about a web browser, especially since I wrote a review here, singing accolades of Firefox a long time back! So I’ll take my chances of being flamed. Firefox once appeared to be THE browser everybody was longing for; safe, fast, tabbed and highly customizable with extensions. Version after version of Firefox kept on pouring but it’s still very far from perfection. Version 1.5 arrived but fails to address my biggest complaints against Firefox:
1.Java Runtime or PDF loading sends the browser to sleep (stops responsing i.e.)... always. That’s on a 1.8GHz processor with a huge chunk of 512MB RAM free for Firefox to eat.
2.Lots of websites still don’t appear correctly. The claim is that those sites were meant to screw Firefox. That didn’t stop Opera though!
3.Extensions are still buggy. In fact they are having more and more compatibility problems with every new version of Firefox.
4.Random crashes too often, too many and apparently increasing with every updated version.
So I gave a try to Internet Explorer 7 Beta 1. Microsoft has incorporated the following new features in IE7 Beta 1 (some also in IE6 + XP Service Pack 2):
Phising filter: Microsoft will maintain a list of user reported fake sites. Every time you will visit a site, Microsoft servers will report if the site is not what it pretends to be. Might be helpful for online shopping or other secure activities but I don’t really care about it. Also, does this mean that every time a user requests site confirmation, MS will log his online activity? Honestly I don’t know. I do know that you can lose your online privacy in a thousand different ways, but why add one more to it.
Inbuilt search toolbar: where you are given a choice of engines like AOL, AskJeees, Google, MSN or Yahoo much like Firefox’s search plugins.
Tabbed browsing is possible in IE! Microsoft has finally put together a perfect tabbed browsing interface in IE 7.
Pop-up blocker: Pop-up blocking was introduced by Service pack 2. It appears rather extreme even at low sensitivity settings and gobbles up almost all pop-ups, unwanted or not; the solution is simple, just ctrl+click on the link.
Like Firefox 1.5, IE 7 also has the capability to remove all personal browsing info including browser history, cookies, web-form data and passwords in three clicks of the mouse. earlier the user had to delete thses individually.
Firefox vs. Internet Explorer 7 Beta 1
As far as security goes, I don’t think Firefox really does anything extraordinary except doing away with ActiveX, which can be managed with IE as well. Post SP2 it is also possible to selectively enable or disable IE add-ons. However, Firefox’s cookie management that allowed the user to automatically delete all cookies on browser exit is missing in IE. Firefox’s integrated page source view made it really easy to save embedded media from web-pages; again missing in IE. IE does not take care of the page ads even now and it won’t do so even in IE 7 final releases. I had to install shareware Ad-muncher which is good but I still miss the flexibility of Firefox’s Adblock extension.
IE 7 Beta has been very stable for me but I miss Firefox functionality and flexibility. Firefox is so flaky that I don’t feel like installing it. As for Opera, I never felt comfortable using it after years of IE and then FF.
It appears that Microsoft does not plan to add any more features in the final release. In other words, they will be concentrating on the stability issues now rather than adding new features in the final release. In any case, I’d not recommend a Beta version to anyone since this was more out of curiosity that I used the browser and wrote this review.