Internet Explorer 7 BETA 2 is available for a try

Hows the CSS support? any other features apart from the tabs worth mentioning?

Have you noticed anything weird happening on your system? I'd like to install it but I don't have a spare machine at the moment and I hget a bit twitchy about installing beta software

Having tabs isn't even worth mentioning any more, it should be something that comes with a browser IMHO

Agreed, Internet Explorers sloppy, half-assed attempts at making a real browser get under my skin. A good product doesn't count for anything these days, so long as you have market dominance.

The 'better late than never' arguement doesn't hold sway either, since I.E. has already caused all the damage it can.

Personally I'll stick with Opera.

Fact remains, 80 percent + of web surfers still use IE.

Yeah, exactly, so it's important to pay attention to it. But still, i can't imagine it being better than Opera or Firefox for geeks like ourselves Will have to try it and see, perhaps. And, of course, there are no new features in this browser that the other two didn't do first. Tabs? Opera had that from the start. Zoom feature? Opera again. Built-in RSS? Wait, Opera had that 2 versions ago!

From what I understand they're not greatly increasing the CSS support. It's mainly fixing of bugs (which may have an impact on some of the hacks people are using). That is really too bad. Looks like we'll be stuck at the current level of support for a very long time. This is the main reason why IE is a problem IMO.

James - how is the RSS feature? They did put that in, right? Are they calling it RSS or did they use soemthing else? Opera uses "feeds" which I think is much more intuitive than RSS. Or maybe it was just the orange button the were talking about changing??

Hah, I'd love to see IE go out the window (or do something good for a change).

For those of you who don't want to install the ie7 beta over ie6, I have a nifty little page you might find interesting. Allows you to run ie7 as a stand alone, and thus keep your ie6 install.

http://weblogs.asp.net/jgalloway/archive/2005/12/28/434132.aspx

I did it, it works. Running ie7 and ie6 at the same time sure is handy.

Also, for those opera users... I used to use it, I loved it. Until I tried to view a quicktime movie and it told me to install the plugin. I downloaded it, installed it, and went back to view the movie. Opera said to go download the plugin, again. Firefox viewed it just fine (as did ie and netscape). Thus, I no longer use opera :-\.

Because of one quicktime movie?? Man, that's harsh. To me that's such a minute little detail - there are so many bigger things that make little problems worth it.

But to each his own I'm not going to turn this into an Opera debate.

heh, i was watching lots of quicktime movies at the time

Agreed, Opera has had some annoying bugs and problems, although they are almost all gone now. I remember getting frustrated at Opera a few times, usually it turned out to be a case of changing a setting.

However, I'll take a couple of minor bugs any day if it means I avoid a product as terrible as I.E. and do my tiny part so save the Internet from the Microsoft Monopoly.

Dux0r wrote: The 'better late than never' arguement doesn't hold sway either, since I.E. has already caused all the damage it can.

Personally, I've been thinking of running a "ditch ie" campaign for exactly that reason. They're attempting to catch up now because their market share is slipping (the only reason MS do anything). So what will happen when they've got their 90% market share back? They'll rest on their proprietory extensions and we'll have to suffer another round of: "I only develop for IE because no-one uses anything else."

Fact is MS aren't responsible enough to develop a browser, we simply cannot trust them.

Have had the joy of converting two other people to Opera; one of them discovered you could do back and forward without moving the mouse today, even I didn't know that!

Anyway, think Opera gets mentioned more on this forum than on Opera.com (More than Just a Browser! ) so will try to shutup about it.

Thanks for the heads-up though James, it'll be good to get some preliminary testing done in IE7 ... That's assuming I can bear using that awful operating system for long enough to install it.

Still some things needing to be fixed on the IE beta,

Megan, CSS looks ok (sometimes slightly incorrect, generally fonts do look different however) and RSS is presented where the favourites/history are. It's still BETA versions, so I guess most of these small errors would be fixed. Certain javascripts not working properly either.

But I see some improvements. They made an effort.

One thing I don't really understand however is how people can be so picky about a browser. I just used IE all my life, never feeling the need to bother for another browser. It opens up the sites, that's fine for me

And we all got this thing against Microsoft don't we.

What operating systems do we all use?

windows XP, but not by choice. LoL.
Actually, I do like windows. It's stable for everything I use with it and it also plays all the games you could ever want to play. And, there's so much stuff out there that works on windows.

The alternative (for me) would be Apple. It's great, it's fast, it has no customization for the computer and almost no games. Meh.

If I had my choice, my business computer would be apple and my personal computer would be the best pc out there.

And if you still use IE6, try firefox or opera (or wait for ie7) . Tabbed browsing it just awesome, I can't stand not having it in ie6, so I never use it. Firefox and Opera are, in my opinion, the best out there. I'd actually recomend ie6 over netscape. netscape is so slow to start... I hate it.

james wrote: One thing I don't really understand however is how people can be so picky about a browser. I just used IE all my life, never feeling the need to bother for another browser. It opens up the sites, that's fine for me

Firefox and Opera are better in so many ways. Opera has so many features that make browsing and emailing more conveneint. Tabs are just the tip of the iceburg. There's things like built in search, mouse gestures, better bookmarking features, the ability to validate a site from right-click, really cool integrated skinning, the ability to rearrange toolbars the way I want to, rss, a built in notepad etc. etc. And we've had all this for *years*.

I prefer Opera over Firefox because I don't have to download any extras to make it do what I want it to. Others prefer the extensibility of Firefox - you can make it do basically whatever you want it to do. if you don't understand why people are so picky you must not have tried these two!

They are also way, way ahead on support for web standards. Microsoft really isn't close and that's the problem I have with that browser. It's holding us all back because they haven't been able to keep up with support for CSS, SVG, and other standards. I don't understand why a multi million dollar corporation with all the resources in the world can't manage to keep up with an open source project and small Norwegian company.

Yes. You are probably right in all what you have said;

But I think the difference with microsoft's internet explorer is they produced a web browser for the average web surfer with no computer skills, who actually don't need these extra, more advanced features. Who actually probably won't feel confident about downloading and installing these "extra software" (to them).

Microsoft had to include more features in this version, probably thanks to its small competitors piling on the pressure.

well, even if they didn't have tabbed browsing/etc/etc/etc they could atleast have given proper support for CSS long ago. That's something that affects everyone, but doesn't require a knowledgeable user to utilize.

I have both Firefox and Opera, seldome mentioned is Operas ability to resume downloads (not quite perfect yet though)... Most of the time I use Firefox...

Anyways we all blabber about these, but what do you do for this cause... For my part, every PC i have been in contact with I install both FF and O... In the Last Year I had Installed both in 6 Firms eith about 200 Computers (Mac and PC), each, so its about 1200 Computers. Installed both in 10 net cafes, which more or less have 20-50 PC... , and a bunch of other home PC's... I was looking for some Opera and FF posters to give away to these peoples businesses but I dont have some... An informational campaign I feel should be done to inform them that a big blue E, is the relic version of the big orange circle and a Big Red O... (which are way better of course)...

Demonhale.com's history is that we outreach to Secondary and early college students to teach them basic Computer training, and basic html and impact of css... These young people come out knowing there is actually a better way to browse the net, and see their code the way it was ment to be...