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Some thought on IE7

a picture called ie7.gif (click to enlarge) OK,
everybody seems to feel the need to out their opinion about Internet Explorer 7, so ... here's mine :-)

I installed the latest beta build today.
Instantly, its obvious that IE7 is not compatible with the windowsblind skinning system, probably because it's ported backwards from the Windows Vista graphics engine.
The GUI is completely messed up - but adding IE7 to the windowblinds exclude list is only a few clicks away ...

Ok, now the interface is readable, but eh ... it's still messed up !
Really, the user-interface guys at Microsoft clearly have some more work to do, I can't imagine this interface will make it to the final release:
first of all: the address bar is on top of the screen (even above the file menu) which is plain weird and annoying.
but there's more: you can't move the friggin thing!
The home, refresh, stop, back and forward buttons are scattered to 3 different toolbars, and that's final: you can't move any of those ... man - this is just ... incomprehensible.

But after the first negative impressions, things are getting better: one of the first changes you'll notice is that fonts are looking smoother than ever. Microsoft is calling this "Cleartype" and I love it !
Probably this will be present everywhere in Windows Vista.

Then offcourse the tabbed browsing: I'm glad MS copied the Firefox model quite faitfully: A click on the mouse wheel on a link opens it in a new tab.
Another thing that's copied 1 on 1 from firefox is the print-preview: Pages can now be scaled to fit on 1 page etc ... (thank god)

One thing that MS got absolutely right is the newsfeeds (which are offcourse RSS feeds)
When a page has a rss-feed, an orange button gives you a cleanly formatted view of the feed.
You can subscribe to it so the feeds moves to your "favourites", just like webpages.
It can even downloads binary includes automaticaly: perfect for podcasts.

IE7 is filled with more minor and major improvements, but most of them are "long overdue" and should have included in IE years ago. (for example: the native XMLHTTPRequest object is fine, but as we say it so nicely in Belgium: "vijgen na pasen". The damage with the ActiveX XMLHTTPRequest object of IE6 is allready done and for many years to come, developers still will have to support the ActiveX XMLHTTP method for IE6 compatibility ...)

Verdict: IE7 is a logical step forward in browsing, but long overdue ...
MS is chasing the facts, and one can't help wondering why: It feels like Microsoft is not very interested anymore in browser development. Some analysts even claim MS will abandon IE alltogether in a few years time. Geef je reactie (0)