Internet Explorer 7 is just about at RTM and will be delivered to all Windows users as a high-priority, automatic update this month. What does this mean to you? Well, whether you like it or not, shortly you too will be running IE7 if you aren’t already.
IE7 is a huge improvement over the now-stagnant IE6. Even the improved security that was introduced with Windows XP service pack 2 didn’t help slow the onslaught of vulnerabilities found in Microsoft’s web browser. I don’t know how much more secure IE7 will be over IE6 but there are definitely lots of needed features being introduced that all users will benefit from.
The most obvious new feature is the tabbed browsing which other browsers have been sporting for years. Browsing productivity increases ten-fold with tabbed browsing and you’ll find yourself ctrl-clicking (or middle-clicking) links instinctively to open them in new tabs after a short time of using the feature. As you get lost in the huge number of open tabs you have, click the ‘Quick Tags’ button to see a cool thumbnail view of all your tabs. (note: if you look closely, you’ll see that the quick-tags isn’t perfect. Post a comment below if you can see the bug.)
Another new feature which doesn’t seem that important at first is the new Favorites Center (or Favourites Centre for those of us who still speak the Queen’s English!) This can be pinned to the left hand side of the browser or left as a drop down dialog box to allow easy access to favourites. Just like the start menu in Windows Vista, menus open in-place instead of cascading. This takes a while to get used to but makes sense when you have lots of nested sub-folders. You’ll also notice that the Favorites Center now also houses the History which probably doesn’t make sense to you either.
More interestingly, you’ll see the new ‘Feeds’ section which is where all of your RSS and Atom feeds are stored. Yes, that’s right, IE7 has a built-in feed reader and although it is still very basic and not suitable for power-users, it’s interesting to think that soon, all Windows users will have a feed reader installed on their computers which should finally bring RSS to the masses.
As you browse to a site that has a valid feed available, the subscribe button will glow orange and you can click on it to add the feed to your subscribed list. The main complaint with this is that it requires two clicks to subscribe: one to view the feed, and another to subscribe to it. I would prefer to see an option to subscribe to a feed with one click. Subscribing to a feed doesn’t just subscribe to it in IE7, this adds it to the Windows Common Feeds list, which is available to all applications on the computer. Outlook 2007 will be able to access this list and also display the same feeds in the familiar email interface. There is also a synchronisation applet available from Newsgator which will keep your WCF list synched with the Newsgator suite of products. You can expect more applications to take advantage of this as IE7 is finalised.
So prepare yourself for IE7 by downloading the release candidate and read through the IEBlog where you’ll find a wealth of information.
Link to IEBlog : IE7 Is Coming This Month…Are you Ready?
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Posted by stuart on October 20th 2006 
