Internet Explorer 7 - Maybe Microsoft never really had a groove, but lately it's been making some serious efforts at getting one. It started with the X-Box, then the X-Box 360, and soon the Zune will hit the market; Microsoft is slowly re-inventing itself into something it never was before... cool.
In the interests of "fair disclosure" I am a devout Firefox user (note the Firefox link on the side panel), but after playing with the new Internet Explorer 7 for a week I'm impressed. I'm not going to stop using Firefox, but Microsoft has closed much of the gap between the two web-surfing solutions.
If you visit the Explorer home page (link above) you'll immediately see in big letters "we heard you", and that's exactly the feeling I got when I started using IE7. It is easier to use and it seems to be more secure, though only time and people a lot smarter than me will be able to determine if it really is more secure. The first improvement, which fixed what had always been my biggest complaint about IE, is tabbed browsing. Now you don't have to open a new IE window every time you want to look at more than one page at a time. Every other browser has this, so it's time IE caught up. To it's credit Microsoft has actually done slightly more than catch up in this department, however, it's made some slight improvements. For example, adding more tabs to the tab bar is as simple as clicking on a little mini-tab that always resides to the right of the furthest right tab. In Firefox you have to add a button to your menu bar, so score a point for Microsoft on ease of use (as much as it pains me to say that). The other improvement over Firefox is that if you middle click on a link it open the page in a new tab (as Firefox does) but the new tab is directly next to the tab you're currently using. Firefox always opens new tabs at the end of the tab bar, and while you can move tab locations around in both programs, IE7 is (sit down for this) a lot easier. To the left of your tab bar is a nice button that will pop up a page showing you screen shots of all the tabs you have open, so if you're like me and you get lost in your tabs it's easy to find the tab you're looking for. You can even close tabs from this display mode. It's easy and intuitive.
Most noticeably is the lack of pull down menus when you first launch IE7. You can add the menu bar if you so choose, but I found I didn't really need it, you can get pretty much every thing done using the icon toolbars. To the left of your tab bar are your favorites, represented by little star buttons. Managing your links is easy and simple. But if that doesn't work for you and you have a del.icio.us account you wish to access you can add a del.icio.us toolbar, which brings me to the next great thing about IE7, it's customizable.
I always liked the ease with which I can personalize my Firefox browser and while IE7 isn't quite there yet it's come a loooooooong way from IE6. Under the tools menu you can manage "add-on's", much like you can in Firefox, and I found it painless to add my treasured del.icio.us and RoboForm toolbars to IE, something I hadn't been able to do before. IE7 still doesn't have the vast number of add-on's that Firefox has, but I imagine that will come in time. The del.icio.us add-on isn't as good as some of the ones for Firefox either, but again, being that Microsoft is allowing third parties to write add-on's for IE7 I can only assume it will be a matter of time before IE catches up.
So far IE7 has functioned with few problems for me. At first I was having trouble playing YouTube videos and I was scared for IE (no browser will last long without that functionability), but within a day the problem seemed to go away. Don't know why, maybe it was patched, maybe I did something wrong, but it works fine now. I've had to install a couple of plug-in's which is no surprise other than that I had to install the Windows Media Player plug-in, I thought they would have had that together. I've spent a whole week doing my usual surfing and not run into any real problems. Microsoft is right, it is easy to use, and any troubles I had were short lived and fairly simple to figure out.
I'm not a security expert but this IE seems to be much more on the ball on such issues. There are little pop-ups to warn you of potentially malicious software trying to install from web pages, and even Microsofts own scripts won't run unless you give them express permission. This is a change for Microsoft who once shipped XP with a built in firewall but without having that firewall on unless you turned it on yourself. Microsoft seems to now realize you have to expect people don't know as much about security as we should (because for the most part we don't) and play the role of a guiding parent.
On the down side, unless I'm missing it IE still doesn't handle downloads half as well as Firefox does. Cosmetically the only thing I've noticed wrong is a little rebellious graphic in the tab bar, at the base of the tabs, that doesn't seem to want to line up with the rest of the graphics. Otherwise it's a good looking program, not at all utilitarian like a lot of Microsoft products. It's cool looking, or at least close to it.
Overall big thumbs up to Microsoft. I'll go back to using Firefox because I don't see anything about IE7 that will make me want to jump ship, but on the other hand if I had been an IE user all along I would certainly have much less reason to leave IE for Firefox now. The gap isn't entirely closed between the two yet, but IE7 marks a giant leap for the IE brand. I no longer cringe if I have to use IE (say, to get Microsoft updates). Firefox isn't running circles around IE anymore, IE is a close second now, which is great news for IE users. In a sense it's also good news for Firefox users because competition is a good thing. If you're already using IE6 don't hesitate to get 7, you'll never look back.
