Results tagged “Internet Explorer” from Capitol Valley

IE 7 was loaded onto my machine at work last week.  Currently, when compared to both IE 6 and Firefox 2.x there are things that I like and dislike.

First, here are some nice new things that we have in Microsoft Internet Explorer 7

• Tabbed browsing!  Everyone ( I think) loves tabbed browsing and it is great to see it in Internet Explorer.  I do not like that you have to select a tab in order to close it.  Firefox has the ability to kill a tab regardless of whether or not it is the active tab.  I have, however, fallen head-over-heels in love with the Quick Tabs feature.  Either by clicking an icon or using Ctrl+Q you can pull up a thumbnails of all of your active tabs.  You can actually see what's going on on each tab and then click on the one you want.  It's pretty useful if you have a lot of tabs, causing the names to get truncated.  Also, it's just pretty darned cool.
• Favorites - There are 2 little stars to the left of your tabs. One is just a star, and this will open up your favorities list.  Once it's open there are a few new things.  First, you have a regular scroll bar on the side to move up and down through your list.  Second, there are more options than just your faves.  You can click on an icon to see all of your feeds and another for your history.  There's also a pin fnction that will create a frame off to the left to keep the content on display.  Next to the plain star is a star with a plus sign.  Not only will it give you the ability to add the active page as a favorite, but you can add the entire group of tabs that you have open as a favorite.  Really cool if you have a group of sites that you need open at all times, like for work.
• The feeds button is kind of cool.  It will scan the site and see if there are any feeds available.
• Placement of Refresh and Stop bug the heck out of me, but I think that's because I'm a robot and am terrified of change.  In older versions of IE you have, across the top Back, Forward, Refresh, Stop, Address Bar.  Now?  Back, Fowards, Address Bar, Refresh, Stop.  I'm still getting a little lost when I want to refresh the screen.

My only other concern is speed.  I'd like it if IE 7 were a little quicker.  I'm not going to lament any shortcomings too much, because IE 8 is close on its heels.  I'm looking forward to the mapping capability of IE 8 and would like to see if it addresses any other issues.  From the articles I've read, it seems like IE 8 is more of a "Here's what IE 7 should've been" as opposed to being an entirely different animal. 

It was just 5 short months ago that IE 7 rolled out.  Now, with pressure to be more "open" (both to avoid another anti-trust scare in the States and due to constant pressure from the EU to be less anti-competitive) Internet Explorer 8 is being released to developers.

Reuters has details for you

LAS VEGAS (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp on Wednesday made available a test version of Internet Explorer 8, the next edition of its Web browser.

...

Microsoft's presentation was catered heavily toward Web developers, but Hachamovitch showed some user features of IE 8. One feature allows users to save work being done on a Web site to the local computer when an Internet connection goes down.

Another feature lets users highlight an address on a Web site and then see a map within the Web site with a single click. Users can also highlight a product name and be able to see if the item is available for sale on eBay.

...

Earlier this week, Microsoft announced the new browser would use the most-standards-compliant mode by default in rendering Web sites.

That means Web sites will essentially look the same regardless of browser and developers will not need to do multiple versions of Web sites for different browsers.

...

The European Union launched a new antitrust investigation into Microsoft to probe complaints from Norwegian browser maker Opera Software about how Microsoft ensures rival Web browsers are not fully compatible with Internet Explorer.

 

Feature-wise, it seems pretty neat.  I like the ability to pull up a map of an address (hoping it works for email displayed in the browser) just by clicking on it.  The product feature is really cool too, although I'd probably be giddier if it searched Amazon or Buy as opposed to eBay.  It'd be nice for it to look at a more "standard" online retailer where maybe there would be product specs.  Or maybe even a way to toggle which site(s) it look at?  Anyway, I digress.

The announcement that IE 8 will load "the most-standards-compliant mode by default" is promising.  I think that between its inability to get XML certified as an international standard and the Russian Ministry of Defence (among others in Eastern Europe) saying "no" to Windows PCs Microsoft is feeling more pressure than ever to be more flexible than before. 

I have to say, I look forward to being able to load a website and not have it look ridiculous because it was designed with one browser and viewed with another.

Anyone have the test version of Internet Explorer 8 yet?  Let us know what you think!

UPDATE:

C|Net's Download.com has a post about IE 8.  Insightful.