Yes people, it has finally arrived, and it beat Mozilla to the punch.
The new version features tabbed browsing (hurray!), anti-phising agent, built-in RSS reader and improved printing. And, of course, many more under-the-hood changes like security improvements and such.
But the good news aren’t just for the IE users. Web Designers should be equally happy now, because, IE7 finally adds support for transparent PNGs and is more standards compliant, although, it is still far away from Firefox’s level.
I already wrote a preview of the second Beta of the program, which pleased me greatly and not much has changed since then on it’s “surface”, so go read it if you want to have an idea of what visual changes you can expect from it. It will be available as an update on the next Windows patch, however, you can download it already from Microsoft’s website.
Just in case anyone was wondering, it does require validation.
And, of course, there is already a vulnerability in IE7.
http://secunia.com/advisories/22477/
“The vulnerability is caused due to an error in the handling of redirections for URLs with the “mhtml:” URI handler. This can be exploited to access documents served from another web site.”
Two words: Use Firefox.
As a web designer my concern is with testing on IE7 and IE6 for sites I build, but I still haven’t found a good solution for running the two side by side on one PC. The standalone solutions I’ve found all seem buggy and the Virtual PC idea MS put forth is just too slow and expensive.
Anyone found a good, reliable way to run IE7 and IE6 on one PC?
I am a long time user of firefox, but the ie7 is intriguing. I will never switch over but the interface isn’t bad. I am too accustomed to using the open source browser
I’m sorry for the double post, buy just saw Kevin’s question. I wrote a post about a site called ‘browsershots’ that tests your design in about 15 browsers. Might be a good resource for you.
I have to admit that it will be much harder to convince the more “computer-illiterate” people to switch to Firefox now. If you open the two and alt+tab between them it’s no secret that IE7′s interface has been given a better “face-lift” than Firefox 2.0.
@Jason: Thanks for the tip about browsershots, I actually use that for testing sites when I have to, but there’s nothing quite as good as having the actual browser working for poking around and making sure all is well on many pages.
I’ve been searching all over and there just doesn’t seem to be a good solution for keeping multiple versions of IE running properly on one PC. Ah well, I guess for a while I’ll just have to keep another old PC running for testing. Firefox remains my choice for everyday use.
I am just trying out the new release of IE7, and find it interesting all the debate about this release versus the Firefox download. One of the most interesting aspects of the IE vs. Firefox battle is the development of the ecosystem of extensions or add-ons. Itâs not just about bugs and features. Right now Firefox had a great advantage in this space but you can see Microsoft trying to catch up.
I noticed an interesting extension called Trailfire, set up as a recommended download for IE7. See link:
http://www.ieaddons.com/SearchResults.aspx?keywords=trailfire
I think the ecosystem for Firefox and IE will decide who wins this battle. What do you think?
I think that IE will steal a small slice of Firefox’s share, due to Vista, however, as soon as more vulnerabilities start to be found Firefox will slowly start eating IE’s share again.
IE7 Gives Mozilla a run for the title.
Graphicially it’s easier on the eyes.
Hi there! Your site is cool, indeed!
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