 The long-awaited upgrade to Microsoft's Web browser is here, introducing the masses to features available for years in rival products.
| Only they don't seem to work quite as well. |
My initial thought to Microsoft Corp.'s game of catch-up was "no big deal." But after trying out version 7 of Internet Explorer, the first major release since 2001, I found a number of improvements to like. Normally, those might provide enough reason to switch to IE7 — except rivals like Mozilla's Firefox have been pushing forward with new tools as well.
| Firefox is okay, but since I write data entry pages, I'm stuck with either IE or Opera. Data entry pages are pretty useless when the buttons don't work. |
The most noticeable change in IE is a redesign that replaces menus like "file" and "edit" with task-oriented buttons for printing, searching and the like. Just as Google Inc.'s novel, folder-less approach to e-mail took getting used to, Microsoft's new interface initially will seem odd. But in no time, I started questioning the old ways — why, for instance, was "print" under "file" and not "view"?
| My guess would be for consistency's sake. Even if you have controls in an illogical order, once users are used to them there moving them confuses people. And you do print a file. You don't print a view. |
IE7 also introduces a built-in search box and tabbed browsing, which reduces clutter by opening multiple Web pages in a single window. That'll come as new to the 90 percent of Internet users who don't use Firefox and Opera, which already sport both features.
| The tabs also behave differently than they do in Opera and Firefox. A file that should open in a new tab opens a new instance of the browser, which itself is capable of lugging multiple tabs around. |
The new Microsoft browser also carries security improvements, including warnings when Web visitors try to go to known "phishing" sites that try to steal passwords. |