Internet Explorer 7 Beta 1 – The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

// August 13th, 2005 // Technology

IE LogoMicrosoft recently announced the Beta 1 release of Version 7 of their next-generation Internet Explorer (IE) browser.

Early reviews are mixed, and seem to indicate both a great leap forward over IE6 while still missing some of the features long since standard-fare on alternative browsers like Mozilla’s Firefox and the Opera browser.

The Good:
IE7 will add support for tabbed browsing and improved standards compliance, including Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) improvements and RSS support. It will also add a number of much-needed security enhancements, including taking a proactive approach to protect users from phishing sites. A built-in search feature was also added to the top-right corner of the window, which supports the major search engines and eliminates the need for a separate add-on toolbar from the search vendors.

The Bad:
Microsoft announced some time back that no improvements would be made to support browsers on platforms older than Windows XP. There are a lot of people still running Windows 2000 who will be left out in the cold. This ensures the continued widespread takeover of Windows 2000 PC’s by scammers and spammers taking advantage of IE6 security holes, which will continue to provide a nice living for the geek crowd, and cost companies a lot of money.

The Ugly:
Reviewers have also pointed out that most of the web-standards improvements in IE7 revolve around bug fixes in their implementation of CSS. That said, by Microsoft’s own admission, IE7 will still fail to support the latest CSS standards, instead continuing to use a proprietary implementation. They also admit that IE7 won’t pass the Acid2 browser-compliance test, designed by the Web Standards Project to help vendors ensure their browsers support web standards.

Overall, it likely will be a major upgrade to the Internet Explorer browser, especially with respect to security. But no backwards compatibility with older (and still widely used) operating systems and lack of formal support of common web standards still leave it severely lacking in comparison to the other freelyavailable commercial browsers on the market.

For more information:
IE7 Beta Site
IE7 Reviews Mixed
Microsoft Admits IE7 Doesn’t Make Progress In Standards Support
Web Standards Project
Mozilla Firefox Browser
Opera Browser
Netscape Browser

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