Harry's Blog

What a surprise, it’s actually rather good. I’ve been running the latest public beta build for the last couple of days and I’m rather impressed, not just with the strong security, but also with the layout of the controls.

It’s certainly a less fussy browser and at first it almost seems like a lot of functionality has been taken away, however this is just because the interface has been streamlined. More importantly the security options that the browser defaults to really should stop inexperienced users from messing up their machine.

Ironically it’s the strong security that’s bugged me the most the last couple of days. The default for the Internet Zone is very strong, which means I’ve had to actually tone down some of the restrictions to do things such as run video on the BBC Online website. It’s no bad thing though and new features such as anti-fishing algorithms and an immovable address bar (often hijacked by dodgy websites) are a step in the right direction.

Unlike previous IE7 builds this one doesn’t mess up my computer nor prevent me from using the various CMS systems I have to access when working for several clients. It doesn’t mess up this site either. One odd problem was that it made Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004 crash when trying to use the in-game kneeboard. The kneeboard is a reference panel that uses Internet Explorer. A quick websearch helped me fix the problem, deleting one particular .dll file from the FS2004 root directory did the trick.

Talking of search, the new search functionality works very well and allows you to define the default internet search and a selection of alternates. I’ve got my IE7 set to use Google for search, alas at this time only the .com is available, I’d prefer to be able to use the .co.uk variety of the search engine.

My only real problem with the new browser is the favourites menu. The location on the toolbars is fine, my problem is with selecting links. You have to click through the folders to get to the bookmarks rather than the folders expanding when you hold the curser over them as is the case with most browsers. If MS can offer an option to allow this, then I’m sold.

As it is, IE7 is a very strong browser on a part with anything else you can use at the moment.