BrianAndPamela.com

Internet Explorer 7 final released - AUTOMATIC updates begin in November

Why should you care? Because IE6 was one of the most targeted (and therefore dangerous) browsers on the market and in spite of the fact that I've been BEGGING all of you to switch to Firefox forever, I know there are some of you still using IE.  So, with that in mind, I repost the intro to IE I sent to the folks at my office. Oh, and I'll get to a review of Firefox 2 soon… promise. Read on…
Some time in the very near term, Microsoft will be pushing the new version of Internet Explorer (IE7) to all Windows users via Windows Update.  The new version of IE is touted as being faster and more secure, but the changes to the user interface might be a little surprising if you aren't ready for it.  Since many of our users rely heavily on Internet Explorer and IE7 is an automatic download and replaces previous versions, it's important we're ready for it.

One of the most surprising things is that the interface has been changed substantially for the first time in years.  For most users the menu bar is hidden by default and the toolbar has been completely reconfigured.  You can recover the menu bar by right clicking on the new toolbar and enable the "Menu bar" item, and the "Command bar" (as the toolbar is known now) is customizable from the right click menu.  Other changes include moving navigation buttons from the toolbar to the address bar, and a slicker look and feel. 

Then of course there are the functional changes.  There are several "behind the scenes" changes that make IE7 more secure than IE6.  Unfortunately there are still problems with Active X and scripting exploits, and it's not as fireproof as other browser/OS combos, but Microsoft has made some security change that are good.  Next, MS has moved closer to full compliance with web standards such as CSS.  Good for designers, but really there are still major differences in support compared to, for example, Firefox.

The biggest changes, other than the interface, are much needed functional additions to IE that have been a long time coming.  Finally, IE has tabbed browsing, which means that you can now open multiple web pages or sites within the IE window.  Right clicking a link opens a context menu which allows you to open that link in a new tab.  You can get the same result by holding the CTRL key while you click a link.  Normally, the link is opened in a background tab, but pressing CTRL+SHIFT and clicking will bring the new tab to the foreground. To open a new tab on a blank page, you can press CTRL-T.  There are other tabbed browsing shortcuts, in the address bar, type "about:Tabs", there is a link on that page to more info on tabbed browsing.

There are other new changes, built-in RSS support, changes to Favorites and searching, and the introduction of Add-ons, which enhance the browser.  Microsoft has a tour of the new browser and its features available online at "http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/ie7/tour/fre/default.mspx".