Blog FeedIE7 Beta 2 - Getting Better
It has been quite a few months now since Microsoft released the first Beta for Internet Explorer 7, and Vermy took a look at it. I never tried it myself - the most important part of IE7 for me is the CSS compliance, and the IE team had said that this would not be fully implemented until Beta 2. Well, now we are there, and Microsoft has delivered as promised. As an avid Firefox fanatic, switching to IE7 for regular use was never really on the cards. Rather, the reason I want IE7 to be good is because I want everyone else to hurry up and ditch IE6. As a web designer, that browser is an absolute pain in the rear, and the sooner it is relegated to the status of Netscape 4, the better.
So, we know that the CSS support is now mostly up to scratch, and with a long-term commitment from Microsoft, it should stay that way. So my main focus is what the IE team has done to make the user experience better, and I have to say that they have definitely come a long way.
First up, their implementation of tabbed browsing is great.The quick tabs function is more elegant than any extension-induced Firefox version, the close-tab button is on the tab but not obtrusive like Opera’s, and most importantly it’s intuitive. The new-tab button is always where your eyes will naturally see the need for a new tab - next to the last one. However, it does seem a little clunky at the moment. Closing a tab causes the toolbars above it to flicker, far from the solid feel in Firefox and Opera. The options for how tabs behave are sufficient, approximately as good as those in Firefox. I have to say though, that’s not great, and I require an extension in Fx to get what I need. Of course with each new Firefox release, more and more of these options are being integrated into the browser itself, so the need for the Tab Mix Plus extension dwindles further every 6 months or so. Seemingly listening to the desires of many (including Vermouth), Microsoft has also ditched the Opera-like tab arrangement from Beta 1, and now features a much more Mozilla-like tab function.
Switching between search engines is now simple as ever, and unlike Vermy’s issues in Beta 1, IE7 now remembers your search engine choice, which I dare say for most people won’t end up being MSN search. I still don’t rate it as highly as the search feature in Firefox, which also has handy little icons for each search provider, for those who don’t care about that, the two systems are practically identical.
The favourites menu, too, is quick and simple. Adding a favourite comes in the form of a very apt addition icon which is located next to the now well-known favourites star icon. This star opens the “Favourites Center” which houses a list of your favourites, your feeds, and your history all in one. This is something which not only does Firefox lack, but that Firefox 2 is apparently no longer getting. It’s similar “Places” feature appears to have been pushed back to after the 2.0 release. Looks like IE may be in front for a while there, then.
That said, there are some parts of the browser interface which I just find really strange, and sometimes, annoying. The back/forward buttons look great, and work great. So why aren’t the refresh and stop buttons next to them like every other browser in existence? Maybe some people will like that - but for those who don’t, it’s frustrating to not even have the option to move them. At all. I suppose it sort of makes sense keeping Refresh where it is, of course - because when you are typing in the address bar, it magically turns in to the “Go” button. This has caught me out more than once when I have started typing an address, and then changed my mind and stopped, to try and refresh the current page. Instead I am sent on a trip to Google, which has been tasked with trying to identify my half-typed URL. Maybe when we are all using Vista we will see this as normal, as I think that is where the inspiration comes from for the refresh button.
Compared to Firefox and Opera in general, the GUI is hardly customizable at all. I can’t choose to have the classic menu above the address bar. I can’t choose to have the Home, Feeds, Print and other “command” buttons on a different line from the tab bar. More irritatingly, not all of the command buttons even fit, no matter how few you have. There is always an “extra” double-arrow menu. People who are anal about how their applications are laid out could well have heart attacks over this one. The arrows are everywhere. Every second button has a drop-down menu arrow, mostly for showing trivial options. I’d rather have less clutter, thanks. And why does the command bar have it’s own sub-menu in the toolbar menu? Why can’t I just lock them all at once?
The interface in general feels to me like the IE team tried to cram in as many features as possible, so that they are just one or two clicks away instead of being hidden in some advanced options dialogue. While it might seem like a good idea, it seems to me that many of the options available this way are advanced enough and seldom used enough to warrant being tucked away and out of sight. I don’t need a small drop-down to choose to change my home page. I don’t need a drop-down to choose the RSS or Atom feed on this blog. In both cases, a default setting elsewhere would do. In fact, I have to say that almost the entire Command Bar seems quite redundant, but I don’t want to turn it off because of those two things I do use. It would be lovely to have the Home and Feed buttons somewhere else.
Overall, IE7 is a massive improvement and it holds its own when pitted against Firefox and Opera. It has the features, but the way in which they’ve been implemented in the GUI somtimes makes me cringe. The interface appears simple and slightly minimalisitc to look at, but once you start clicking, one may find it’s actually somewhat cumbersome to use. Hopefully they can use the remaining few months before the official release to make it less alienating. If I find things fairly awkward, and I am one who has tried many different browsers and analyzed their features and interfaces, I can only imagine how someone who has never used anything but IE6 is going to feel. Nevertheless, IE7 Beta 2 shows some real promise, and those who use it won’t be seeing the pro-Firefox propaganda on this site like IE6 users do.
28th April | Reply
I think that this comment is best begun with the statement that I am only using IE7 because I have to use IE at work for a number of applications and IE7 beats the snot out of IE6. In this respect IE7 can be considered better than IE6 and I believe that everyone should upgrade to it as soon as possible, especially since I haven’t seen any problems with the current beta since I started using it (about a week now).
Ultimately, however, I would never actually use IE7 for private web browsing. The main reason for this is that there is no Mac version and I refuse to use any browser that employs proprietory technologies so I am mostly using Camino these days due to its Mozilla base. Further, however, IE7 falls into the same trap as all the other browsers that I know in that it isn’t perfect. This is more than slightly annoying. I currently have about 5 web browsers installed on my Mac and none of them are perfect. Equally, however, each of them tends to be very strong in some areas that makes up for the fact that it isn’t perfect but still means that I tend to have to swap between browsers for different jobs. IE7 has the same problem for me in that its RSS reader doesn’t allow aggregation of multiple feeds at the same time and it doesn’t have Inquisitor, a sort of “search as you type” tool for the Internet that replaces the Google Search function in Safari and Camino, and its form completion/password management is just plain weak. In comparison, for example, Safari has better RSS management/reading, it makes use of Mac system functions (such as Keychain password management and Network settings for locations), and forms can be completed almost instantly. Unfortunately for Safari it seems to have some rendering bugs that have been corrected in the open-source project but have yet to make it into the version that ships with OS X. Firefox is a nice browser with all its extensions but it falls down for me because it doesn’t have an Inquisitor plug-in (yet) and it also doesn’t support Mac system functions. Camino beats Firefox for me because it uses the same rendering engine and is therefore compatible with any site that is Firefox compatible but does is a full Cocoa application that makes use of the system functions; the lack of RSS management at all is Camino’s chief weakness, plus Flash seems to have some issues that I’ve raised.
This, I think, is it for IE7. It’s a good browser and it deserves to do well but don’t expect it to be perfect. If you have to use IE then use IE7. Personally, I’m much happier working using IE7 than I was using IE6, mostly because of the tab functions and this keeps a lot of the screen clutter under control.
On the browser side of things, while my personal preference is Camino at the moment, I am still following the development of Flock. I’m a big advocate of the writable web having effectively written my dissertation project on the subject and so I’m very interested to see what the new beta of Flock is going to look like when it is released in May. The blog entries for the project suggest that a lot is going to have changed and I’m going to enjoy giving it a test when it arrives.
4th May | Reply
Oh, one additional bitch about IE7 - why doesn’t it implement a reasonable username/password management system? Just about every other browser will remember for you the username/password that you used on a form and will automatically populate that information for you when you revist that form. With IE7, IE still requires that you either manually enter the username or click on the username field and select the username from the autocomplete dialog before the password is populated. What’s the point of remembering these details if they won’t automatically be used?
5th May | Reply
I think having it remembered in the autocomplete box is reasonable - I mean, what if you have two accounts somewhere which uses the same login page? The IE implementation makes management of that much easier. I recall when I used to play NukeZone, I had my player account and my moderator account, two different logins. Because of the way Firefox chose to do it, I used a completely different browser for when I logged in with my moderator account.
5th May | Reply
In Reply to #3: I think it’s safe to say that this is the exception rather than the rule and as such IE’s implementation of username/password management is deeply flawed. I have logons for many web sites/services and for none of them do I have more than one logon so I am always entering the same information. To be honest, the AutoComplete functionality in of itself isn’t very good when compared to Safari. In Safari it will completely populate a new form for you with past information as soon as you have entered a value it has seen before into one of the fields. Typically this is your first or full name and this triggers the remainder of the form to be completed. The browser quite often gets the form completely correct and even when it makes a mistake it is much quicker to change the mistakes than it is to use something like AutoComplete’s drop-down lists.
5th May | Reply
That safari feature sounds pretty cool - but I don’t recall any other browser having that, not just IE.
I don’t see why you would be entering the same information in IE for a login at the same site. All you do in IE7 (even back in IE6) is double-click the empty username box. A list of usernames you have used appears, and when you select one, it puts that in, with it’s relevent password. You just need to press enter or hit the submit button and you’re away.
For me, it is just one extra finger action to what I already have to use in Firefox. I can see how you might think it is inferior, but I can’t say it’s “deeply flawed”.
8th May | Reply
In Reply to #5: As far as I am concerned it is “deeply flawed” because it missed the requirement. The requirement is that I don’t want to have to enter anything when logging onto a web site that I have already submitted my logon details to. This includes having to select a username from a list already supplied since, 99.9% of the time, I will only ever supply the one. As far as I am concerned, I just want to hit Enter to logon when that logon screen is displayed; no moving of the mouse or additional typing. Every browser that I know of at the moment gets this right but for some odd reason IE decided to target that 0.1% scenario. This smacks as general laziness as it is clear that they just tacked username/password management on as a simple extension to AutoComplete.