Internet Explorer Beta 1

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Last week I installed Internet Explorer beta 1, here are my thoughts.

  1. Its stable.  I've had no crashes or odd sufferings at all since I installed it.
  2. Tabbed browsing - without MSN Search toolbar and with a much nicer implementation
  3. Search is built in - pick your engine
  4. Fast - it is faster to start and rendering is quick
  5. Its just over 10 Mb - not a huge download or install
  6. Add folders to your Links toolbar - you can now click the folder in your links toolbar and select the fav you want
  7. RSS feeds built in.  I'm still wondering if this makes sense for a browser - I didn't like the firefox implementation and I'm not a fan of this either (see below), but at least it is nice to be able to view XML feeds in an HTML format rather than just XML.  It also has RSS discovery, so you dont have to go looking for the XML icon on the page.
  8. New graphics - the revovling "e" is gone replaced with a vista style windows flag
  9. Tab independance - you can open your history/favs in one tab without it affecting another tab
  10. Anti-phishing - dodgy websites are flagged before you get to them.

Things I'd like to see improved:

  1. The favourites in the links toolbar have a fixed width regardless of the width of the text descriptor
  2. RSS implementation:
    • Offline browsing is clunky and needs to be streamlined
    • Scheduling is not granular enough - what if I want to refresh it every hour rather than every day?
    • No notification of updates except via email (should be a toast pop up or something similar - and it should be integrated with the scheduling)
  3. It would be nice if it was blogging aware - a customizable "blog this" button would be great - especially if it was integrated with MSN Spaces ;-) - this would drive more awareness of blogging and encourage non technical people to start blogging.

So thats it after about a week.

If you want a copy of IE7, you can download it from the MSDN Subscription Download center. 

If you dont have a MSDN subscription - we have 48% off at the moment - so its a great time to buy it!