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Internet Explorer 7: More than a browser

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Yesterday we had Cyra Richardson - Lead Program Manager on the Internet Explorer team - in Belgium for a few customer visits and an MSDN Evening session on what's new in IE7 for developers.

During the customer visits that I participated in, she focused on on the 3 major pillars of Internet Explorer 7:

  • Better User Experience
    • Make consumers more productive
    • Browse, Search and Subscribe
  • Secure and Trustworthy Browsing
    • Safe Personal Web Surfing
    • Safe Corporation Web Consumption
  • Powerful Web Developer Platform
    • Web Development Improvements for “Standards-First Web Development”
    • RSS Platform to “Reach your customers wherever they are”

Especially the last part was very interesting for those folks that make a living on the web. The topics highlighted and discussed were: 

  • Fix top pain points in standards based web development
  • Add most requested standards features
  • Make building AJAX type applications easier
  • Improve standards first web development
  • Offer an RSS platform that can be used outside of IE

A lot of interest also in the new security features in IE7. It was the first time I got some in-depth information about the ActiveX Installer Service. This service is available in Windows Vista from the "Turn Windows features on or off" - "Windows Features" window.
The ActiveX Installer Service is the solution to delegating the install of per-machine ActiveX controls to a Standard User in the enterprise. It consists of a Windows service, a Group Policy administrative template, and a few changes in Internet Explorer.

One of the more interesting conversations I had was on Search in IE7. IE uses OpenSearch which is a technology collection for generically publishing search results. One of its features is that users can add sites as search providers. IE also provides Search Discovery. This way you can offer search on your own blog/web site. More on this in the MSDN article Search Provider Extensibility in Internet Explorer 7.

Another interesting resource on installing IE7 and Enhancing IE7 I learned about is the web site https://www.enhanceie.com/ie/. It has 5 main sections:

Here you can find a dozen of tips, tricks and useful tools for IE7 users and developers. Enjoy! For those of you who have been using the HTTP Debugging proxy "Fiddler" the design of the EnhanceIE site will be familiar ;-).

Some of the attendees of the MSDN evening I talked to found it interesting; so I think we can say that Cyra did a nice job. Thank you Cyra!

As the final release is coming close now you might want to prepare for IE7. Check out these resources:

Technorati tags: MSDN Evening, Community, Internet Explorer 7, OpenSearch, Security