I installed Microsoft IE7 Beta 2 preview on my machine yesterday. So far I like what I see and although I don’t really think it will get back the people who have already deserted to other browsers like Firefox, I think it may stop others leaving the ship. Personally I’ve never been a fan of FF as it doesn’t offer me anything that I want; I have no need for RSS in the browser or TABS, and generally I found it much slower than IE.
Anyway, after a day or more using IE7 there are a few things I noticed;
after trying to use the TAB functionality I have ditched it. I really don’t want TABBED browsing, I don’t see what all the fuss was about. In my opinion Microsoft made the correct decision when it started dropping the MDI from it’s software.
Having set up the RSS feeds, I really don’t want to read my feeds in a browser, it just don’t feel right, and there is no notification when new feeds update, so I will go back to my seperate Feed Reader Application. It is good that the browser detects the feeds and allows easy subscription, and I just hope that either in XP or under Vista other feed readers will use the underlying RSS model so that I can subscribe while in IE but read in another app. Alternatively Microsoft, please add RSS Feeds to outlook, and while you’re at it, add newsgroups as well!
Other than that I like the look and feel, and the lightweight interface and some of the other little changes… so it’s a goer for me!