Windows Internet Explorer 7 released yesterday so I updated my work desktop to run it. I’ve been using both IE6 and Firefox 2 beta for a while, with FF being my prefered browser for some time. I hadn’t used any of the intermediate betas of IE7. Out the gate, this is a lot better than IE6. My biggest gripe is that for some of the same interactions (e.g. the search box behavior, the tab behavior) that Firefox has, it’s different which makes it kludgy to swich. For my own sake, here’s what I like and don’t like.
- I don’t like that Control-L brings up a new “open” window. I can’t Control-Enter in that dialog box.
- I like that it’s faster, a lot faster on a lot of pages.
- I like that RSS system is integrated with Outlook’s. When I installed IE7, Outlook asked me if I wished to combine the RSS lists between Outlook. Genious.
- I don’t like that when I click to choose a different search provider and a keyword is in the box, it tries to execute that search on my current tab.
- I love quick-tabs
- I wish the search box had search suggestions
- Tabs feel slow to open and close
- The browser still locks up quite a bit
It’s a great step forward and there’s a lot of love. I hope they keep pushing out versions of this and keep pace with Firefox.