IE7 is finally upon us. It has taken Microsoft more than 5 years to get to this point. A lot has changed since then. In the last 5 years Mozilla’s Firefox has stolen a march, both in being technology compliant and browsing safety, and has eaten into IE’s market share. In 2002, IE had a 96 percent market share of the browser market. In 2006, it has fallen to 85 percent and will continue to fall further as Firefox finds more adapters.

To add to Microsoft’s woes, they have faced a lot of flak for the various security bugs that keep popping up every second day. Keeping this in mind, Microsoft has overhauled IE7 significantly. The browser has had a significant security overhaul and is more standards compliant. It has received a re-designed UI and added tabbed browsing. It has even introduced new features like anti-phishing technology (which for a change has been copied by other browsers like Mozilla), RSS support and a new approach to the favorites /bookmarks folder.We ran the browser through its paces to see how significant this update really is.

Installation

The install of the browser remains the same as earlier versions. You can either get it from Windows Update in a few days or if you are eager to try it out get it from here. The installation procedure is relatively simple. It first verifies if your Windows XP is authentic and will only proceed to install the browser if your Windows is a legal copy. Do remember you need to have Service Pack 2 installed or the browser will not install. If both the above conditions are satisfied, the setup will then proceed to ask you if you wish to check for malware through Windows Defender beta 2.

Since I was getting a little impatient at this point (I know I have a clean PC!), I proceeded with the next step. An actual install. Once the install was done, it asked for the traditional reboot which left me a little surprised. Other browsers don’t ask you for a reboot when you install them, so why does IE need a restart. Even the recent beta copies of Office 2007 have not needed a reboot and work fine out of the box after install. For this I poked around a few forums and sites and finally came upon the answer. IE7 has added a new RSS feed engine which allows IE to render existing RSS feeds as a readable web page. Hence the reboot is needed and well essential for IE to work properly.

First Impressions

After the reboot was over, I fired up IE and was greeted by a typical options screen which allows you to turn on the anti-phishing filter and set up various options such as default language etc. Once you are done with the options, the first thing that strikes you is the re-designed interface. You will either love it or hate it. I had mixed feelings on the issue - finding it quite functional but a little too sparse for my liking. The back and forward buttons have been kept in place in the corner on the left side, but in a break from the traditional design, the standard drop-down menus are by default hidden and become visible only if you use a shortcut like ALT-F or the mouse. The address bar has been moved right on top which is a good thing as this will prevent spyware toolbar’s from hijacking it. In a bad move though, the refresh button has moved next to the address bar and is not easily visible. Its odd position will make people search for it initially.