The Far Side of Tech

Last week, after months of beta testing, Microsoft finally released Internet Explorer 7 to the public. Now titled Windows Internet Explorer, it marks the first major update of IE since Service Pack 2 for Windows XP was released two years ago. While I’m always excited at the prospect of shiny new software, as an IT worker I’m also somewhat anxious of the IE 7 launch; it’s the first of a trifecta of upcoming Microsoft software upgrades for their core products, the other two being Vista and Office 2007. All of these applications will see major changes in functionality and usability in the next few months, which means things will get very interesting for us computer support folk.

The first thing you’ll notice after installing Internet Explorer 7 is the radically redesigned user interface. At first glance, it looks a lot like Mozilla Firefox sans the menu bar. I think someone at Microsoft feels that menus have become passé, as this is an increasing trend in their newer software. If you’re afraid of change, you can enable the standard menu bar, but it doesn’t really mesh well with IE’s new aesthetic.

The location bar, where you type in web addresses, is now moved to the top of the screen by default. To the right of that (and ripped almost blatantly from Firefox) is the search bar, which you can customize with several search engines. The second row houses the tab bar as well as some functional buttons like printing and access to Internet Explorer tools.

What are tabs you ask? Basically, they allow you to view multiple web sites within a single Internet Explorer window. Instead of sifting through multiple windows, you can maneuver through websites loaded in tabs inside of a single window. Firefox, Opera, and Safari users have known this joy for years already, so this is yet another situation where Microsoft is playing catch-up with the competition. There is a nifty “quick tabs” button, which instantly shows you all of the websites loaded in your tabs as thumbnails. Props to MS for finally finding a feature which Firefox doesn’t have by default. Of course, you can add it easily to Firefox with the “Foxpose” extension.

Internet Explorer 7 also adds RSS support, which means you can subscribe to syndicated RSS feeds from news sites, blogs, and the like. This allows you to easily track when your favorite websites get updated from a single location. While nice, I still personally prefer most of the online RSS aggregator homepages over this functionality. Netvibes.com is my current favorite. Still, it’s a strong attempt at adding syndication to the browser, and it’s definitely more robust than Firefox’s “live bookmarks” feature which lets you add feeds as bookmarks.

Another feature in IE7 that Firefox doesn’t have (yet) is an antiphishing filter. It automatically alerts you whenever you visit a potentially bogus website, i.e., any of those eBay or PayPal scams. This is a particularly useful feature for the casual web user, who is often not aware of these scammer sites. Microsoft wisely chose to have IE prompt you to enable the phishing filter the first time it encounters something suspicious. Of course they could have just enabled it by default to make things easier. Thus far there’s no reason why you wouldn’t want to be running this filter. Look for similar features to pop up in Firefox 2.0 and Opera in the near future.

The most fundamental changes in Internet Explorer 7 are not available in the Windows XP version unfortunately. In its Vista incarnation, IE7 will also offer enhanced security by running as a separate application with no direct ties to the operating system. It exists in a special protected state that has minimal privileges, making it impossible to do anything unwarranted in the Vista operating system. This will essentially make the Vista version free of all those exploits and spyware issues that plagued Internet Explorer 6 in XP. While IE 7 in XP doesn’t have this blanket of security, it’s still more secure than IE 6—just not as much as in Vista.

Internet Explorer 7 will be available as a critical Windows Update on November 1st, so you’ll get it then automatically if you have Automatic Updates turned on. If you want it now, you can grab it from the Internet Explorer site at www.microsoft.com/windows/ie.

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