IE7 Beta 2
As the saying goes, a dressed up pig is still a pig. Beta 1 was a dressed up and rather confused pig, but IE 7 Beta 2 has moved on to being a tramp dog: Attention-seeking, sort of ugly, not too smart, spastic, and omnipresent, but better than a pig.
The first thing that I noticed about IE 7 Beta 2 is that it won’t install with Beta 1 already there. It won’t upgrade, it won’t remove it itself, it basically says “No. I won’t install unless you uninstall Beta 1″. It took me a while to figure out where the uninstall was, because it classifies itself as an update, which is hidden in the “add/remove programs” window by default. Strike 1.
After it installed, though (which took about an hour. Zzz…), I immediately went to test the most glaring omission in Beta 1: CSS rollovers. They simply didn’t work under Beta 1. They even work in IE 6. Worse CSS support than IE 6? That’s embarassing. But, to my elation, rollovers do indeed work. Hallelujah! In fact, CSS support overall seems to be much improved over Beta 1 (which itself was virtually no improvement at all over IE 6). Lucky for Microsoft, because if they didn’t fix the abysmal CSS support in 7, web developers from all over the world would march on Redmond and burn the IE department to the ground.
The tab rollovers were slightly different in B2 than B1, but that was the extent of the cosmetic changes. The whole tab bar, though, being always on, screams “Hey! We’ve got tabs too!”. Good job, we’re proud of you for being YEARS late to the tabs party and then implementing them tackily. Even more tackily than FireFox’s, which is pretty tacky too, though not always on.
IE 7 is also the latest victim of Microsoft’s crusade against menus, which are thankfully reenablable, though they appear below the toolbar. Tacky again. If menus are confusing to noobs (Microsoft’s argument), then removing them is restrictive to everyone else. If you’re worried about noobs, then start by overhauling the convoluted and ridiculously complicated control panel system. And the XP view doesn’t count, because it doesn’t make it any less user-friendly.
IE7 does have some innovative features, though. I haven’t tested it myself yet, but the print preview system seems like an incredibly handy feature. It can delete parts of a webpage before printing - after all, why print a 500 pixel wide full-color header, or a group of ads? Their implementation of the forward and back buttons, though minor, is also nicely done. Instead of holding down the back or forward buttons to see all webpages ahead or behind the current one, there’s an extension of the button set that shows all the webpages both before and after the current, with the current highlighted.
Hopefully IE 7 final release will feature spec-complete CSS2 support (or at least close, since they already said it wouldn’t pass the Acid2 test). That’s the one feature that I want more than any other, for the sake of people on the internet, and to make my life as a web developer easier, seeing as I don’t use IE anyway.
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