My impressions of IE7 beta 1

I finally got a chance to play with Internet Explorer 7 beta 1, which is currently only available to MSDN subscribers (I am not a MSDN subscriber).  Here are some of my observations:

• After having been accessing Outlook Web Access through Firefox for the last several months, I had forgotten how much more robust it is to access OWA with IE.  There is nothing specifically different about accessing OWA with IE6 vs. IE7, but I figured I would through that out there.
• Tabbed browsing is nice, but it’s no fundamentally any different than tabbed browsing in Firefox.  Sure, the interface looks a little different, but IE has not done anything fundamentally different than what’s been available for a long time in Firefox.
• There is an anti-phishing filter that runs constantly, verifying sites that you visit against some sort of MS database (I’m guessing).  I did not visit any sites that prompted any sort of warning.
• The current version of Google Toolbar seems to work just fine in IE7, which is weird because browser upgrades usually break the Toolbar; I did verify that it was the IE6 version of the Toolbar being used, not some sort of IE7 beta upgrade from Google.
• The whole interface seems a little more rounded out; sort of in the style of screenshots of seen of Vista.
• There’s a “Delete Browsing History” window that essentially functions in exactly the same way as “Clear Browsing History” in Firefox, so that’s not real different from what we can do now.  I’ve heard that Administrators can disable some of these functions for users in a Windows environment, which I do not believe is an option in Firefox.
• It breaks Trillian and other multiple service instant messaging programs by installing some sort of new MSN files.  I think that if you disable your MSN sign-on in Trillian that you are ok in to use it with other services, but I’m not sure.  Trillian has no plans of patching until there is a public beta or final release of IE7.
• In order to install IE7, you have to go through the Windows Genuine Advantage certification.  It’s not clear if this is just for the beta or if this will be required for the full version as well.

For lots more information, check out the IEBlog.

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