# Are You Using IE 7?



## BigApe (May 12, 2006)

Is anyone trying out the public beta of IE 7?

You can get it here

I'm giving it a go right now. The tabs are nice, just like FireFox. It seems to be faster than FF, the history is buggy (what's new for Microsoft?) and the GUI should be customizable.

What do you think?

Joe


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## Steve Mehs (Mar 21, 2002)

I used to use a leaked copy of IE 7 Beta 1. Never tried Beta 2, it's not as much fun using a public beta versus a leaked copy that your not supposed to have access too 

Does the GUI still look like it did in Beta 1?

http://www.dbstalk.com/showthread.php?t=45010


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## ebaltz (Nov 23, 2004)

Why switch from FF? Its so much better.


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## Steve Mehs (Mar 21, 2002)

I don't like/use Firefox.


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

Nope.. using FF. Last time I looked, it was a huge rip off of FF.


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## ebaltz (Nov 23, 2004)

Steve Mehs said:


> I don't like/use Firefox.


Then you don't know what you are missing. I have never heard of anyone using FF and then saying, oh I prefer IE6 afterwards. IE7 is an improvement on IE6 for sure, but it is no improvement on FF. Have you ever tried and used the extensions available for FF? I use like 30 and they are awesome. No ads, no popups, no crap at all. Block flash is you choose, and on and on. If you aren't using extensions, then you aren't using FF to anywhere near its potential.


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## BigApe (May 12, 2006)

I used FF for about a year. It's really a great program. I didn't like what it did to some web pages, but other than that, it was a great program.

I was hoping for a more unified program. Something that worked well with the other Microsoft programs I use. That would be IE 7. It's faster and more user friendly for the non-tech people in my house (my wife.) The new version also gives me access to RSS feeds as well... just like FF.

I'll admit the new version isn't as tweakable as FF, but that will come with time.

Joe


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## Steve Mehs (Mar 21, 2002)

ebaltz said:


> Then you don't know what you are missing. I have never heard of anyone using FF and then saying, oh I prefer IE6 afterwards. IE7 is an improvement on IE6 for sure, but it is no improvement on FF. Have you ever tried and used the extensions available for FF? I use like 30 and they are awesome. No ads, no popups, no crap at all. Block flash is you choose, and on and on. If you aren't using extensions, then you aren't using FF to anywhere near its potential.


Not to get off topic, but yes I have used Firefox for a month or two and I don't see the big deal. I have it installed on my computer right now, but hardly ever use it. Yes I have used extensions, at one point I had about 15 of the most popular installed, and other then ShowIP I think they're a waste. Never took advantage of them, why the hell would I want something stupid like weather info in my browser. Why would I want to block Flash? Three of my most my most frequented websites use Flash (Time Warner Cable, TV.com and the Speakeasy Broadband Speed Test application). The pop up blocker in XPSP2 works fine for me. Other then the pop up from Circuit City's and Radio Shack's website I don't think I've ever seen the pop up alert bar.

I hate the integrated search bar in Firefox (and IE 7), I'd rather have a drop down Links/Bookmarks menu next to the Address bar like in IE. Yahoo is my home page and has been since I first got the internet in December 1995, no reason for a search bar when I can just hit the home button. Full screen in Firefox doesn't do auto hide for the tool bar. And as for tabbed browsing I still don't get it. Having a clutter of websites in your taskbar at the bottom or a clutter of tabs in your browser at the top. Doesn't make a difference to me. I also like how I can easily copy Favorites from my computer to my Pocket PC. I also don't like the Find feature in Firefox.

I've been surfing the net with IE with a certain specific interface for 8 years, and I'm not going to change now.


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## dave1234 (Oct 9, 2005)

Tried it long enough to hate the GUI, primarily because it's different and non intuitive. I suppose if forced to use it long enough I would learn the new GUI and adjust.


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## DonLandis (Dec 17, 2003)

I use IE6 and don't have any issues with it. I don't understand why others do. It is loaded on 7 of my computers here and it works fine. I never have viruses either because I use a good updated daily program for that. 
Now on my PDA, PIE leaves much to be desired but with a flash plugin seems to work better. I tried another but while it did appear to load pages faster, it also was a huge resource hog that caused me to stop using it as a regular browser. If, on the PDA, I need to access a webpage with JAVA, then I will load it up which takes forever and then it loads pages faster than PIE. It is Opera. 

I admit not having looked at FF because the reviews seem to never state specifically what is so great, just that it is. Not good enough for me to go to all the trouble of switching. I suppose those who do fiddle with these different ways to do the same old thing just have way too much time on their hands and nothing better to do with it than experiment with yet another mouse trap.


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## julesism (Feb 25, 2004)

I've been using FF since last summer and have never looked back! Tabbed browsing is what I utilize and like the most about FF. IE7 prolly has it now, but it's too late for M$!


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## sampatterson (Aug 27, 2002)

I like IE7, use firefox also but starting to prefer IE7


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## ebaltz (Nov 23, 2004)

Steve Mehs said:


> Not to get off topic, but yes I have used Firefox for a month or two and I don't see the big deal. I have it installed on my computer right now, but hardly ever use it. Yes I have used extensions, at one point I had about 15 of the most popular installed, and other then ShowIP I think they're a waste. Never took advantage of them, why the hell would I want something stupid like weather info in my browser. Why would I want to block Flash? Three of my most my most frequented websites use Flash (Time Warner Cable, TV.com and the Speakeasy Broadband Speed Test application). The pop up blocker in XPSP2 works fine for me. Other then the pop up from Circuit City's and Radio Shack's website I don't think I've ever seen the pop up alert bar.
> 
> I hate the integrated search bar in Firefox (and IE 7), I'd rather have a drop down Links/Bookmarks menu next to the Address bar like in IE. Yahoo is my home page and has been since I first got the internet in December 1995, no reason for a search bar when I can just hit the home button. Full screen in Firefox doesn't do auto hide for the tool bar. And as for tabbed browsing I still don't get it. Having a clutter of websites in your taskbar at the bottom or a clutter of tabs in your browser at the top. Doesn't make a difference to me. I also like how I can easily copy Favorites from my computer to my Pocket PC. I also don't like the Find feature in Firefox.
> 
> I've been surfing the net with IE with a certain specific interface for 8 years, and I'm not going to change now.


Sounds like maybe you should use Windows 95, IE3, et al. Or maybe DOS.


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## ebaltz (Nov 23, 2004)

BigApe said:


> I used FF for about a year. It's really a great program. I didn't like what it did to some web pages, but other than that, it was a great program.
> 
> I was hoping for a more unified program. Something that worked well with the other Microsoft programs I use. That would be IE 7. It's faster and more user friendly for the non-tech people in my house (my wife.) The new version also gives me access to RSS feeds as well... just like FF.
> 
> ...


Thats the funny part, people trying IE7 who either haven't used FF or don't know much about it, think the new features of IE7 are cool. All of which FF has had for a year or so already, and they could have been enjoying them all this time.


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## ebaltz (Nov 23, 2004)

DonLandis said:


> I use IE6 and don't have any issues with it. I don't understand why others do. It is loaded on 7 of my computers here and it works fine. I never have viruses either because I use a good updated daily program for that.
> Now on my PDA, PIE leaves much to be desired but with a flash plugin seems to work better. I tried another but while it did appear to load pages faster, it also was a huge resource hog that caused me to stop using it as a regular browser. If, on the PDA, I need to access a webpage with JAVA, then I will load it up which takes forever and then it loads pages faster than PIE. It is Opera.
> 
> I admit not having looked at FF because the reviews seem to never state specifically what is so great, just that it is. Not good enough for me to go to all the trouble of switching. I suppose those who do fiddle with these different ways to do the same old thing just have way too much time on their hands and nothing better to do with it than experiment with yet another mouse trap.


As a web designer, when something is broken on a web page, it is invariably IE6. MS has always insisted on making their own standards when it comes to rendering pages and that is a pain for designers. IE6 is a web browser like Notepad is a word processor.


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## Steve Mehs (Mar 21, 2002)

ebaltz said:


> Sounds like maybe you should use Windows 95, IE3, et al. Or maybe DOS.


Do you have to be a wiseass, just becasue I disagree with you over something as stupid as a web browser?

Actually started off with Windows 3.1. I still perfer the UI of WIN9X and 2000 over the cartoonish XP Style and theme, everything is set to classic, Classic Start Menu, Classic Theme, Classic Control Panel, I use Icons not Tiles, no Welcome Screen and my IE buttons are aranged in the order that Netscape Communicator 4.25 had them in. Classic Skin is used for Winamp, ZA Pro is set to Grey, the orginal color of the panels back in 2000.


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## DonLandis (Dec 17, 2003)

ebaltz said:


> As a web designer, when something is broken on a web page, it is invariably IE6. MS has always insisted on making their own standards when it comes to rendering pages and that is a pain for designers. IE6 is a web browser like Notepad is a word processor.


I hope you are much better than all the web designers I have had the misfortune of dealing with. The latest SNAFU was that a web designer was complaining to me that the link I gave him for a video file I host for his client was corrupted and did not work. I went to his web page and saw the problem immediately, He mispelled http:// He had it http:http:// Mistakes happen, especially typos, but the common factor I observe with all these incompetent web designers is that they say the same thing you just did. Not their fault. It's the browser that doesn't handle their code the way it should. I suppose if IE6 was really good it would have interpreted the http:http:// without issue. BTW- the link I sent was correct so I have no idea how he mistyped it. Maybe the difference is that since I'm not a coder, I need to check my work to be sure I have it right before I send it out or blame someone else.

PS, I still use notepad for quick and easy text files I need for my video character generator.  Faster and basic, that is all I need at times.


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

Well Steve, nothing wrong with going with what works. I use both browsers like I said, but I prefer FF over IE. Tab browing and the find you mention or some of the reason I prefer it. As for websites working on one and not the other, most sites people run into that do not work on FF is because the site is using IE only features and ones that are not standards based. In terms of Standards, FF is much more complient than IE6. 

I also find the ablity to provide extension really cool. Allows community to add functionality that is not in the browser. I use the weather extension and personaly find it usueful. 

Browsers like IDEs usually bowl down to personal preference. Personally from what I have seen, not a lot of IE7 buzz at all. Ofcourse since I work for a company that required IE support on web apps eventually I will have to give it a spin. For now I use IE6 and FF for development and mainly FF for development because it offers a lot more in terms of development tools.


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## CoriBright (May 30, 2002)

Yep, IE7B2 here.


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## Steve Mehs (Mar 21, 2002)

For the few weeks that I only used Firefox and the times I've used it casually, I have never had a problem with it displaying websites incorrectly. Everything always displayed alright, and it renders pages a little faster then IE. Granted I don't visit a huge array of sites and Microsoft Update doesn't work (I use Auto Updates anyway). Firefox is not a bad browser, I’m not saying that it is, I just don't like it because it's not what I'm used to and I see any advantages to it. Themes, extensions, tabbed browsing, et al does nothing to enhance my web experience. Thunderbird however, I had that for 15 minutes and removed it. Firefox is okay, but I absolutely hated Thunderbird .

You’re right, there’s not much press about IE7, likewise there’s no press about Mozilla anymore either. I believe their 15 minutes are up, and their market share will not increase much more over what they currently have. I frequent PC Magazine, PC World, Wired News, the Yahoo Tech News, it used to be everyday there was some new article or editorial on Mozilla. It was the main topic of discussion on a lot of podcasts I listen to. Now nothing.


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## jcm.oo (Jan 24, 2005)

I used to use nothing but m$ products. About a year and a half a go I started using Thunderbird and Firefox. Both are really really great applications. So much so that I convinced the rest of the it department for the school system I work for to use it. We use Thunderbird for all of the teacher's e-mail, and firefox is installed on ever computer we roll out, and we have deployed it in all of the computer labs.

Last time I checked out IE7 it had the buttons in the middle, which I didn't like at all, And it looked like somebody did a really bad job of copying something really good, and the result sucked.

I do have a question, I haven't had a chance to try to find this out myself. Is there a way you can prevent somebody from downloading ANYTHING. No right clicking on pictures or links to downloads and "save target as." And is there a way to prevent somebody from right clicking a picture and "set as wallpaper" We have a lot of middle and high school kids that like to mess things up. It has not been a big deal lately because we have started using DriveShield, which btw is a great program.


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## CoriBright (May 30, 2002)

jcm.oo said:


> I do have a question, I haven't had a chance to try to find this out myself. Is there a way you can prevent somebody from downloading ANYTHING. No right clicking on pictures or links to downloads and "save target as." And is there a way to prevent somebody from right clicking a picture and "set as wallpaper" We have a lot of middle and high school kids that like to mess things up. It has not been a big deal lately because we have started using DriveShield, which btw is a great program.


No there isn't. You can always use File, Save As and save the whole webpage or take a screencap and paste that into Paint.


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## djlong (Jul 8, 2002)

I had to switch to IE7. IE6 was no option for me as I'd long0since switched to Firefox and I like tabbed browsing too much.

But FF starting locking up my ENTIRE machine (brand new Media CenterPC) and NO other software was doing it. So I tried IE7 and it's good enough for me.


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## spykedvodka (Jan 31, 2006)

I never liked firefox. I thought it sucked in my opinion. I tried it for about 3 months. I finally just started to use I.E. 7. I like it better.... I don't know, but it just grew on me. I guess you can just put this in as preference. I didn't like Beta 1 of IE 7, but Beta 2 seems to be running more smoothly for me and that's probably why I like it more.

IMO Microsoft should just get out of the browser business unless they are getting some technology that will blow everybody away 10 folds.... But leaving them in it is what makes both FireFox and IE better due to the competition.


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