Pros & Cons
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- Built-in, if rudimentary RSS feed reader that should finally introduce the technology to the masses; tabbed browsing; integrated antiphishing filter and other security features.
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- Page-rendering issues remain here and there; sporadic reports of failures and other problems with installation.
Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 Specs
| Free: | Yes |
| Type: | Personal |
Those of you who've followed our coverage of the development saga that is Internet Explorer 7 know that I and others at PC Magazine haven't been easy on the Softies for their laggardly development and the various shortcomings we've noted in beta builds. I've lived with the various preliminary versions of Internet Explorer 7.0 for almost a year now, using it on a daily basis. What I said in my
I'm constantly surprised that Firefox—an underdog that originated as a passionate open-source response to lack of innovation throughout the graying years of Internet Explorer 6—has wholly stolen the development momentum (as well as considerable market share) from Microsoft. But it has. Still, Microsoft has the vast majority of the market. Those who purchase a new PC next year will find IE7 on it. That alone will make it the default browser of choice for millions of people by the end of 2007. Depending on whose statistics you believe, 80-something to 90 or so percent of consumers use IE, mostly version 6. Millions of XP users will be downloading the IE7 to replace their very-long-in-the-tooth-patched-to-the-hilt versions of IE6. If you're in that camp but on the fence, let me push you over: Upgrade.
Rest assured that you'll be able continue with a normal Internet existence, browsing, shopping, and searching to your heart's content. (And thanks to the ruckus raised by the Europeans, you even get a choice of search providers at install, setup, and during use—
So what really stands out about IE7? A few things. First and foremost, the browser has caught up, in a general sense, to the other two leaders as a modern browser. Mostly that means it natively supports ease-of-use features like tabbed browsing, which lets you have multiple Web pages open in one window. You can also save tabs to open them all simultaneously at browser startup or in groupings that open at once. Other niceties include built-in hooks that allow you to access other Microsoft Web services you've subscribed to like Live Messenger. Being modern also means customizable and modular. You'll find quite a few add-ons, too.
The developers made myriad more minor and subtle improvements. Printing improves in a big way. The browser will force a given page, whether portrait or landscape, to fit into a printed page automatically. That alone should cut down on a lot of cut-off pages filling the recycle bin. You can also zoom in on pages merely by clicking a little magnifying glass icon in the lower right-hand corner of the screen. The typical consumer won't notice many things for designers under the hood, such as improved support for CSS (cascading style sheets), a fundamental underpinning of Web design that continues to plague those who make Web pages (and will actually continue to plague them). And improved integration and support for AJAX (Asynchronoous JavaScript and XML) allows richer, speedier, more interactive Web pages.
IE7 builds in one killer app:
That's not to say that the IE7 RSS reader is the best—it's not even close. For that, you'll have to pay for an application called
Let's Face Some Facts
We all have to do a better job educating ourselves and staying abreast of online security issues. To be sure, IE7 is much better about helping us with this than its predecessor. By default the application is far more secure and locked-down than IE6. It offers improvements in two general areas: protecting you from downloading malware, and preventing you from giving out personal data.
For instance, IE7 pops up an automatic warning in an information bar or popup window when it thinks something you're doing is likely to put you at risk—enabling an uncertified ActiveX control, attempting to download something from a suspicious site, filling out a form in the clear, and the like. Many reviewers of the browser, myself included, found the feature intrusive, but no browser can be all things to all people. Microsoft decided to err on the side of caution.
Utter "security" and "Microsoft" in the same breath, and you're certain raise the ire of IT types. Rest assured, though, that a small army of Microsoft professionals will continue to fortify the browser with fixes, patches, and advice to cover as many users as possible as much as possible. That said, the problems will continue to crop up after users discover new vulnerabilities (and they will).
In any case, here are some of key features that make browsing more secure with IE7. ActiveX Opt-In stands as one of the most important. Although using a term like "opt-in" seems a bit counterintuitive for a safety feature in a locked-down browser this improvement should help put the kibosh on one of the worst IE6 vulnerabilities. ActiveX, a platform for executing interactive content in Windows environments, was originally intended for apps running securely on the desktop, not as an Internet-downloadable platform.
The code made it out into the Internet world, and the bad folks took advantage of its inherent insecurity. Opt-In disables all ActiveX controls by default. How smoothly this will function remains to be seen, considering our ever-growing desire to run multimedia content via Web browsers. But theoretically, Microsoft will stay on top of developers validly employing ActiveX and insure a continual flow of certified controls available.
The most important personal data protection feature in IE7 is the Phishing Filter. It combines both a heuristics engine (which looks for specific "tells"—to borrow from poker parlance, that point to a site being suspicious) as well as an opt-in service where Microsoft keeps constant track of the credentials of valid pages that you can safely visit and use.
Since it has taken IE7 so long to get here and has arrived largely in tandem with Microsoft' Vista operating system, this is one area where security features have been designed to take advantage of the tighter integration of code between the two. You will therefore see a few features either built in to the Vista version of IE7 or built to work specifically in conjunction with it. These include a Protected Mode and Parental Controls among other features. Watch for a more in-depth discussion of security features as part of our continued Vista coverage.—
What About Vista?
IE7 is IE7, its look and feel will be nearly identical no matter what version you use, but the two versions with the largest uptake are sure to be that for XP (specifically reviewed here) and the one bundled with the Microsoft Vista operating system known as IE7+. Representatives from Microsoft have explained over the last year that the underlying code base for all versions of IE7 will largely be the same (we have to take their word for it since it remains proprietary) and will have most of the same features. Though the version for Vista will have some Vista-only capabilities that take advantage of technology only found in the new operating system. Those include enhanced network diagnostic abilities, Protected Mode, and Parental Controls. Stay tuned to PCMag.com for all further developments on the Vista front as well as any pertinent information related to its version of IE7.
What browser should you use? All three of the most popular ones are right for anyone wanting to try them. Firefox and Opera will continue to have the edge among the adventurous, intrepid, customizing-types next year. While its core Web-browsing functions are rock-solid and secure, that's not what draws fans to the browser. It's the multitude (literally in the thousands now) of add-ons and extensions—think of them as mini-programs you download and that work in tandem with the browser—that makes it so popular, and a customizer's dream. Even more impressive than the vast array of stuff you can add to it is the fact the Firefox movement has been largely a volunteer effort and labor of love. Similarly
While it's difficult to fathom how it could have taken a company with the resources of Microsoft this long to reach this point with their browser, the fact remains that it did. This will probably fade from memory over the next year or two as IE7 takes over as the de facto browser of choice, not for over 90 percent of the browsing public as at the height of its predecessor's popularity, but still, for a majority. It will probably fall rapidly behind in terms of the pace of innovations that the more agile, less-targeted alternative browsers designers can achieve, but for now it is here and it is good (if not great).
More Web Browser reviews:
Final Thoughts
Microsoft Internet Explorer 7
You won't find any Earth-shaking new features or technogology here, but you will find a stable browser (for the most part) that's a whole lot more secure than its predecessor. One Word: Upgrade.