The long-awaited upgrade to Microsoft's Web browser is here, introducing the masses to features available for years in rival products.
Only they don't seem to work quite as well. | My initial thought to Microsoft Corp.'s game of catch-up was "no big deal." But after trying out version 7 of Internet Explorer, the first major release since 2001, I found a number of improvements to like. Normally, those might provide enough reason to switch to IE7 — except rivals like Mozilla's Firefox have been pushing forward with new tools as well.
Firefox is okay, but since I write data entry pages, I'm stuck with either IE or Opera. Data entry pages are pretty useless when the buttons don't work. | The most noticeable change in IE is a redesign that replaces menus like "file" and "edit" with task-oriented buttons for printing, searching and the like. Just as Google Inc.'s novel, folder-less approach to e-mail took getting used to, Microsoft's new interface initially will seem odd. But in no time, I started questioning the old ways — why, for instance, was "print" under "file" and not "view"?
My guess would be for consistency's sake. Even if you have controls in an illogical order, once users are used to them there moving them confuses people. And you do print a file. You don't print a view. | IE7 also introduces a built-in search box and tabbed browsing, which reduces clutter by opening multiple Web pages in a single window. That'll come as new to the 90 percent of Internet users who don't use Firefox and Opera, which already sport both features.
The tabs also behave differently than they do in Opera and Firefox. A file that should open in a new tab opens a new instance of the browser, which itself is capable of lugging multiple tabs around. | The new Microsoft browser also carries security improvements, including warnings when Web visitors try to go to known "phishing" sites that try to steal passwords. |