f13.net

They are even providing free telephone support (some restrictions apply)!

Blog posting: http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2006/04/24/582546.aspx

Download page: http://www.microsoft.com/ie

I've been using it at my workplace for awhile now. It works fairly decently. I like that open webpages are stored in tabs in the one browser window since I tend to have 5-10 webpages open at once.

It's also neat that you can have multiple home pages. Each one opens in a tab when you start IE. This has been damn useful at work since we have several web-based applications we use.

You know, you could just use Firefox or Opera which have had those features since, well, practically forever in Internet time.

Its only innovation when Microsoft does it!

We will use IE at work as well and nothing I can do about it. So I am happy they did catch up with some things other browsers did years ago.

Our version of IE is 5.2. No more IE for Apple? Ok by me.

Firefox, Safari, Camino, Shiira, etc. IE = Windows Update imo.

Opera and Firefox do the multiple homepages thing? Without the need to install an additional extension? If so, awesome. How do I do it?

On another note, IE7 does have some nice features, whether "stolen" or not, they are implemented well. The best of them is the thumbnail view of all open tabs. Opera actually took this idea from Microsoft and made it into their own by showing a thumbnail when you hover over the tab. That, to me, is still too much mousing around. In IE7, you hit the hotkey combination (Ctrl+Q) and a page shows thumbnail previews of all the tabs you currently have open. Call it Expose for a web browser. You can then click on a one of the pages to go to that tab, or hit Ctrl-Q again to exit that view. So perhaps Microsoft "stole" the idea from Apple, but hey, what else is new?

In any case, since the flame war could start at any moment, I'm sure the security will be an issue as it will still be the most used browser on the internet. Of course, the adoption rate of new IE browser upgrades is slow to occur because users are either too stupid or too lazy to upgrade their software (unless you force automatic upgrades down their throats). How many years did it take to get people to move from IE 5 and 5.5 to 6?

Where was I? Oh, yes. IE7. Well done so far. Few rough edges to sand down and it should be ready for primetime. I don't know that I will stick with it as my primary browser just yet. On the Mac, there's no contest because there is no IE upgrade and IE for Mac is total shit and ugly as sin. Safari keeps winning by default. On my Windows machines, however, the decision is much harder to make. IE, Firefox or Opera. Firefox is a pain in the ass because I have to screw around with extensions to get all the functionality I want and it likes to crash to desktop fairly often. Opera requires that I adjust my workflow. IE is the old standby, but we're all aware of its problems. If MS can streamline IE7 and make it a little bit snappier for release, then I'm sold.

Opera -> Preferences -> Startup -> Continue from last time

Not exactly the same but close enough.

Firefox does virtually nothing without additional extensions. Thats how they planned it and thats how they put themselves apart from Mozilla. You can like or hate it, but its what they set out to do in the first place.

The thumnail of all open tabs is a Firefox expansion I regulary use. So if Opera took this idea I bet it wasn't from Microsoft. And it makes sense ever since Apple used it. Can't wait for Windows Vista to have Expose (if it does, never looked twice at Vista yet).

And yes, Microsoft will copy all the best things from the other browsers. The loss in market share forced them to do it. They had to put up a stiff lip and write it for XP which they never planned in the first place. Good for them. That will be the status quo for a few years again and the other browser can again innovate until Microsoft realized it will have to do some catchup again. If I have the choice I rather not wait that long between innovation cycles. But I work at a bank and we are used to long replacement cycles in software anyway.

You can use IE tab to switch a page rendered in Firefox to IE rendering for sites that demand IE.

http://ietab.mozdev.org/

It puts a little Firefox window in the lower right corner. Click it and it turns into an IE logo and the tab you are viewing is displayed using IE's render engine.

I mean, if you're gonna copy Firefox, why not just use Firefox?

I think for us homeuser nerds Firefox is great, but it would be an utter nightmare to impliment in a company. One of those open source conundrums. You keep it open source so folks write supporting add-ins, which is great, but so far Firefox has never bundled them into a comprehensive package. I can happily sit at home looking through the bells and whistles, but I'd get an earful from my boss if I spent company time doing so.

I still use IE almost exclusively. I have Firefox installed, but meh. It does nothing for me that's necessary short of the "downthemALL" plugin I have for it. Which should really be called "downallthePORN." Other than that, nah, I'm good with IE.

In Firefox just setup the tabs how you would like on startup and then go to Options -> General -> Home Page -> Use Current Pages. You can also manually edit your home page "list" by separating each URL with a "|" (vertical bar). In Opera there's a concept of a "session" which is much more powerful (and also somewhat confusing) where you can save a set of tabs under a particular name. You can then tell Opera to use that session on startup or you can load it manually at any time. Opera also automatically "auto saves" your working set of tabs for you and you can have it use that set on startup (instead of one of your named sessions). This means you can close your browser at any time and when you relaunch it you'll get back the tabs you were last using.

I browse for fun.  I browse to get a paycheck.  I don't browse for any other reason.

I don't care what they may know   I don't care where they may go.  IE is just aw'right by me.

Seriously I'm glad there's pressure to innovate.  But that's the only value I put on alternates.

Probably the Firefox thing I use the most is the Autocopy (?) thing.  It's a real timesaver.  Otherwise I could go either way, depending on the site I'm trying to view.

7 supposedly unbreaks CSS support and adds transparent PNG support, along with other things. It still kinda has that fucked up IE way of rendering some things though. Too little too late IMO.